Overview
After Nineveh is spared, a furious Jonah retreats east of the city to sulk, and God uses a vine, a worm, and a scorching wind to expose the prophet's disordered loves before closing the book with an open question: if Jonah can grieve a plant he never planted, should not God show compassion toward 120,000 human souls — and even the animals — of Nineveh?
Passages
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Jonah 4
1But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 2He prayed to Yahweh, and said, “Please, Yahweh, 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, Yahweh, take, I beg you, my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
4Yahweh 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. 6Yahweh 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.”
10Yahweh 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?”