In the Book of Jonah, when God commanded the prophet to go to Nineveh, Jonah attempted to flee in the opposite direction. He went down to the port city of Joppa and paid the fare for a ship bound for Tarshish to "flee from the presence of the Lord".

Tarshish was likely in modern-day Spain, representing the furthest known point in the opposite direction from Nineveh (modern-day Iraq).