Jonah’s anger at God’s show of mercy
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📚But this displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry 📖. 2 📚And he prayed to the LORD, and said, “Please, LORD, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore before this I fled to Tarshish. For I knew that you are a gracious God, and merciful, slow to get angry, and of great kindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. 3 📚Therefore now, O LORD, I beg you to take my life 📖 from me, for it is better for me to die than to live”.
4 📚Then the LORD said, “Are you right to be angry?”
4:4 God now has to deal again with His grieved and angry prophet. We see how gently He does this in the rest of the chapter. The answer to the question of this verse is plainly “no”. No one ever has any right to question God’s ways (compare Rom 9:20). It is our part to learn God’s ways and gladly yield to them.⚜
The plant and the worm
5 📚So Jonah went out of the city, and sat at the east side of the city, and there he made a booth for himself, and sat under it in the shade, until he could see what would become of the city 📖. 6 📚And the LORD God prepared 📖 a plant and made it come up over Jonah, so that it might give shade over his head, to deliver him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad about the plant 📖. 7 📚But the next day when morning dawned, God prepared a worm, and it attacked the plant, so that it withered.
4:7 God can take away our comforts as easily as He provides them, and may do so to teach us a lesson.⚜
8 📚And it came about when the sun rose that God prepared a hot east wind. And the sun beat down on Jonah’s head, so that he fainted, and wished that he might die, and said, “It is better for me to die than to live”.
4:8 Again we see that Jonah thought entirely too much of his comforts and not enough of the people to whom God sent him to minister. He still wanted to die, not because of the vine, but because he was still not reconciled to God’s ways and God’s heart.⚜
God rebukes Jonah
9 📚And God said to Jonah, “Are you right to be angry about the plant?” And he said, “I am right 📖 to be angry, even to death”.
10 Then the LORD said, “You are sorry about the plant, for which you did not labour or make to grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. 11 📚And should I not spare Nineveh, that great city, where there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also many cattle?”
4:10-11 Here is the lesson Jonah needed to learn. Let us learn it too. Let us learn that all things of this world, like the vine that gave shade to Jonah, are passing away – 1 John 2:17, and that we must care about the things about which God cares. God is concerned about all the peoples of the world. Are we taken up only with ourselves and our comforts?⚜