Jonah4chapter 4

Jonah 4:1-3

Jonah's anger erupts the moment mercy is confirmed: Nineveh spared displeases him exceedingly, and he asks the Lord to take his life rather than let him live to see it stand. His prayer names the reason he fled to Tarshish in the first place, quoting back to God his own self-description, a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil, the same formula the Lord proclaimed of himself at Sinai. Jonah preached judgment and got mercy, and the prophet who ran from that mercy for Nineveh now begs to die rather than watch it stand. Calvin reads the prayer as Jonah's confession turned complaint, the truth about God's character used as an accusation against God's own kindness.

Jonah 4:4-6

The Lord's question doest thou well to be angry receives no answer; Jonah instead walks out of the city, builds a booth on its east side, and sits watching to see what will become of Nineveh, still hoping for the fire he preached. The Lord God prepares a gourd, most likely the qiqayon plant identified with the fast growing castor plant or with a true gourd vine, the readings named without settling which, to shade Jonah's head from his grief. Jonah's gladness over one plant's shade sets up the argument the Lord will make from the small mercy to the great one. Clarke and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown both note that Jonah's grief here is not for Nineveh's souls but for his own vindication as a prophet of judgment.

Jonah 4:7-8

The same verb that prepared the great fish at 1:17 now prepares a worm to smite the gourd and a vehement east wind to beat on Jonah's head, fish, plant, worm, and wind each arranged by God's own hand to teach the prophet rather than to punish Nineveh. Jonah faints under the sun and repeats his death wish in the same words he used at verse 3, it is better for me to die than to live, the plant's loss undoing him more than a spared city ever did. Keil reads the sequence as deliberate escalation, comfort given and then instruction given by comfort withdrawn. Wesley notes the east wind was the sirocco known across the region for its choking heat, no unusual weather invented where a known wind will do.

Jonah 4:9

The Lord repeats his question, narrowed now to the gourd alone, and Jonah answers without a trace of repentance, I do well to be angry, even unto death, defending his anger over a dead plant with the same words he used to defend his anger over a spared city. Barnes reads the repetition of the question as pastoral patience, God meeting Jonah's temper a second time rather than rebuking it outright. Pusey notes the irony the text leaves for the reader to see for himself, Jonah will grieve a plant that cost him no labor while begrudging the mercy shown to a city of thousands, the very disproportion the closing verses expose.

Jonah 4:10-11

The Lord's closing argument moves from the lesser to the greater: Jonah pitied a gourd he did not plant, did not tend, and lost within a single night, so should not the Lord pity Nineveh, that great city, where more than sixscore thousand persons cannot discern their right hand from their left, besides much cattle. The commentators read the sixscore thousand two ways, the whole population reckoned as morally undiscerning like children, or the number naming Nineveh's infants specifically, and both readings are named without settling between them. The book ends without recording Jonah's answer, the Lord's question left standing as the last word, mercy wider than the prophet who preached it. Gill and Calvin both read the unanswered question as address to every reader who has ever sat in Jonah's booth wanting judgment more than mercy for someone else.