Welcome back to my study/review of The Book of Jonah. If you missed the previous parts of this study, you can find them HERE.
Jonah 3:1-3
4 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 2 And he prayed to the Lord and said, "O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. 3 Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.
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The thing Jonah did not want to happen has now happened. He tried to run from this event, he tried to die to prevent this event, and now he wishes he had died. Why? We'll try to answer that from the text, starting in verse 1 in The Pulpit Commentaries:
Jonah 4:1
It displeased Jonah exceedingly; literally, it was evil to Jonah, a great evil. It was more than mere displeasure which he felt; he was vexed and irritated. The reference is to what is said in the last verse of the preceding chapter, viz. that the predicted destruction was not inflicted. How the knowledge of this reprieve was conveyed to the prophet we am not informed. It probably was made known to him before the expiration of the forty days by Divine communication, in accordance with the saying in Amos 3:7, "Surely the Lord will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets" (see Amos 3:5). Various reasons have been assigned for this displeasure.
(1) Personal pique, lest, his prediction having failed, he should be liable to the charge of being a false prophet.
(2) Zeal for the honour of God, whose knowledge of the future might be discredited among the heathen, when they saw his own servant's words unfulfilled.
(3) Because he saw in this conversion of Gentiles a token of the ruin of his own people, who remained always hardened and impenitent.
(4) A mistaken patriotism, which could not endure to find mercy extended to a heathen nation which had already proved hostile to Israel and was destined to oppress it still further. This last seem to have been the real ground of his annoyance. So deep was this, that he would gladly have seen the sentence executed even after the city had repented (comp. Amos 3:11, "Should not I spare Nineveh," i.e. which thou wouldst have me even now destroy?) He was very angry; Septuagint, συνεχύθη, "was confounded." His vexation increased unto anger.
The commentary speculates about why Jonah is so angry, including a speculation that I have not yet considered - that God's choice in relenting will imply that Jonah is a False Prophet. I doubt that this is the reason for his distress though, inasmuch as he also predicted God would show mercy on a penitent Nineveh. The most likely of those listed seems the "mistaken patriotism" option, wherein Jonah did not want Nineveh to shame Israel (famous for its stiff-necked refusal to submit to God) by doing what his own people struggle to do. I think it is also likely the case that Jonah wanted a wicked people to be punished, not forgiven. I think human nature, in general, often prefers God to punish one's enemies rather than to show mercy to them.
Continuing on to verse 2:
Jonah 4:2
He prayed. He carried his complaint to God, and was prepared to submit it to him, even while he questioned the wisdom of his clemency. I pray thee (anna); Vulgate, obsecro. A particle of entreaty, "Ah! I pray thee." Was not this my saying? Was not this what I said to myself, viz. that God would spare Nineveh if it showed signs of repentance? My country. Palestine, where the original message reached him. I fled before; literally, I anticipated to fly; Septuagint, προέφθασα τοῦ φυγεῖν, "I made haste to flee;" Vulgate, praeoccupavi ut fugerem. I hastened to fly before I should be reduced to seeing my mission rendered nugatory. For I knew. Joel knew the character of God, and how that he threatened in order to arouse repentance, and that he might be able to spare (see Exodus 32:14; Exodus 34:6, Exodus 34:7). The description of God's mercy agrees with that in Joel 2:13 and Nehemiah 9:17.
It's interesting to me that in this Old Testament passage, we see God described in a way that is sometimes at odds with how the modern world describes "the God from the Old Testament" (as though the Father's character and the character of Christ are different.) The God - as seen in Jonah - very much matches God as presented within the New Testament. Further, Jesus needed to be so similar to God as described in the Old Testament that people would not immediately reject His claims about Himself. If Jesus were getting comments from people along the lines of "I like you a lot better than I like the God from Scripture," it would have undermined His claims and He would have rebuked the speaker. As we've mentioned, Jonah is a foreshadowing book of the Gospel and the Christian Church. Continuing on to verse 3 now in Ellicott's Bible Commentary:
(3) Take, I beseech thee.—We naturally refer to the history of Elijah for a similar weariness and disgust of life. (Comp. also the case of Moses, Numbers 11:15). It should be noticed, as a contrast of Hebrew with heathen feeling, that none of these men in their loathing of life contemplated the possibility of suicide.
The note points out that there is a difference between asking God to take one's life and making that choice alone. Jonah, like Elijah, did not contemplate suicide. However, both prophets, shortly after very successful moments in their ministry, sought death. We can probably extrapolate from this that spiritual weariness impacts even those who are strong in faith.
I found a couple videos discussing Jonah's anger. I will share them below:
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