CHAPTER 4 Dec. 3 
Jonah Angry Because of God’s Compassion on Nineveh 
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 2He 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 away 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. 3Therefore now Yahweh, take, I beg You, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.  4Yahweh said, Is it right for you to be angry?  5Then Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made himself a shelter, and sat under it in the shade, until he might see what would become of the city. 6Yahweh 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 very glad because of the vine. 7But God prepared a worm at dawn the next day, and it chewed on the vine so that it withered. 8It happened that when the sun arose, God prepared a hot 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.  9God 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.  10Yahweh said, You have been concerned for the vine, for which you have not laboured, neither made it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night. 11Shouldn’t I be concerned for Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who can’t discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?

Commentary

4:8 God created a great wind with which He brought Jonah and his fellows to their knees in 1:4. God here creates another great wind with which to teach Jonah something else. Jonah ought to have perceived the same hand of the same God at work with him. Jonah's life "ebbed away" inside the fish (2:7)- and a very similar word is used here in 4:8 about his experience as he sat under the vine. In the fish, Jonah prayed that God would save his life, and was heard. But when he was made to feel the same again, he instead prayed God to take away his life. Perhaps this shows that even when we respond well to circumstances, those same circumstances may repeat in order to test us as to whether we will continue to make that right response.