BIG IDEA:
THOSE WHO BENEFIT FROM GOD’S COMPASSION HAVE NO RIGHT TO COMPLAIN AGAINST THE SOVEREIGN EXTENSION OF MERCY TO OTHERS (NO MATTER HOW UNDESERVING)
INTRODUCTION:
Jonah’s ministry “success” was really “failure” when you examine his heart motivation. Here God takes the reluctant prophet to task and uses a simple object lesson to expose the difference between a heart of compassion and a heart of vengeance. Despite having just personally experienced the mercy of God in his own desperate situation, Jonah begrudges that same mercy to the city of Nineveh.
John Goldingay: The chapter division usefully marks the story’s return to a focus on Jonah, but it keeps a focus on what is “dire” (raʿ) for other people and for Jonah, and on what is “good” (ṭôb) in Jonah’s eyes, and in God’s.
Daniel Timmer: Chapter 4 presents two responses:
- Jonah responds to yhwh’s deliverance of Nineveh,
- and yhwh has the last word as he responds, patiently but unrelentingly, to Jonah’s response.
Trent Butler: Prejudice and hatred lead people away from God’s loving plan to a demand for revenge and destruction. Prejudice and hatred lead to a concern for self while love and pity lead to a commitment to help and save.
I. (:1-3) ANGER AGAINST GOD IS ESSENTIALLY COMPLAINING AGAINST SOME ASPECT OF GOD’S CHARACTER
A. (:1) Venting Displeasure — Reformed Actions . . . But Same Judgmental Attitude
“But it greatly displeased Jonah, and he became angry.”
Doug Goins: Jonah’s problem is that he wants to control God. And what do any of us do when we can’t control circumstances and get our own way? We get angry. (We may express our anger in a lot of different ways—perhaps passively.)
Daniel Timmer: The author presents Jonah’s reaction to yhwh’s mercy to Nineveh in the strongest terms. Incredibly, Jonah considers it to be a great evil, something worse in his eyes than was Nineveh’s evil in God’s eyes (1:2)! This statement is so arrogant and blasphemous that it can hardly be understood. Jonah, the Israelite who benefits in countless ways from God’s past mercy towards and self-revelation to his people, who shows no awareness of his sin and does not repent even when faced with death (ch. 2), finds a way to condemn the very God who delights to show mercy to the undeserving. In short, Jonah stands in judgment over God, and arrogates to himself the right to decide who ‘should’ or can fittingly receive divine mercy – he may receive it, and non-Israelites may not. His arrogance is confirmed by his anger with God, probably an ironic subversion of the divine anger over Israel’s idolatry at Sinai (Exod. 32:10–11), a passage to which Jonah refers in the next verse.
John Goldingay: God has given up his blazing anger, but he thus transfers the blazing to Jonah. Why is it so? It seems not to be that Jonah is simply against foreigners; he had fled to a foreign land and had quite a positive relationship with foreign sailors. There is no indication that he is against Nineveh because it is the imperial capital, though that attitude might be presupposed. But in Jonah’s day Assyria was not Ephraim’s oppressor, and in the Persian period relationships with the imperial power (the Assyria of the day) were good. There is no indication that it is because Nineveh’s pardon will mean Israel’s destruction nor that he is afraid of being judged to be a false prophet. There is more indication that it is wickedness that offends Jonah. “A colonial power (read: Nineveh) should not be let off the hook but called to account for its past and ongoing violent actions.” It’s hard to learn to love the bloody city. And it ill behooves readers from superpower/imperialist cultures to say that Jonah should do so. Such a city’s dire action and its violence (1:2; 3:8) mean a dire fate should come upon it. Every prophet says so.
B. (:2) Justifying Rebellion — Preferring Personal Agenda
“And he prayed to the Lord and said, ‘Please Lord, was not this what I said
while I was still in my own country? Therefore, in order to forestall this I fled to
Tarshish, for I knew that Thou art a gracious and compassionate God, slow to
anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.”
C. (:3) Throwing in the Towel – Self Pity Party
“Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life.”
