Fearing that the Lord might forbear punishing them if they repented, and so seemingly tarnish his honour, Jonah shipped himself at Joppa for Tarshish, when a storm quickly pursued the ship wherein he was. The heathen mariners awaked him, and required him to call on his God for deliverance. Lots being cast to discern for whose sake the storm arose, the lot fell on Jonah, who with shame confessed his guilt to the mariners, and desired them to cast him into the sea, that the storm might be stayed, which with reluctance, they were at last obliged to do; whereon the storm immediately ceased. A large fish swallowed up Jonah, and retained him safe in her belly for three days. There he earnestly prayed to the Lord, at whose command the fish vomited him alive on dry land. His orders to warn the Ninevites of their approaching destruction were immediately renewed, and all obedient, he hasted to that vast city, and travelled in it above a day’s journey denouncing their ruin if they did not repent within forty days. When the inhabitants heard this, they were greatly afflicted; a fast of three days both for man and beast was appointed, and they cried mightily to God for the preventing of this stroke; he heard their prayers, and long delayed their ruin. Displeased with the divine mercy, Jonah angrily wished to die, rather than live and see his prediction unfulfilled. While he sat without the city, waiting for his desired view of Nineveh’s ruin, God caused a gourd quickly to spring up to overshadow him from the scorching heat of the sun, but next day, a worm having bitten its root, it suddenly withered. The scorching sun and blasting wind vehemently beating on Jonah, he fainted and angrily wished to die, and averred to God himself that he was right in doing so. The Lord bid him think, if he had pity on the short-lived gourd, was there not far more reason for his and their maker to pity the penitent inhabitants of Nineveh? Nineveh at last was destroyed about one hundred years after Jonah. The Medes and Persians had several times laid siege to it, but were diverted by various accidents; but after the massacre of the Tartars in Media, they repeated the siege, Cyaxares and Nebuchadnezzar being the commanders: after they had lain before it three years, the river Tigrus or Sycus, being exceedingly swollen, washed away two and a half miles of the wall; when the waters assuaging the besiegers rushed into the city, and murdered the inhabitants, who lay buried in their drunkeness, occasioned by an advantage which they had just before gained over the enemy. When the king, whose name we suppose was Sardanapalus, heard the city was taken, it is said, he shut up himself, family, and wealth to the value of about twenty-five thousand millions sterling, in the palace, and then set fire to it, and destroyed all that was in it, and it was fifteen days before the flames were quenched.