Jonah 4: Summary and Commentary

Verse 1

4:1-7 The account takes an unexpected turn. Jonah, himself a recipient of God’s mercy, complains about the mercy that the Lord has dispensed to the Assyrians. The prophet’s insolence only magnifies God’s grace (see 4:8-11 for God’s response).

4:1 This change of plans (literally It): See study note on 3:10.

Verse 2

4:2 Jonah expresses his motive in originally fleeing from the Lord (1:3): He knew that the Lord would not destroy the wicked Ninevites if they repented. • I knew: Jonah practically quotes Exod 34:6-7, a passage set in the context of Israel’s covenant relationship with the Lord. Even in the Old Testament, God was concerned to spread salvation to the nations (cp. Matt 28:18-20).

Verse 3

4:3-5 Jonah’s desire to die rather than embrace God’s will (see also 4:8-9), and his willingness to wait in hope that the city would be destroyed (4:5), are signs of his hard-heartedness and his hatred for the Assyrians.

Verse 4

4:4 The Lord’s reply is a rhetorical question. The implied answer is “No, of course not!” The object lesson that follows (4:6-11) reveals why Jonah ought not to be angry.

Verse 6

4:6 The Lord is God’s covenant name in relation to Israel (see, e.g., Ps 72:18). God did these things to show his covenant love toward Jonah and to those in Israel who had the same attitude. • arranged for: see study note on Jon 1:17.

Verse 11

4:11 people living in spiritual darkness: God graciously sent the light of his prophetic word into a wicked city. Not all who encounter God’s light respond favorably (cp. John 3:19-21), but God is eager to save those who receive his word in genuine repentance and faith. • The book closes abruptly, leaving the reader to ponder God’s final question to Jonah. God would rather save than destroy. Those who have received his mercy must be glad for that same mercy to be shown to others, even to their enemies.

Verse 2

my saying—my thought, or feeling.

fled before—I anticipated by fleeing, the disappointment of my design through Thy long-suffering mercy.

gracious . . . and merciful, &c.—Jonah here has before his mind ; as Joel () in his turn quotes from Jonah.

Verse 3

Jonah's impatience of life under disappointed hopes of Israel's reformation through the destruction of Nineveh, is like that of Elijah at his plan for reforming Israel (1Ki. 18:1-46) failing through Jezebel ().

Verse 4

Doest thou well to be angry?—or grieved; rather as the Margin, "Art thou much angry," or "grieved?" [FAIRBAIRN with the Septuagint and Syriac]. But English Version suits the spirit of the passage, and is quite tenable in the Hebrew [GESENIUS].

Verse 5

made him a booth—that is, a temporary hut of branches and leaves, so slightly formed as to be open to the wind and sun's heat.

see what would become of the city—The term of forty days had not yet elapsed, and Jonah did not know that anything more than a suspension, or mitigation, of judgment had been granted to Nineveh. Therefore, not from sullennesss, but in order to watch the event from a neighboring station, he lodged in the booth. As a stranger, he did not know the depth of Nineveh's repentance; besides, from the Old Testament standpoint he knew that chastening judgments often followed, as in David's case (, ), even where sin had been repented of. To show him what he knew not, the largeness and completeness of God's mercy to penitent Nineveh, and the reasonableness of it, God made his booth a school of discipline to give him more enlightened views.

Verse 6

gourd—Hebrew, kikaion; the Egyptian kiki, the "ricinus" or castor-oil plant, commonly called "palm-christ" (palma-christi). It grows from eight to ten feet high. Only one leaf grows on a branch, but that leaf being often more than a foot large, the collective leaves give good shelter from the heat. It grows rapidly, and fades as suddenly when injured.

to deliver him from his grief—It was therefore grief, not selfish anger, which Jonah felt (see on ). Some external comforts will often turn the mind away from its sorrowful bent.

Verse 7

a worm—of a particular kind, deadly to the ricinus. A small worm at the root destroys a large gourd. So it takes but little to make our creature comforts wither. It should silence discontent to remember, that when our gourd is gone, our God is not gone.

the next day—after Jonah was so "exceeding glad" (compare ).

Verse 8

vehement—rather, "scorching"; the Margin, "silent," expressing sultry stillness, not vehemence.

Verse 9

(See on ).

I do well to be angry, even unto death—"I am very much grieved, even to death" [FAIRBAIRN]. So the Antitype ().

Verse 10

The main lesson of the book. If Jonah so pities a plant which cost him no toil to rear, and which is so short lived and valueless, much more must Jehovah pity those hundreds of thousands of immortal men and women in great Nineveh whom He has made with such a display of creative power, especially when many of them repent, and seeing that, if all in it were destroyed, "more than six score thousand" of unoffending children, besides "much cattle," would be involved in the common destruction: Compare the same argument drawn from God's justice and mercy in . A similar illustration from the insignificance of a plant, which "to-day is and to-morrow is cast into the oven," and which, nevertheless, is clothed by God with surpassing beauty, is given by Christ to prove that God will care for the infinitely more precious bodies and souls of men who are to live for ever (). One soul is of more value than the whole world; surely, then, one soul is of more value than many gourds. The point of comparison spiritually is the need which Jonah, for the time being, had of the foliage of the gourd. However he might dispense with it at other times, now it was necessary for his comfort, and almost for his life. So now that Nineveh, as a city, fears God and turns to Him, God's cause needs it, and would suffer by its overthrow, just as Jonah's material well-being suffered by the withering of the gourd. If there were any hope of Israel's being awakened by Nineveh's destruction to fulfil her high destination of being a light to surrounding heathenism, then there would not have been the same need to God's cause of Nineveh's preservation, (though there would have always been need of saving the penitent). But as Israel, after judgments, now with returning prosperity turns back to apostasy, the means needed to vindicate God's cause, and provoke Israel, if possible, to jealousy, is the example of the great capital of heathendom suddenly repenting at the first warning, and consequently being spared. Thus Israel would see the kingdom of heaven transplanted from its ancient seat to another which would willingly yield its spiritual fruits. The tidings which Jonah brought back to his countrymen of Nineveh's repentance and rescue, would, if believingly understood, be far more fitted than the news of its overthrow to recall Israel to the service of God. Israel failed to learn the lesson, and so was cast out of her land. But even this was not an unmitigated evil. Jonah was a type, as of Christ, so also of Israel. Jonah, though an outcast, was highly honored of God in Nineveh; so Israel's outcast condition would prove no impediment to her serving God's cause still, if only she was faithful to God. Ezekiel and Daniel were so at Babylon; and the Jews, scattered in all lands as witnesses for the one true God, pioneered the way for Christianity, so that it spread with a rapidity which otherwise was not likely to have attended it [FAIRBAIRN].

Verse 11

that cannot discern between their right hand and their left—children under three of four years old (). Six score thousand of these, allowing them to be a fifth of the whole, would give a total population of six hundred thousand.

much cattle—God cares even for the brute creatures, of which man takes little account. These in wonderful powers and in utility are far above the shrub which Jonah is so concerned about. Yet Jonah is reckless as to their destruction and that of innocent children. The abruptness of the close of the book is more strikingly suggestive than if the thought had been followed out in detail.

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