But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.
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.
His complaint is made of God’s own words about himself
Jonah’s “slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness” is, word for word, how God proclaims himself in Exodus 34:6.
Joel uses it to call people home. Jonah uses it as a complaint.
Shared words found mechanically at build time: 9 with Exodus 34:6, 11 with Joel 2:13.
Therefore now, Yahweh, take, I beg you, my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
Yahweh said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful
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.
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.
God prepares four things, and one verb covers them all
A fish. A vine. A worm. An east wind.
The same verb covers the one that saves him and the one that ruins his shade.
Occurrences of “prepared”: Jonah 1:17, 4:6, 4:7, 4:8.
But God prepared a worm at dawn the next day, and it chewed on the vine so that it withered.
When 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.”
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.”
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.
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 many animals?”
The book ends on a question, and Jonah never answers it
Jonah gets the last word in verse 9. God gets the last word in the book, and it is a question.
Jonah never answers. The text simply stops.
Jonah 4:11 is the final verse. There is no verse 12.
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persons in Nineveh who could not tell their right hand from their left — Jonah 4:11
Jonah finally admits why he ran. Not fear — he knew God was merciful and would forgive them. He was right, and it made him furious.
Why is God’s mercy to other people sometimes hard for you to accept?