Why did he do it? We can imagine some possible reasons. We can imagine, first, that Jonah was overcome by thoughts of the mission's difficulties. They are expressed very well in the commission which God Himself gave Jonah. God told Jonah that Nineveh was a very "great city," and indeed it was. In addition to what the book itself tells us - that the city was so large that it took three days to cross it and that it had sixty thousand infants or small children (Jonah 4:11) - we also know that it was the capital of the great Assyrian Empire, that it had walls a hundred feet high and so broad that three chariots could run abreast around them. Within the walls were gardens and even fields for cattle. For a man to arrive all alone with a message from an unknown God against such a city was ludicrous in the extreme. What could one man do? Who would listen? Where were the armies that could break down such walls or storm such garrisons? The men of Nineveh would ridicule the strange Jewish prophet. If Jonah had been overcome with the thought of the difficulties of such a mission and so had fled to Tarshish because of them, we could well understand him. Yet there is not a word in the story to indicate that it was the difficulties that upset this rebellious prophet.