Jonah 4:4-11
4 And YHWH said, “Is it right for you to be angry? [lit. is it rightfully hot for you?]”
5 And Jonah went forth from the city and he sat down east of the city and he made for himself there a booth and he sat down under it in the shadow until he would see what would become with the city.
6 And YHWH God supplied a plant and he made it grow up over Jonah to be a shadow over his head to take him away from his misery and Jonah rejoiced over the plant with great joy.
7 And God supplied a worm at the coming up of the dawn the next day and it attacked the plant and it withered.
8 And it happened at the rising of the sun and God supplied a sharp east wind and the sun attacked upon the head of Jonah and he grew faint and he asked his soul to die and he said, “My death is better than my life.”
9 And God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry? [lit. is it rightfully hot for you?] about the plant?” And he said, “It is right for me to be angry until death [lit. rightfully it is hot for me until death].”
10 And YHWH said, “You are troubled over the plant that you did not labour for it and you did not cause it to grow, it was for a son of a night and it perished a son of a night.
11 And I should not be troubled about Nineveh, the great city which there are in her many more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot tell their right hand from their left and many animals.”
Comments
In the first part of chapter 4 (verses 1-3), Jonah prayed to God, complaining about how events had turned out and asked him to take his life so he didn’t have to live anymore. In Jonah 4:4 God responds to Jonah’s complaints. He asks him if it is right for him to be angry. This is an incredibly probing question. It should be provoking Jonah into thinking about why he is feeling angry and challenging his assumptions both about his desire for Nineveh’s destruction and his expectations concerning God’s actions towards both Israel and her enemies. God’s response could have been a harsh rebuke of Jonah’s behaviour, but this would have no chance of getting the stubborn prophet to think or change his mind about what had not happened to Nineveh. Jonah would simply have dug his heals in even more. By trying to make him think, God is trying to draw Jonah around to his way of seeing things.
Jonah doesn’t respond at all to God’s question. Instead verse 5 describes Jonah leaving the city and sitting down to the east of it. From there he can wait for the forty day time period to elapse and see if God will destroy the city. This indicates that he doesn’t know for sure that God has relented of his judgement of destruction on Nineveh because of their repentance. We, as the readers of Jonah, have been told this (3:10) but Jonah hasn’t. Instead he has deduced from what he knows of God’s character (4:2) and the response of the Ninevites which he would have witnessed (3:5-9), that there is a strong chance that God will not destroy the city.
Jonah builds himself a little shelter (a booth) and sits under it and waits. Booths were used by the Israelites during the annual Festival of Booths (Lev 23:33-44). For seven days each year the whole nation was to live in booths as a reminder of the booths they had to live in when God brought them out of Egypt. A booth is a very crude form of shelter, usually made from branches and would not have provided much shelter from the hot sun. So instead of reflecting on what God had asked him concerning his reaction to Nineveh’s repentance, Jonah settles down to examine the city itself and see what becomes of it.
Despite Jonah’s lack of response to him, God still cares for him by supplying a plant, which was probably a vine type plant (possibly a castor vine which had big leaves), which grows over Jonah and his booth providing much better shelter from the heat of the sun. This made Jonah very happy as he was no longer suffering in the heat. Little did he know that this very plant would be the focus of the lesson that God was intent on teaching to him. This is also the only time in the whole book of Jonah where Jonah is described as rejoicing with great joy. Not even when he was saved from drowning by the fish was he this happy. It is odd that the growth of a plant should elicit such a reaction (even if it did provide much needed respite from the hot sun), but neither his own rescue nor the turning of an entire city to God could do likewise.
It is interesting to note that up until this point in Jonah, God has been referred to as YHWH when the text focuses on Jonah and as God (elohim) when on the Ninevites and the sailors (both of whom are not part of Israel and do not know God by his proper name, YHWH). However, in verse 6 God is named as YHWH Elohim, a combination of the two names. Throughout Jonah 4:7-9 God is only referred to as Elohim, even though it is Jonah who is the focus of this passage. This indicates that God is demonstrating to Jonah what it is like to be in a situation similar to that of the Ninevites through his use of the short life of a plant and the subtle change in the name of God helps highlight this.
