Study Desk

The Lord God says: "The days are coming when I will cause a time of hunger in the land. The people will not be hungry for bread or thirsty for water, but they will be hungry for words from the Lord .

They make promises by the idol in Samaria and say, ‘As surely as the god of Dan lives... ' and, ‘As surely as the god of Beersheba lives, we promise... ' So they will fall and never get up again."

The Lord God All-Powerful touches the land, and the land shakes. Then everyone who lives in the land cries for the dead. The whole land rises like the Nile River and falls like the river of Egypt.

I, the Lord God , am watching the sinful kingdom Israel. I will destroy it from off the earth, but I will not completely destroy Jacob's descendants," says the Lord .

I will plant my people on their land, and they will not be pulled out again from the land which I have given them," says the Lord your God.

This is the vision of Obadiah. This is what the Lord God says about Edom: We have heard a message from the Lord . A messenger has been sent among the nations, saying, "Attack! Let's go attack Edom!"

The sailors were afraid, and each man cried to his own god. They began throwing the cargo from the ship into the sea to make the ship lighter. But Jonah had gone down far inside the ship to lie down, and he fell fast asleep.

The captain of the ship came and said, "Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray to your god! Maybe your god will pay attention to us, and we won't die!"

Then Jonah said to them, "I am a Hebrew. I fear the Lord , the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land."

While Jonah was inside the fish, he prayed to the Lord his God and said,

When I went down to where the mountains of the sea start to rise, I thought I was locked in this prison forever, but you saved me from the pit of death, Lord my God.

The people of Nineveh believed God. They announced that they would fast for a while, and they put on rough cloth to show their sadness. All the people in the city did this, from the most important to the least important.

But every person and animal should be covered with rough cloth, and people should cry loudly to God. Everyone must turn away from evil living and stop doing harm all the time.

Who knows? Maybe God will change his mind. Maybe he will stop being angry, and then we will not die.

When God saw what the people did, that they stopped doing evil, he changed his mind and did not do what he had warned. He did not punish them.

He prayed to the Lord , "When I was still in my own country this is what I said would happen, and that is why I quickly ran away to Tarshish. I knew that you are a God who is kind and shows mercy. You don't become angry quickly, and you have great love. I knew you would choose not to cause harm.

But the next day when the sun rose, God sent a worm to attack the plant so that it died.

As the sun rose higher in the sky, God sent a very hot east wind to blow, and the sun became so hot on Jonah's head that he became very weak and wished he were dead. He said, "It is better for me to die than to live."

But God said to Jonah, "Do you think it is right for you to be angry about the plant?" Jonah answered, "It is right for me to be angry! I am so angry I could die!"

Hear this, all you nations; listen, earth and all you who live on it. The Lord God will be a witness against you, the Lord from his Holy Temple.