This study is designed as a commentary with a difference, where the reading of the prophet's travails is explored in the context of two wider (1) the overt and highly sophisticated intertwining of Jonah's story with an impressively wide range of other biblical texts, often deployed in surprising ways; and (2) the clearly contrarian relationship between God and Jonah which has both vexed and intrigued scholars and lay readers alike for millennia.Underpinning this reading is a twofold firstly, an argument that many of the puzzles inherent in the book of Jonah can be illuminated in the light of the idea that Nineveh was from the beginning a cipher for the Jerusalem of the author's time; and secondly, that this would have been evident to Jonah's first the class of elite literati amongst the ruling cadre of late Persian or early Hellenistic Judaea.