own ancestors suffering under the cruelty of Nineveh and the Assyrians. It is quite understandable that an Israelite prophet would be reluctant to accept a mission to that city. It would be as if a Jew who had lost family in the Holocaust were asked to undertake a mission to Germany just after the Nazi period. Nineveh was, as Nahum named her, “the harlot,” the “bloody city,” the center of violence and terrorism, the enemy. While the location of Tarshish is still somewhat in doubt, most agree that