*Jonah 3:1-4:11
Reluctantly obeying God, Jonah preaches to Nineveh and the city repents, but Jonah becomes angry when God spares the city.
- Jonah’s Second Call:
- God commands Jonah a second time to go to Nineveh and proclaim His message of impending judgment.
- Jonah obeys this time and enters Nineveh, a great city, as instructed by God.
- Jonah’s Proclamation:
- Jonah delivers a concise yet powerful message to the people of Nineveh, proclaiming that in forty days the city will be overthrown.
- The people of Nineveh, from the greatest to the least, heed Jonah’s warning and respond with sincere repentance.
- The King’s Decree:
- Word of Jonah’s message reaches the king of Nineveh, who responds with humility and calls for fasting, repentance, and a cessation of evil deeds.
- The king hopes that God may relent from His fierce anger and spare the city.
- God’s Compassion:
- Witnessing the genuine repentance of the Ninevites, God relents from the disaster He had planned to bring upon them.
- God’s mercy is evident as He chooses not to destroy Nineveh as initially proclaimed through Jonah.
- Jonah’s Displeasure:
- Seeing that God has relented from destroying Nineveh, Jonah becomes angry and displeased.
- He expresses his frustration to God, stating that this outcome is the very reason he initially fled from God’s presence.
- God’s Lesson for Jonah:
- God teaches Jonah a lesson about His compassion and sovereignty through the illustration of a plant that provides shade for Jonah but is then destroyed by a worm.
- God challenges Jonah’s anger, questioning his right to be angry about the plant’s demise when he did not create it.
- Closing Thoughts:
- The book concludes with God’s rhetorical question to Jonah, highlighting the stark contrast between Jonah’s concern for a plant and God’s concern for the great city of Nineveh, with its multitude of people and animals.
3:1 And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying, 3:2 Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.
3:3 So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey.
3:4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
3:5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.
3:6 For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
3:7 And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: 3:8 But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.
3:9 Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? 3:10 And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.
4:1 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.
4:2 And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.
4:3 Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.
4:4 Then said the LORD, Doest thou well to be angry? 4:5 So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city.
4:6 And the LORD God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd.
4:7 But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered.
4:8 And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live.
4:9 And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death.
4:10 Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: 4:11 And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?