Jonah’s adventure starts when God commands Jonah, son of Amittai, to travel to the great city of Nineveh and preach repentance to the people. However, Jonah disagrees with God. He doesn’t believe that the Ninevites are worthy of salvation because Nineveh was the capital city of one of Israel’s enemies, the Assyrian empire. They were also a very wicked city at this time. Jonah instead decides to disobey God and travels in the opposite direction to Joppa, a seaport in Israel, where he boards a boat bound for Tarshish.