Jonah 4: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Jonah is angry that God spared Nineveh, and tells God this is why he ran toward Tarshish in the first place: he knew God was merciful and would hold back the harm. He asks God to take his life. God grows a plant to shade Jonah, then sends a worm to kill it and a hot east wind, and Jonah again says he would rather die. The chapter ends with God's question: Jonah pitied a plant he did not grow, so should God not care about a city of more than a hundred and twenty thousand people and many animals?

Claim by Claim

1. 4:1
   • It was greatly displeasing to Jonah.
   • Jonah became angry.
2. 4:2
   • Jonah prayed to the LORD.
   • Jonah asked the LORD whether this was not what he had said while he was still in his own land.
   • Jonah said that for this reason he had fled beforehand toward Tarshish.
   • Jonah said he knew that God is gracious.
   • Jonah said God is compassionate.
   • Jonah said God is slow to anger.
   • Jonah said God is abundant in steadfast love.
   • Jonah said God relents from sending disaster.
3. 4:3
   • Jonah asked the LORD to take his life from him.
   • Jonah said that his dying is better than his living.
4. 4:4
   • The LORD asked Jonah whether he did rightly to be angry.
   • The LORD's question can also be read as asking whether Jonah was greatly angry.
5. 4:5
   • Jonah went out of the city.
   • Jonah sat down east of the city.
   • Jonah made himself a shelter there.
   • Jonah sat under the shelter in the shade.
   • Jonah waited to see what would happen in the city.
6. 4:6
   • The LORD God appointed a plant.
   • The plant is named by a term whose species is uncertain.
   • The plant grew up over Jonah.
   • The plant was to be shade over Jonah's head.
   • The plant was to deliver Jonah from his misery.
   • Jonah rejoiced greatly over the plant.
7. 4:7
   • God appointed a worm at the rising of dawn the next day.
   • The worm struck the plant.
   • The plant withered.
8. 4:8
   • When the sun rose, God appointed an east wind.
   • The wind is described by a word that may mean scorching or sultry or silent.
   • The sun beat on Jonah's head.
   • Jonah grew faint.
   • Jonah asked that he might die.
   • Jonah said that his dying is better than his living.
9. 4:9
   • God asked Jonah whether he did rightly to be angry about the plant.
   • Jonah said that he did rightly to be angry, even unto death.
10. 4:10
    • The LORD said that Jonah had pity on the plant.
    • The LORD said Jonah had not labored for the plant.
    • The LORD said Jonah had not made the plant grow.
    • The LORD said the plant came into being in a night.
    • The LORD said the plant perished in a night.
11. 4:11
    • The LORD asked whether he should not have pity on Nineveh.
    • The LORD called Nineveh a great city.
    • The LORD said there are in Nineveh more than one hundred twenty thousand people.
    • The LORD said those people cannot tell their right hand from their left.
    • The LORD said there is also much livestock in Nineveh.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

4:1

The Hebrew here plays on a word that runs through the whole chapter: literally "it was evil to Jonah, a great evil." The same root word is used for the disaster God had threatened against Nineveh (verse 2), and for the discomfort the plant relieves (verse 6).

4:2

Tarshish was a far-off port in the western Mediterranean, in the opposite direction from Nineveh (Jonah's attempt to get as far from his errand as a ship could take him. The string of phrases "gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness" is a fixed formula that recurs throughout the Hebrew scriptures. In the King James wording, "repentest thee of the evil" does not mean God repents of sin: "repent" here means to change course or relent, and "evil" means disaster or harm) the calamity God had announced.

4:3

"I beseech thee" is an old way of saying "I beg you" or "please."

4:4

The Hebrew question is compressed and can be read two ways: "is it right for you to be angry?" or "are you really that deeply angry?" Most translators take the first. The King James "doest thou well" is old English for "are you right to."

4:5

A "booth" was a rough temporary shelter of branches and leaves, the kind put up in fields at harvest time for shade.

4:6

The Hebrew word for the plant, qiqayon, appears only here, and its identity is uncertain; ancient and modern guesses include the castor-oil plant and a fast-growing gourd vine. The King James "gourd" is one such guess. "Prepared" translates a verb meaning appointed or assigned, the same verb used of the great fish, and used again of the worm and the wind in the verses that follow. King James "grief" here means physical discomfort, not sorrow.

4:7

"Smote" means struck or attacked. The worm ate into the plant's stem so the leaves dried out.

4:8

A "vehement east wind" is the desert wind that still blows across that region, sometimes called the sirocco or khamsin. It is dry and full of dust, and it can wilt plants and leave people exhausted within hours.

4:9

"I do well to be angry, even unto death" means Jonah is saying he has every right to be angry, angry enough to die.

4:10

The King James uses "pity" here and "spare" in the next verse, but the Hebrew has the same verb both times: to feel concern for something and hold back from letting it be destroyed. God is deliberately matching Jonah's feeling for the plant against his own feeling for the city.

4:11

"Sixscore thousand" uses an old counting unit: a score is twenty, so sixscore thousand is 120,000. "Cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand" is an idiom, and it is read two ways: either as small children, which would make 120,000 the number of young children in a very large city, or as the whole population described as not knowing enough to tell right from wrong. "Much cattle" means the livestock, the herds and flocks kept in and around the city. The book stops here, on God's question, with no reply from Jonah recorded.