Hosea Chapter One

THIS MATERIAL HAS NOT BEEN EDITED FOR

SCRIPTURAL ACCURACY, SPELLING, OR GRAMMAR

JONAH – CHAPTER 4

4:1-11 CORRECTION OF JONAH

M 4:1. Jonah’s anger.

N 4:2, 3. Jonah’s complaint to Jehovah.

O 4:4. Jehovah’s question. “Doest thou well?”

P 4:5. East side.

Q 4:6-. Gourd. Comes up.

R 4:-6. Jonah’s gladness.

Q 4:7. Gourd smitten.

P 4:8-. East wind.

R 4:-8. Jonah’s sorrow.

O 4:9-. Jehovah’s question. “Doest thou well?”

M 4:-9. Jonah’s answer.

N 4:10, 11. Jonah’s correction by Jehovah.

4:1 displeased = vexed. Not the waywardness of a child, but the displeasure of a man of God, for great and sufficient reason to him. Now that Nineveh was spared, it might after all be used as God’s rod for Israel, and thus destroy the hope hold out by him to Israel in 2 Kings 14:25-27. The Companion Bible

Jonah 4

1 BUT IT displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was very angry. 2 And he prayed to the Lord and said, I pray You, O Lord, is not this just what I said when I was still in my country? That is why I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, and [when sinners turn to You and meet Your conditions] You revoke the [sentence of] evil against them. [Exodus 34:6.] 3 Therefore now, O Lord, I beseech You, take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. 4 Then said the Lord, Do you do well to be angry? 5 So Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city, and he made a booth there for himself. He sat there under it in the shade till he might see what would become of the city. 6 And the Lord God prepared a gourd and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to deliver him from his evil situation. So Jonah was exceedingly glad [to have the protection] of the gourd.

7 But God prepared a cutworm when the morning dawned the next day, and it smote the gourd so that it withered. 8 And when the sun arose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah so that he fainted and wished in himself to die and said, it is better for me to die than to live. 9 And God said to Jonah, Do you do well to be angry for the loss of the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die! 10 Then said the Lord, You have had pity on the gourd, for which you have not labored nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons not [yet old enough to] know their right hand from their left, and also many cattle [not accountable for sin]? AMP

4:1 displeased = vexed. Not the waywardness of a child, but the displeasure of a man of God, for great and sufficient reason to him. Now that Nineveh was spared, it might after all be used as God’s rod for Israel, and thus destroy the hope held out by him to Israel found in 2 Kings 14:25-27.

The Companion Bible

JONAH CHAPTER FOUR

Jonah 4:1-4

The Object Lesson

4:1-4 Jonah's anger. Jonah is angry that the Lord has so easily capitulated to the pagan tactics of appeasement. He is embarrassed and theologically scandalized that Yahweh should offer compassion so readily, for this suggests that Yahweh can be bought. The Ninevites would view him no differently from their own gods. (IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament)

4:5-9 vine and worm. The plant that brings Jonah shade is described by a general term usually associated with the gourd family. As with the fish, the terminology does not allow a more specific identification. The insect that destroys the gourd plant is most likely of the aphid variety. (IVP)

4:8. scorching east wind. The east wind here would not be a µamsin (or sirocco) because then the sun would not be a factor. The east wind was a problem in Palestine because of the desert to the east, but for Nineveh an east wind would often result in rain. Here it is a particular type of east wind (NIV: "scorching"), but this word is used only here so it is difficult to understand precisely. (IVP)

4:11. population of Nineveh. Assyrian scholars have estimated the population of Nineveh (city and surrounding countryside) when it was the capital city at about three hundred thousand, so the hundred and twenty thousand here for an earlier period is not implausible.

(From IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament)

[General Information - 4:1-11 Jonah and the Lord discuss the matter.] Jonah is upset, but why? Because his proclamation did not come true, from his perspective (see Deuteronomy 18:21-22). He associates this lack of fulfillment with God’s attributes (in verse 3, he is using Joel 2:13; Psalms 86:15; 103:8; 145:8 as a key interpretative texts for Exodus 34:6-7 and Numbers 14:18), and by doing so he is raising a theological confrontation between himself and God. One has to infer that Jonah thought that God should behave according to the paradigm advanced in another set of biblical texts (see Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29), but he was sure that God’s behavior would not follow this paradigm.

(a) So God was in the wrong, from his perspective.

(b) Some Jewish and non-Jewish interpreters have supported a different understanding. According to them, Jonah was upset that God relented from punishment only because those who were to be punished were not Israelites.

(c) A variant of this interpretation posits that the issue was not that they were not Israelites per se, but that they were Ninevites, i.e. the same people who will later oppress Israel and Judah.

(d) Those for whom Jonah is a stern chauvinist text – and there are still some contemporaneous readers who think so – tend to maintain that the book was a theological attack against those who may identify with this jingoist Jonah and his positions.

(e) The problem with this approach is that Jonah never says that he wants the Ninevites destroyed because they are not Israelites.

