John Calvin Commentary Jonah 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." — Jonah 4:9 (ASV)

We see here that God had concealed Himself for a time, but did not yet forsake His servant. He often looks on us from behind; that is, though we think that He has forgotten us, He still observes how we are doing, so that He may in due time provide help. This is why He recovers and raises up the falling, before we perceive that He is near.

This was His manner with Jonah when He began to address him. For, as we have said, grief had so oppressed the mind of the holy Prophet that it could no longer be raised up to God. Therefore, he desired to die; and still God did not forsake him.

This was no common example of the invaluable mercy of God, with which He favors His own people, even when they plunge themselves into ruin. Such was the case with Jonah, who rushed headlong into a state of despair and did not care for any remedy. God then did not wait until He was sought, but anticipated miserable Jonah, who was now seeking destruction for himself.

He says, Doest thou well that thou art thus angry for the gourd? As if He had said that Jonah was too violently disturbed for such a trivial matter.

And we must always bear that in mind, which we discussed more fully yesterday — that God did not merely reprove His servant because he did not patiently bear the withering of the gourd. What then? But because he became angry, for in anger there is always an excess.

Since Jonah was so grieved beyond measure and without any restraint, this was justly condemned by God as a fault. I will not now repeat what I said yesterday regarding the gravity of the offense, inasmuch as Jonah not only grumbled on account of the withering of the shrub, but also disregarded himself and boiled over with displeasure beyond all due limits.

And Jonah’s answer confirms this. I do well, he says, in being angry even to death. Here we see how stubbornly the holy Prophet rejected God’s admonition, which should have restored him to a right mind. He knew that God was speaking.

Why then was he not struck with shame? Why was he not moved by the authority of the Speaker, so as to immediately suppress the fierceness of his mind? But this is what commonly happens when people’s minds are once blinded by some wrong feeling; even if the Lord thunders and fulminates from heaven, they will not listen, or at least they will not stop violently resisting, as Jonah does here.

Since we find such an example of stubbornness in this holy man, how much more should every one of us fear? Let us therefore learn to restrain our feelings in time and to bridle them instantly at the beginning, lest, if they should burst out more intensely, we finally become completely obstinate.

I do well, he says, in being angry even to death. God charged His servant Jonah with the vice of anger.

Jonah now indulges in his own madness, so that he says that despair is not a vice. He says: I do not sin, though I am despairing; though I abandon myself to death as with mad fury, I do not yet sin.

Who could have thought that the holy Prophet could have been brought into this state of mind? But let this remarkable example remind us, as I have already said, how furious and unreasonable the passions of our flesh are.

Therefore, there is nothing better than to restrain them before they gather more strength than they should; for when anyone feeds his vices, this stubbornness and hardness always follow.

But to be angry, or to be so consumed by anger as to wish for death, is to feel such a weariness of life that we give ourselves up to death of our own accord. It was not, indeed, Jonah’s intention to lay violent hands on himself; but though he refrained from violence, yet, in the purpose of his mind, he brought death upon himself. For he did not submit to God, but was carried away by a blind impulse, so that he wished to throw away his life.