Albert Barnes Commentary Jonah 4

And Jonah was displeased exceedingly - It was an untempered zeal. The prophet himself records it as such, and how he was reproved for it. He would, like many of us, govern God’s world better than God Himself. Short-sighted and presumptuous! Yet not more short-sighted than those who, in fact, quarrel with God’s Providence, the existence of evil, the baffling of good, “the prison walls of obstacles and trials,” in what we would do for God’s glory. What is all discontent but anger with God? The marvel is that the rebel was a prophet!

“What he desired was not unjust in itself: that the Ninevites should be punished for their past sins, and that the sentence of God pronounced against them should not be recalled, although they repented. For so the judge hangs the robber for theft, however much he repents.” He sinned in that he disputed with God.

Let him cast the first stone who never rejoiced at any overthrow of the enemies of his country, nor was glad, in a common warfare, that they lost as many soldiers as we. As if God did not have instruments enough at His will! Or as if He needed the Assyrians to punish Israel, or the one nation whose armies are the terror of Europe to punish us, so that if they were to perish, Israel would therefore have escaped—though it persevered in sin—or we ourselves!

And he was very angry - or, perhaps, “very grieved.” The word also expresses the emotion of burning grief, as when Samuel was grieved at the rejection of Saul, or David at the breach upon Uzzah (2 Samuel 6:8; 1 Chronicles 13:11). Either way, he was displeased with what God did. Yet Samuel and David also took God’s actions to heart; but Samuel and David were grieved at God’s judgments, while Jonah was grieved at what was mercy to the Ninevites—mercy that, with respect to his own people, seemed to involve judgment. Scripture says that he was displeased because the Ninevites were spared, but not why this displeased him.

It has been thought that it was jealousy for God’s glory among the pagans, as though the Ninevites would think that God in whose Name he spoke had no certain knowledge of things to come, and so that his fault was mistrust in God’s wisdom or power to vindicate His own honor. But it seems more likely that it was a mistaken patriotism, which idolized the well-being of his own and God’s people, and desired that its enemy, the appointed instrument of its chastisement, should itself be destroyed. Since Scripture is silent about it, we cannot know for certain. Jonah, under God’s inspiration, relates that God pronounced him wrong.

Having incurred God’s reproof, he was careless about human judgment and left his own character open to the harsh judgments of people, teaching us a holy indifference to human opinion and, in our ignorance, carefulness not to judge unkindly.

And he prayed to the Lord - Jonah, at least, did not murmur or complain of God. He complained to God about himself. He expostulates with Him. Shortsighted indeed and too wedded to his own will! Yet his will was the well-being of the people whose prophet God had made him. He tells God that this was what he had dreaded all along. He softens it, as well as he can, by his words, “I pray You,” which express a prayer against this outcome and a spirit of unsubmissiveness. Still, he does not hesitate to tell God that this was the cause of his first rebellion! Perilous to the soul it is to speak of former sin without penitence; yet it is to God that he speaks, and so God, in His wonderful condescension, makes him teach himself.

I knew that Thou art a gracious God - He repeats to God, to the letter, His own words from Joel 2:13. God had thus revealed Himself anew to Judah. He had, doubtless, on some repentance which Judah had shown, turned away the evil from them. And now by sending him as a preacher of repentance, He implied that He would do the same to the enemies of his country. God confirms this by the whole sequel.

Therefore, from that time on, Israel knew that God was also intensely and infinitely full of gracious and yearning love toward the pagan; indeed (as the grammatical form rather implies), He was mastered (so to speak) by the might and intensity of His gracious love, being slow to anger and delaying it, great in loving tenderness, and abounding in it. They also knew that toward them, when evil was about to be inflicted, or had been partially or wholly inflicted, He would repent of that evil and replace it with good on the first turning of the soul or the nation to God.

Therefore now, O Lord, I ask You, take my life from me – He would rather die than see the evil that was to come upon his country. Impatient though he was, he still cast himself upon God. By asking God to end his life, he, at least, committed himself to the sovereign disposal of God.

He reasoned that since the Gentiles were, in a way, entering in, and those words were being fulfilled—They have moved Me to jealousy with that which is "not God," and I will move them to jealousy with those which are "not a people"; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation (Deuteronomy 32:21)—he despaired of Israel’s salvation. He was convulsed with great sorrow, which burst out into words and revealed the causes of his grief, essentially saying, ‘Am I alone chosen out of so many prophets to announce destruction to my people through the salvation of others?’

He did not grieve, as some think, that the multitude of nations was saved, but that Israel was perishing. This is why our Lord also wept over Jerusalem.

The Apostles first preached to Israel. Paul wished to become an anathema for his brethren, who are Israelites (Romans 9:3–5), whose is the adoption and the glory and the covenant, and the giving of the law and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came. Jonah had now faithfully discharged his office. He had done what God commanded; God had done through him what He willed. Now, then, he prayed to be discharged. So Augustine, in his last illness, prayed that he might die before the Vandals brought suffering and devastation to his country.

And the Lord said, Doest thou well to be angry? – God, being appealed to, answers the appeal. So he often does in prayer, by some secret voice, answer the inquirer. There is right anger against sin. Moses’ anger was right when he broke the tables (Exodus 32:19). God secretly suggests to Jonah that his anger was not right, as our Lord instructed James and John that theirs was not (Luke 9:55).

The question relates to the quality, not to the greatness of his anger. It was not the vehemence of his passionate desire for Israel that God reproves, but that it was turned against the Ninevites.

“What the Lord says to Jonah, he says to all who, in their office of the cure of souls, are angry. They must, concerning this same anger, reflect inwardly to consider the cause or object of their anger, and weigh carefully and attentively whether they do well to be angry.

For if they are angry not with men but with the sins of men, if they hate and persecute not men but the vices of men, they are rightly angry; their zeal is good. But if they are angry not with sins but with men, if they hate not vices but men, they are angered wrongly; their zeal is bad.

Therefore, what was said to one person must be carefully considered and determined by all: ‘Doest thou well to be angry?’”

So Jonah went out of the city - The form of the words implies (as in the English Version) that this took place after Jonah was convinced that God would spare Nineveh. Since there is no indication that he knew it by revelation, it was probably after the 40 days.

“The days now being past, after which it was time for the foretold events to be accomplished, and His anger still taking no effect, Jonah understood that God had pity on Nineveh. Still, he does not give up all hope. He thinks that a respite from the evil has been granted them for their willingness to repent, but that some effect of His displeasure would come, since the pains of their repentance had not equaled their offenses. So, thinking this to himself, apparently, he departs from the city and waits to see what will become of them.”

“He expected,” apparently, “that it would either fall by an earthquake or be burned with fire, like Sodom.”

“Jonah, in that he built himself a tabernacle and sat opposite Nineveh, awaiting what should happen to it, represented a different, prefiguring character.

For he prefigured the carnal people of Israel. For these too were sad at the salvation of the Ninevites, that is, the redemption and deliverance of the Gentiles. Therefore Christ came to call, not the righteous but sinners to repentance.

But the overshadowing gourd over his head symbolized the promises of the Old Testament, or those offices in which, as the apostle says, there was a shadow of good things to come, protecting them in the land of promise from temporal evils, all of which are now emptied and faded.

And now that people, having lost the temple at Jerusalem, the priesthood, and the sacrifice (all of which was a shadow of that which was to come) in its captive dispersion, is scorched by a vehement heat of tribulation, as Jonah was by the heat of the sun, and grieves greatly. Yet the salvation of the pagan and the penitent is considered more important than its grief and the shadow which it loved.”