(f) Furthermore, there is not even a hint of the tension between Israel and the nations in the book of Jonah. [Jewish Study Bible]

[General Information - 4:6-8:] This scene may be based on Elijah in (1 Kings 19:4). If so, Jonah is being parodied as an anti-Elijah figure. [Jewish Study Bible]

JONAH CHAPTER FOUR

4:6: The Lord God provided: The repetition of this language links the fish (2:1), the plant here, the successful worm in (verse 7), and the extremely scorching wind in (verse 8). All of them are provided or appointed by God. Ricinus plant (“gourd,”): Scholars have tried to identify the type of plant, but there is no general agreement. More important, the particular plant described here belongs to the realm of the fantastic that is provided only by God, just as was the “great fish” in whose belly a man can be accommodated. This plant suddenly grows to provide shade over Jonah’s head and just as suddenly it withers. [Jewish Study Bible]

4:7: The east wind is a dry, scorching wind and is often associated with disaster and / or God’s power (Exodus 14:21; Isaiah 27:8; Jeremiah 18:17; cf. Genesis 41:6). [Jewish Study Bible]

3. The Marvel of an Unhappy Servant (Jonah 4)

If this book had ended at the last verse of chapter 3, history would have portrayed Jonah as the greatest of the prophets. After all, preaching one message that motivated thousands of people to repent and turn to God was no mean accomplishment.

But the Lord doesn't look on the outward things: He looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7) and weighs the motives (1 Corinthians 4:5). That's why Chapter 4 was included in the book, for it reveals "the thoughts and intents" of Jonah's heart and exposes his sins.

If in chapter 1 Jonah is like the Prodigal Son, insisting on doing his own thing and going his own way (Luke 15:11-32); then in chapter 4, he's like the Prodigal's Elder Brother critical, selfish, sullen, angry, and unhappy with what was going on.

It isn't enough for God's servants simply to do their Master's will; they must do "the will of God from the heart (Ephesians 6:6). The heart of every problem is the problem in the heart, and that's where Jonah's problems were to be found, "But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry" (Jonah 4:1).

The remarkable thing is that God tenderly dealt with His sulking servant and sought to bring him back to the place of joy and fellowship.

God listened to Jonah (Jonah 4:1-4). For the second time in this account, Jonah prays, but his second prayer was much different in content and intent. He prayed his best prayer in the worst place, the fish's belly, and he prayed his worst prayer in the best place, at Nineveh where God was working.

1. His first prayer came from a broken heart,

2. But his second prayer came from an angry heart.

3. In his first prayer, he asked God to save him,

4. But in his second prayer, he asked God to take his life!

5. Once again. Jonah would rather die than not have his own way.

This petulant prayer lets us in on the secret of why Jonah tried to run away in the first place. Being a good theologian, Jonah knew the attributes of God, that He was "a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity" (v. 2, NIV). Knowing this. Jonah was sure that if he announced judgment to the Ninevites and they repented, God would forgive them and not send His judgment, and then Jonah would be branded as a false prophet!

JONAH CHAPTER FOUR

Remember, Jonah's message merely announced the impending judgment: it didn't offer conditions for salvation.

Jonah 4:1-4

Jonah was concerned about his reputation, not only before the Ninevites, but also before the Jews back home. His Jewish friends would want to see all of the Assyrians destroyed, not just the people of Nineveh. When Jonah's friends found out that he had been the means of saving Nineveh from Gods wrath, they could have considered him a traitor to official Jewish foreign policy. Jonah was a narrow-minded patriot [jingoist] who saw Assyria only as a dangerous enemy to destroy, not as a company of repentant sinners to be brought to the Lord.

1. When reputation is more important than character,

2. And pleasing ourselves and our friends is more important than pleasing God,

3. Then we're in danger of becoming like Jonah and living to defend our prejudices

4. Instead of fulfilling our spiritual responsibilities.

5. Jonah certainly had good theology,

6. But it stayed in his head and never got to his heart,

7. And he was so distraught that he wanted to die!

God's tender response was to ask Jonah to examine his heart and see why he really was angry.

Learning 4:1-11.

(A) Complaint 4:1-3.

Jonah had obeyed the Lord by going to Nineveh and preaching God's message, but his heart attitude had not been changed to love. He so hated the Ninevites for their cruelty that deep in his heart he looked forward to their destruction. Now the forty days had gone by, and Nineveh was still standing unharmed.

4:2 I knew. This was well known, from Jehovah’s revelation of Himself:

(A). Jonah knew, and referred to the Pentateuch (Exodus 34:6; Numbers 14:18, 19).

(B). David knew (Psalm 86:5).

(C). Hosea knew (Hosea 11:8, 9).

(D). Joel knew (Joel 2:13).

(E). Micah knew (Micah 7:18).

Jonah’s knowledge explains his flight (1:3). No one could tell us this but himself.

The Companion Bible

Jonah 4:1

Verse 1. Displeased ... exceedingly ... very angry. A typical Hebrew parallelism, expressing the extreme reaction of Jonah to the salvation of the city of Nineveh.

(From The Wycliffe Bible Commentary)

JONAH CHAPTER FOUR

Jonah 4:2

I knew that thou art a gracious God. At last the secret was out. Jonah was not ignorant of the character of his God. He had fled to Tarshish not because he was afraid of the Ninevites, but because he did not want them to be saved. He knew that every threat of God was conditional, no matter how stated.

God was gracious, meaning that He had the welfare of man upon His heart, and passionately desired to lift him from his sin. Even Jonah's own nation could not have come into being if God had not been gracious to the children of Israel at the very beginning (Exodus 34:6-7). Any deliverance from slavery, oppression, famine, or destruction is an evidence of God's gracious love toward man (Isaiah 30:18), and the Lord forgives sins because He is gracious (Hosea 14:2).

(1). Merciful. A companion word with gracious, pointing to the love of God which is poured upon the undeserving sinner who repents of his sins. God retains the right to help those who show genuine sorrow for sin and who trust in His kindness.

(2). Slow to anger. It is not God's first wish to punish the wayward. He endures much of man's wickedness. But when it becomes evident, in any given situation, that men are too proud and headstrong to be guided by easy, agreeable discipline, He begins to teach them the "hard way," by expressing His displeasure toward sin.