Jonah Chapter 4

From The Open Bible Project

4:1 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.

• (a) Because by this he would be taken as a false prophet, and so the name of God, which he preached, would be blasphemed.

4:2 He 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.

• (b) Read (Jonah 1:3).

4:3 Therefore now, Yahweh, take, I beg you, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live."

• (c) Thus he prayed from grief, fearing that God’s name by this forgiveness might be blasphemed, as though he sent his Prophets forth to make known his judgments in vain.

4:4 Yahweh said, "Is it right for you to be angry?"

• (d) Will you judge when I do things for my glory, and when I do not?

4:5 Then 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.

• (e) For he doubted as yet whether God would show them mercy or not, and therefore after forty days he departed out of the city, to see what God would do.

4:6 Yahweh 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.

• (f) Which was a further means to cover him from the heat of the sun, as he remained in his booth.

4:7 But God prepared a worm at dawn the next day, and it chewed on the vine, so that it withered.

4:8 It happened, when the sun arose, that God prepared a sultry east wind; and the sun beat on Jonah's head, so that he fainted, and requested for himself that he might die, and said, "It is better for me to die than to live."

4:9 God 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."

• (g) This declares the great inconveniences into which God’s servants fall when they give place to their own affections, and do not in all things willingly submit themselves to God.

4:10 Yahweh 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.

4:11 Shouldn'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 much livestock?"

• (h) Thus God mercifully reproves him who would pity himself and this gourd, and yet would keep God from showing his compassion to so many thousand people.
• (i) Meaning that they were children and infants.