Jonah 4

CHAPTER 4

Jonah’s Anger

¹But this was a great evil to Jonah, and he became ^aangry.

²And he ^aprayed to Yahweh and said, “Ah! O Yahweh, was not this my word to myself while I was still in my own land? Therefore I went ahead to ^bflee to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a ^cgracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning evil.

³“So now, O Yahweh, please ^atake my ¹life from me, for death is ^bbetter to me than life.”

⁴And Yahweh said, “Do you have good reason to be angry?”

⁵Then Jonah went out from the city and sat east of the city. And there he made a booth for himself and ^asat under it in the shade until he could see what would happen in the city.

⁶So Yahweh God appointed a ¹plant, and it came up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to deliver him from his miserable evil. And Jonah was ²extremely glad about the plant.

⁷But God appointed a worm at the ¹breaking of dawn the next day, and it struck the plant, and ²it ^adried up.

⁸Then it happened that as the sun rose up, God appointed a scorching ^aeast wind, and the ^bsun struck down on Jonah’s head so that he became faint and asked with all his soul to die and said, “^cDeath is better to me than life.”

⁹Then 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.”

¹⁰Then Yahweh said, “You had pity on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which ¹came to be overnight and perished ²overnight.

¹¹“So should I not ^ahave pity on Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not ^bknow the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many ^1canimals?”