The Real Jonah Story

The Headlines read "Man's Body Found in Whale". The story started in the little town of Galilee, where a man named Jonah, last name withheld until relatives can be notified, who last known job was that of a prophet. In interviewing his neighbors about Jonah, they say that he might have been sckitzophrenic, he was always going around talking to someone who was not there. One neighbor, who last saw him. said that he, Jonah, had been told to go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, and preach to the Ninevites. Jonah was supposed to warn the Ninevites to repent or suffer the consequences of their wickedness. And when I asked the neighbor who told him this, he said his invisible buddy. So that is where the story takes a little left turn. In tracing Jonahs last steps, he did not go to Nineveh but instead booked a cabin on a ship heading to Tarshish, Spain. I think Jonah was trying to hide from the voices in his head. Now little did Jonah know that the people running this ship where just a crazy as he was and that would eventually lead to a big problem.

The first night out there came a terrible storm. The ship was being tosses around wildly. The crew who were drinking and smoking crack started to get paranoid. And who is this paranoid directed at, you guess it, our sckitzo friend Jonah. The sailors all question Jonah about what he’s done to bring this storm on them. He confesses that he is running away from his invisible buddy and tells the sailors to throw him overboard to spare their lives. Bad suggestion, they do. As one of the crew would say later, "As soon as he hit the water a giant blue whale surfaced and swallowed him like a 130 pounds of krill." And that was the last time, until today, when a giant blue whale that had been harpooned, and was being butchered, that they discovered the decomposed body of Jonah in the great beasts stomach. Moral of the story is that in a storm, and you are on a boat, with a crew that are all as high as a kite, don't act crazy and say you are the cause of the storm. And most of all don't suggest that you, should be thrown over board.