Context No. 2780 of 4322 · Jonah

Jonah 4:1-11: in context

1But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 2He prayed to the LORD, and said, “Please, LORD, wasn’t this what I said when I was still in my own country? Therefore I hurried to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, and you relent of doing harm. 3Therefore now, LORD, take, I beg you, my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4The LORD said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” 5Then Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city, and there made himself a booth and sat under it in the shade, until he might see what would become of the city. 6The LORD God prepared a vine and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head to deliver him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the vine. 7But God prepared a worm at dawn the next day, and it chewed on the vine so that it withered. 8When the sun arose, God prepared a sultry east wind; and the sun beat on Jonah’s head, so that he was faint and requested for himself that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” 9God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the vine?” He said, “I am right to be angry, even to death.” 10The LORD said, “You have been concerned for the vine, for which you have not labored, neither made it grow; which came up in a night and perished in a night. 11Shouldn’t I be concerned for Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred twenty thousand persons who can’t discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also many animals?”

The book of Jonah ends on a strange, revealing note. Nineveh has repented and God has spared the city, and Jonah is furious about it. He prays, in effect, I knew you would do this. I knew you are gracious and merciful, slow to anger, quick to relent, and that is exactly why I ran. Now take my life; I would rather die than watch this. God only asks, is it right for you to be angry?

Jonah sulks outside the city. God gives him a plant for shade, then sends a worm to kill it, and Jonah rages over the withered plant. So God draws the lesson out: you pitied a plant you did not grow or tend, gone overnight. Should I not pity Nineveh, with its more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and even its animals? Jonah's heart is out of all proportion, tender toward his own comfort and hard toward the people God loves.

Whose forgiveness would make me angry, and what does that reveal about how small my mercy is next to God's?

Sources

Jonah 4:2: "I knew that you are a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness."
Jonah 4:11: "Shouldn't I be concerned for Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred twenty thousand persons?"
Matthew 20:15: "Or is your eye evil, because I am good?"