The Book of Jonah is a book in the Hebrew Bible

Hebrew Bible

The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...

. It tells the story of a Hebrew prophet named Jonah

Jonah

Jonah is the name given in the Hebrew Bible to a prophet of the northern kingdom of Israel in about the 8th century BC, the eponymous central character in the Book of Jonah, famous for being swallowed by a fish or a whale, depending on translation...

 ben Amittai who is sent by God to prophesy the destruction of Nineveh

Nineveh

Nineveh was an ancient Assyrian city on the eastern bank of the Tigris River, and capital of the Neo Assyrian Empire. Its ruins are across the river from the modern-day major city of Mosul, in the Ninawa Governorate of Iraq....

 but tries to escape the divine mission. Set in the reign of Jeroboam II

Jeroboam II

Jeroboam II was the son and successor of Jehoash, , and the fourteenth king of the ancient Kingdom of Israel, over which he ruled for forty-one years according to 2 Kings . His reign was contemporary with those of Amaziah and Uzziah , kings of Judah...

 (786-746 BCE), it was probably written in the post-exilic period, sometime between the late fifth to early fourth century BCE. The story has an interesting interpretive history (see below) and has become well-known through popular children’s stories.