Prophet Jonah (Israel)

Jonah son of Amittai, from Gath-hepher in Lower Galilee, appears in 2 Kings 14:25 as the prophet who foretold that Jeroboam II would restore Israel's borders "from Lebo-hamath to the Sea of the Arabah." The book bearing his name tells a different story: sent to warn Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, he fled from Jaffa on a ship bound for Tarshish. In a storm the sailors cast lots and, at his urging, threw him overboard; a great fish swallowed him, and after three days and nights and a prayer from its belly it spat him onto dry land. His five-word sermon in Hebrew, "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned," moved the king to sackcloth and the whole city, even its animals, to fast, and God spared it.

Angry, Jonah sat outside the city; God grew a plant to shade him, then sent a worm to kill it, and the book closes with God's question about pity for 120,000 people "who do not know their right hand from their left, and many animals." The whole book is read at the afternoon service of Yom Kippur. His traditional tomb on the mound of Nebi Yunus in Mosul was blown up by ISIS in 2014, exposing tunnels into an Assyrian palace beneath it.