Jonah

The book of Jonah is the shortest and most story-like of the twelve minor prophets, four chapters long. Jerome translated it from the Hebrew in the late fourth century as part of his Latin Old Testament, and also wrote a commentary on it.

God commands Jonah, son of Amittai, to preach against the wicked city of Nineveh, but Jonah takes ship from Joppa in the opposite direction. A great storm breaks, the sailors cast lots to find who is to blame, and at Jonah's own urging they throw him overboard, whereupon the sea grows calm. A great fish swallows him, and after three days and three nights in its belly, where he prays to God, it casts him up on dry land. Sent again, he preaches in Nineveh that the city will be destroyed in forty days, and the king and people, down to their animals, fast in sackcloth and repent, so God spares them. Jonah is angry at God's mercy. He sits outside the city, where God makes a plant grow to shade him and then sends a worm to destroy it, and God asks him whether he should not pity a great city with all its people.

Jerome's choice of 'hedera', ivy, for this plant famously caused a riot in a North African church where the congregation was used to the older word for a gourd, and led to an exchange of letters with Augustine. The book is short, vivid and easy to read in Latin.