Even though the plant provided Jonah with the shade he needed, he only experienced it for a short period of time. The next day God supplies a worm to attack the plant and cause it to wither (4:7), thus depriving Jonah of its shade. This was not a common earth worm which makes soil so good for growing plants, but some other type which feeds on the plants themselves.
Not only does Jonah have to bear the heat of the sun, but God also sends and easterly wind (4:8). The easterly wind would have brought plenty of hot, dry air off the deserts of the Near East, amplifying the heat of the sun and causing the temperature to rise rapidly. As a result of all the heat, Jonah grows faint and he repeats the request he made to God in verse 3, that he be allowed to die, although this time he addresses the request to his soul, basically to himself, as God had already refused his request. Once again he is in the depths of despair and can see no way forward except to have his life end.
Again God comes in and asks him if he is right to be angry (4:9), but this time he ask if he is right to be angry about the plant. By focusing on this particular incident, God is able to get Jonah to respond in such a way that his will condemn his own behaviour towards Nineveh (much like Nathan’s use of a parable to get David to condemn his own behaviour towards Uzziah in 2 Sam 12:1-15). Jonah responds to God’s question that it is right for him to be angry until he dies. He didn’t even pause to think about what God was asking him, all he saw was the injustice of the plant being given to shade him and then taken away so that he suffered in the heat. It is possible that Jonah did think he was very close to death at this point, which would explain why he believed he was right in being angry “until death.” In this state, he was unable to see how his concern for the plant might mirror God’s concern for Nineveh.
In verse 10, God is once again referred to by his proper name, YHWH. Now the illustration is over and the lesson behind it will be explained to Jonah. God tells Jonah that he has shown concern for a plant whose life he had no part in. He did not plant it or make it grow. The pronoun “you” at the beginning of verse 10 is emphatic, as is the “I” at the beginning of verse 11. This highlights the contrast between these two verses and the point God is trying to make to Jonah. Jonah had no right to be concerned for the plant as he had nothing to do with its short life.
God hammers home his point in verse 11. If Jonah can be so troubled by the short life of a plant which he had no part over, can God not be concerned over a city inhabited by 120,000 people and many animals? Nineveh may not be God’s chosen people like Israel, but this still doesn’t mean that God cannot be concerned for them. The illustration of this with the plant only goes so far of course, as God had far more concern for Nineveh than Jonah would have for the plant because he is the creator and sustained of everything. Thus everything that went on in Nineveh was important to God. That Jonah could not even see any similarity between the plant and Nineveh highlights that he does not understand that God’s concern in his world does extend beyond his chosen people. After all, part of Israel’s mission was to be a light to the nations around them (Gen 18:18; 22:18; Isa 42:6; 49:6), an indication that God was concerned with other nations as well.
The statement that the people in Nineveh cannot tell their right hand from their left is meant to show their religious naivety. They did not have all the information about YHWH that Israel did, but God still considered them important enough in his creation to extend mercy to because of their repentance.
The book of Jonah ends on this point. We will never know how Jonah responded to God’s lesson of the plant. But that was never the purpose of the book. The book of Jonah uses the story of Jonah and the message he prophesied to Nineveh to demonstrate the boundless nature of God’s mercy, which was something that Jonah never understood in the book. Jonah saw Israel as set apart and the only people God should be concerned about. The very idea of God relenting from destroying Israel’s enemies was horrific to him. But God demonstrated to the prophet that his mercy extends beyond the people of Israel, to all human beings who turn toward him and even their cattle (as mentioned at the end of 4:11). Jonah showed more concern for a plant that he did for his fellow humans. God, however, is willing to extend his mercy to all who will accept it.
This is the last section of Jonah. I hope you have enjoyed exploring this book of the bible with me. Please feel free to add a comment below telling me what you thought of the series, or if you have any questions.
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