Jonah 1:2-3 

Well, Jonah, “got up” alright, but not to do what God told him to do.  He made up his mind he was going to Tarshish.  Now, don’t confuse “Tarshish” with “Tarsus”—that’s where Saul (Paul) was from. Tarsus is inAsia Minor, at the northeast corner of theMediterranean Sea.  Tarshish, on the other hand, is 2,000 miles away from our hero’s hometown, on the southern coast of Spain.  You have to go all the way across the Mediterranean Sea and through the Strait of Gibraltar to get to it.

In the ancient world, it was pretty much as far west as you could go before you fell off the edge of the earth.  Jonah didn’t just hop a bus for the next town, he was getting as far away from Nineveh as he possibly could.

Tarshish was a bustling seaport, a hub for exports to Israel and other points east. …