Jonah 4 - Summary

Jonah's angry reaction to Nineveh's salvation reveals his original motive for flight: he knew God's gracious and merciful character would spare the enemy city, and death seems preferable to witnessing such undeserved compassion. The LORD questions Jonah's anger, then appoints a plant to shade the sulking prophet, followed by a worm to destroy it and a scorching east wind to intensify his misery. Through this object lesson God exposes Jonah's inconsistency—grieving over a plant he neither planted nor tended while begrudging divine compassion toward Nineveh's 120,000 people who cannot discern right from wrong, plus their many cattle.