A Commentary in Simple English on Jonah

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Chapter 4

Verses 1-4: Jonah in Nineveh

Jonah must have stayed in Nineveh for forty days. [4.1] He saw that God had not destroyed the city. He became very angry. Everyone who speaks in the name of God ought to think about these verses.

In verse 1 we learn that Jonah became angry. ‘It was evil to Jonah a great evil’. I think we can all see why. God had sent Jonah to Nineveh. God had told Jonah what to say. So Jonah had preached in Nineveh. He told the people in Nineveh that God would destroy their city. Now Jonah knew that this would not happen. Jonah was angry because he thought more about his ministry than about God’s glory. It was for God’s glory when the heathen people prayed to Him. It was for God’s glory when the people turned away from violence and sin. It was for God’s glory when they heard what God said to them. It was for God’s glory that they obeyed His message.

Now we should do everything for God’s glory. Jonah felt that God had let him down. We shall often feel like that if we think more about our ministry than the glory of God. So in verse.2, Jonah prays again. Jonah knows God: he is not like the king. (3:9) He knows the grace of God. Jonah knew what God had said about Himself. (Exod 34:6) Jonah says that this is why he set out to go to Tarshish. This may not be quite true. Often ideas come to us, and we pretend we had them long before we really did. Jonah was just frightened to go to Nineveh. Now he finds better reasons for what he had done when he set out to go to Tarshish. God had given life to the sailors. (1:15) He has given life to the people of Nineveh .(3:9)

Our God is the God who gives life to the dead. (Rom 4:17) He had given life to Jonah when he was as good as dead. (2:2,6,7) Yet now Jonah prays to God to take his life away. Another prophet had prayed like this. (1Ki 19:4) Elijah had just had a great success in his work for God. Yet he is bitter. Jonah too has had a great success and he too feels bitter about it. (See Rev 10:9 and Dan 10:2 and 3.) Now we must learn that it is not at all easy to have success in God’s work. We minister to others. They get the blessing. Yet there may seem to be nothing at all for us.

In verse.4, God asks Jonah to think again. There are some times when it is right for us to be angry. More often, it is wrong. Jonah is ‘hot’ or angry. If we are angry we need to ask ourselves why we are angry.

Verses 5-11: Jonah outside Nineveh

So in verse 5, Jonah goes out of the city. On the east of Nineveh there was high ground. He could see over the city from there. (See 1 Kin 19:8.) Perhaps Jonah thought that God would still destroy the city after the end of the forty days. Jonah built a rough wood building. The heat from the sun was not so bad if he sat in the shade.

In verse.6, the two names for God, Jehovah and Elohim come together. Once before, God had prepared a great fish to save Jonah. Now God prepares a plant of some kind grow quickly. The plant gives Jonah more shade from the sun. Jonah was very pleased. ‘He rejoiced a large rejoice!’ Perhaps Jonah thought that God was pleased with him after all. Jonah thought that he was right to wait outside Nineveh. The plant is rather like the ship. (1:3) So Jonah spent the night there. The sun came up the next day. Then God (Elohim) prepared a worm. This ate the plant. Perhaps it ate the root of the plant. The plant quickly dried up and died. In verse.8, God prepares a wind again. This is not like the stormy wind of 1:4. This is a hot, steady, and dry wind. Some people think that it blew down the rough building Jonah had put up. Now he had no shade at all from the heat from the sun.

Now of course we can see that God has done to the plant the very thing that Jonah wanted God to do to Nineveh. Jonah cannot stand the heat from the sun and once again he says that he wants to die. Jonah was sorry for the plant, but not for the people in the city.

In verse.9, God is ‘Elohim’. God wants to teach Jonah to care for Nineveh and for the people who live in it. So God asks Jonah whether he has a right to be angry about the plant. God knows why Jonah is so angry. Jonah is sorry that the plant has died. He has lost its shade. Then God gives some reasons why Jonah is not right to be angry about the plant. Jonah did not look after it or make it grow. God really starts to explain to Jonah that He cares for Nineveh. First, verse.10 calls God ‘The LORD’ - Jehovah. People built Nineveh by long years of hard work. So it was worth more than the plant. Perhaps Jonah should think that Nineveh is like a plant, which God cares for.

In verse.11, the 120,000 people may be children who are too young to know which hand is which. Or the point may be that there are 120,000 people in Nineveh and they do not know right from wrong. Jonah has to learn that Jehovah, his God, is not only the God of the Jews. He is the God who rules all the world. He is the God who cares for men and women everywhere. He wants His people to care for others, even their enemies. That means that He wants us to go and take His Word and His truth to them. God sent Jonah to preach at Nineveh. This was because He wanted the Jews to know that the nations would listen to the message of God’s love and grace to sinners. So the Jews were much worse off if they did not listen to this message.

Now many people feel that the end of the Book of Jonah is strange. We would like to know what Jonah did. Only one other verse in the Old Testament tells us anything about Jonah. This is 2Ki 14:25. [4.2] So we may think that Jonah heard what God said to him. He left Nineveh. He made the journey back home to Israel. This took him about three months again.. He saw the armies, which fought each other in the Civil War in Assyria. He saw the ruined cities and the empty land in Syria. Then he spoke the word of God to his own people. He told them that there was a good time ahead of them. He told them that the power of the King of Israel would spread north into Syria and south to the Dead Sea. This did happen when Jeroboam II was king of Israel from about 782-753BC. Sadly, this did not last. After 755BC., Assyria grew stronger and Israel lost most of Syria again by 748BC.