Jonah would have been the first Israelite prophet to announce divine judgment to a foreign city, but here comes one of the surprising plot twists in the book. Jonah rebelled against the command of the Lord. Instead of going to Nineveh, Jonah fled to Tarshish. Initially, we are not given the reason for Jonah’s reluctance to proceed immediately to Nineveh. Jonah is simply a truant prophet of the Lord.