Daniel Timmer: This passage is without parallel in the Old Testament. A human being, and an Israelite prophet at that, rejects God’s display of grace to those whom the prophet deems unworthy. More than that, Jonah somehow imagines once again that he can escape this God, whom he finds intolerable, in death! He has apparently forgotten (or misinterpreted) his earlier deliverance by means of the fish God ‘appointed’ and believes (at least in part out of sheer desperation) that God might end his life. Not only does this make clear that Jonah had never received and experienced God’s grace himself, but it also pushes the reader to the conclusion that those who misunderstand and reject grace cannot enjoy life in relationship with God. The ghastly separation between what Jonah knows to be true (that God is incomprehensibly and wonderfully gracious) and the realities and truths Jonah is willing to accept reveals an unprecedented egoism that sees him put God ‘in the dock’, so to speak. After these shockingly sinful responses, the unit’s last verse provides an equally surprising but radically pleasant turn of events: true to his nature, God gently cross-examines the prophet-turned-accuser. God’s patience and mercy truly know no bounds!
II. (:4-8) SHADE PLANT OBJECT LESSON DEMONSTRATED: DO YOU HAVE GOOD REASON TO BE ANGRY?
A. (:4) Fundamental Question
“Do you have good reason to be angry?”
B. (:5) Safe Vantage Place
“Then Jonah went out from the city and sat east of it. There he made a shelter
for himself and sat under it in the shade until he could see what would happen in the city.”
Daniel Timmer: In this verse we see Jonah, unable to answer yhwh and unwilling to repent, simply turn his back and walk away. Although Jonah knows that God has decided to spare Nineveh, he may hope that God will change his mind, or that Nineveh’s repentance will evaporate as quickly as the gourd will wilt under the rays of the sun. Both possibilities are compatible with his decision to erect a temporary shelter.
C. (:6) Shade Plant Provided – Liking the Circumstances
“So the Lord God appointed a plant and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade
over his head to deliver him from his discomfort. And Jonah was extremely
happy about the plant.”
John Goldingay: the description of his capacity to move from blazing anger to great delight on the basis of the growth of a shady plant makes fun of him.
D. (:7-8) Shade Plant Removed – Hating the Circumstances
“But God appointed a worm when dawn came the next day, and it attacked the
plant and it withered. And it came about when the sun came up that God
appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that
he became faint and begged with all his soul to die, saying, ‘Death is better to me than life.’”
III. (:9-11) SHADE PLANT OBJECT LESSON EXPLAINED: DO YOU HAVE GOOD REASON TO BE ANGRY?
A. (:9) Fundamental Question / Defensive Answer
“Then God said to Jonah, ‘Do you have good reason to be angry about the
plant?’ And he said, ‘I have good reason to be angry, even to death.’”
Ron Ritchie: That’s the way we react (at least I do) when God doesn’t do it our way. This is called “biblical thumbsucking.” “When God doesn’t do it my way, I’d just as soon die. What is the use? I can’t go on! This is not the way I planned it, and therefore, it is better to be home with the Lord. ” (I suspect I am saying that for myself.) We all struggle with that, one way or another. Our children don’t turn out exactly the way we want them; our marriages aren’t exactly the way we want them; our jobs are not exactly what we prayed for, so we get angry with God and say we’d rather die. We’d rather give up, quit. What’s the use?
B. (:10) Object Lesson of Shade Tree Reviewed
“Then the Lord said, ‘You had compassion on the plant for which you did not
work, and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and
perished overnight.’”
C. (:11) Application to Lord’s Compassion on Nineveh
“And should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are
more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right
and left hand, as well as many animals?”
Doug Goins: The expression refers to an inability to make moral judgments. That is how God views the wicked, evil, idolatrous citizenry of Nineveh. They are in the dark, blindly flailing around. They can’t tell their right hand from their left, good from bad, right from wrong. They are in bondage.
Daniel Timmer: The point of the comparison, which takes for granted that reflecting the divine character is an ethical ideal, is that Jonah should be infinitely more concerned about the well-being of Nineveh than about his physical comfort. Jonah’s response to yhwh’s question should have been to affirm the perfect fittingness of yhwh’s pity for the Ninevites and their cattle, praise yhwh for his countless displays of sovereign and unmerited grace, and pursue conformity to his character.