Albert Barnes Commentary Jonah 4:1

"But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry." — Jonah 4:1 (ASV)

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.