called Tarshish (the name designating towns that were built on the activity of mining and smelting). One such Tarshish was in the western Mediterranean, either in the territory that is now Spain, or on the island of Sardinia (where archaeologists have discovered Phoenician inscriptions from the ninth century B.C. bearing the word Tarshish), and it is probably this location that is intended in the story. It is not clear yet, at this point in the story, why Jonah was so immediately and directly disobedient.