Everyone on the ship panics over the tidal waves and lightning — everyone except for Jonah who, not even kidding, goes below-deck for a nap. Wasn’t this whole shipwreck business for his benefit in the first place? Apparently having the Lord of All Creation conduct a vendetta-at-sea against him is a little too boring for him to keep his eyes open for. Man, seriously: what a prick. All hands race around the deck, abandoning their cargo and bailing water out of the ship in a frantic effort to save their lives. Jonah continues sleeping. His bailing hand was probably sore from all that sticking his own thumb up his ass all day, I'll bet.

Evidently I’m not alone in thinking Jonah’s a total dick, since the Tarshish captain races below deck and starts slapping Jonah in the mouth, shrieking at this shiftless idiot to help them not die. "How can you sleep?” he yells. “Wake up and call on your God! Maybe He will take notice of us, and we will not perish!" Oh, whatever. The story never establishes which deity the Tarshish captain prays to — but whichever it is, he certainly drops it like a hot potato the second he actually needs some deistic intervention. Wake up and call on your God? He might as well be saying, “My false god’s a hollow sham! Quick, call your real one!”

This grates at me less from a theological standpoint so much as it’s just sloppy storytelling. The Tarshish captain freely admits Jonah’s God not only exists, but has the power to help them? Then why isn’t he worshipping Jonah’s god? They couldn’t have thrown a quick scene in here with the Tarshish captain trying to get in touch with Zulu or whatever, failing, then running to Jonah? It’s hard to take spiritual lessons seriously when everyone but our protagonist seems to have chosen their religion through the same elimination process as a Kirk/Picard debate. “Well, Jehovah is the one true god… but on the other hand, this fake god Ammon has such nice hair!”

By now the only thing blowing fiercer than the storm is the story's plotline. Above deck, it's somehow just as clear to everyone else as it was to the Captain that the storm was sent by Jonah’s God. Holy weather patterns must have a look unique from conventional meteorology. Eager to resolve the issue, the Tarshish sailors draw straws in order to figure out which one of them angered the Lord. I wouldn’t even know where to start with how idiotic that is, so let’s just skip to the part where it works anyway.

Jonah, the one person in a group that believes in God's existence who actually worships Him, is flushed out as the one God wants dead. Nice moves there, God. Good hustle. The Tarshish sailors listen to Jonah explain himself, nod sympathetically, then throw him over the side of the boat. Say what you will about the religious failings of Tarshish sailors: these guys are problem solvers. The second they pitch Jonah over the side, the roiling seas calm and the skies become clear. Everyone makes vows to God and offers a sacrifice to him (which seems like a waste of perfectly good goat. Didn’t they technically already make one?)

Jonah, meanwhile, gets bored of drowning and takes another nap. No, not really, though it sounds like something he’d do. Actually, Jonah is immediately swallowed by a whale, and spends several nights sitting around in its stomach. Eager to kill some time and without a PSP, Jonah sings songs of thanksgiving, praising the Lord for delivering him from drowning by sending the whale to eat him. Geez, Jonah — have some dignity. Jonah’s time spent in the belly of the whale is otherwise a mystery, though I’d like to think he whiled away the hours praising God for teaching him the value of celibacy by fucking his girlfriend in front of him.

You know, Jonah — there is one way out of here. But you're not gonna like it.

After an undisclosed period of time (my secondary reading says three days, though I don’t see any direct mention of it in BoJ), the whale vomits Jonah back onto dry land. God asks Jonah a second time to go to Nineveh and preach His message. I imagine God asking this here with the exact same cadence and phrasing as the first time, like the last three days didn’t even happen. Jonah wisely keeps his head down and does what he’s friggin’ told this time.