Verse-by-Verse Commentary
The Book of Jonah
Chapter 4: Should Not I Spare Nineveh?
The book of Jonah ends not with the city's repentance but with the prophet's heart, exposed and challenged by the mercy of God. Jonah is 'very angry' that God spared Nineveh, and admits the real reason he fled: 'I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness.' He would rather die than see his enemies forgiven. So God teaches him with a growing gourd and a gnawing worm: Jonah grieves over a withered plant he did not make, and God asks the question the whole book has been driving toward, 'should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand?' The book closes on that question, hanging in the air, aimed not only at Jonah but at every heart too small for the mercy of God.
About This Commentary
This is a verse-by-verse study of Jonah chapter 4, the prophet's anger at grace and God's lesson of compassion. For each section you will find the KJV text, the Hebrew words that sharpen the meaning, plain explanation, and a Gospel Focus. This closing chapter turns the searchlight from Nineveh onto Jonah's heart, and onto ours, with a final unanswered question about the mercy of God. Every Scripture quotation is from the King James Version.
Setting the Stage
Angry at Mercy
A prophet displeased that God forgave his enemies.
A Gracious God
Jonah admits why he fled: God is too merciful.
A Plant and a Worm
God teaches with a shade that grows and dies.
Should Not I Spare?
The book ends on God's heart for a lost city.
A Gracious God, and Merciful (Jonah 4:1-5)
Jonah is furious that God spared Nineveh, and confesses that he fled in the first place because he knew God was too merciful to destroy them; he asks to die, and God answers his rage with a searching question.
Doest Thou Well to Be Angry?
"But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live. Then said the LORD, Doest thou well to be angry? So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city."
Hebrew Study
"a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness." Jonah quotes the great self-revelation of God from Sinai, "The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth" (Exodus 34:6). What Israel treasured as their comfort, Jonah resented when it fell on his enemies. Here is the irony at the book's heart: the prophet knew God's character perfectly and fled precisely because of it, "I knew that thou art a gracious God." He believed the doctrine of grace but hated its reach. It is possible to affirm God's mercy in theory and resent it in practice, to want it for ourselves and begrudge it to others. Jonah's confession is right; his heart is wrong.
"Doest thou well to be angry?" God does not rebuke Jonah with thunder but with a gentle, probing question, the same method He used with Cain, "Why art thou wroth?" (Genesis 4:6), and with Adam, "Where art thou?" (Genesis 3:9). The question invites Jonah to examine his own heart: is your anger right? Is it justified? God's questions are a mercy; they give us room to see ourselves. Jonah's silence, he simply stalks off to wait and watch, is his answer. Anger that cannot bear examination is anger that knows it is wrong.
Explanation
The mercy that delighted heaven "displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry." His prayer is astonishing: he complains to God for being merciful. "Was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country?" Now the real reason for his flight in chapter 1 comes out, he ran not because he feared Nineveh but because he feared God would forgive them: "I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil." Jonah would rather die than watch his enemies saved: "take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live."
God's reply is a single, searching question: "Doest thou well to be angry?" It is patient and pointed, giving Jonah a chance to face his own heart. But Jonah does not answer; he stalks out of the city, builds "a booth," and sits "in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city." He still hopes, it seems, that judgment might yet fall. The prophet who was glad for the shade of a booth had no gladness for the sparing of a hundred and twenty thousand souls. The stage is set for God's final lesson.
Gospel Focus
Jonah's sin is one we rarely name but often share: resentment at grace given to others. He knew God was "gracious" and "merciful," and that was exactly his complaint, he wanted that mercy for Israel and death for Nineveh. It is the spirit of the elder brother who would not go in to the feast for the returning prodigal (Luke 15:28), the laborers angry at the master's generosity to the latecomers (Matthew 20:15), "Is thine eye evil, because I am good?" We can rejoice in mercy for ourselves and begrudge it to those we dislike, our enemies, other nations, people not like us. The gospel exposes this narrowness and calls us to a heart as wide as God's, to love our enemies and long for their salvation, "that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 5:44-45).
And God's gentle question, "Doest thou well to be angry?", is His grace to us as much as to Jonah. When resentment rises in us, God does not always thunder; often He simply asks us to look honestly at our own hearts. Is this anger right? Would I really rather see judgment than mercy? The willingness to let God question our anger is the beginning of its cure. Do not stalk off to your booth to nurse a grudge; sit still under God's question, and let Him show you a heart too small for His mercy, so He can enlarge it.
Should Not I Spare That Great City? (Jonah 4:6-11)
God gives and takes away a sheltering gourd to teach the sulking prophet, and then presses the lesson home: if Jonah grieves over a plant he never made, how much more should God have compassion on a great city full of people He created.
And Also Much Cattle
"And the LORD God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered. And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live. 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. Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?"
Hebrew Study
"the LORD God prepared a gourd... God prepared a worm... God prepared a vehement east wind." Four times in the book God "prepares" (manah, to appoint, ordain): the great fish (1:17), the gourd, the worm, and the east wind. The Lord of all creation sovereignly appoints great things and small, a sea-monster and a caterpillar, a plant and a wind, all to accomplish His purpose and to teach one stubborn prophet. God governs every detail of nature and providence, and He bends it all to shape His servants. The same sovereign hand that "prepared" a fish to save Jonah "prepared" a worm to instruct him; God's discipline and His deliverance flow from the same appointing love.
"should not I spare Nineveh, that great city." The word "spare" (chus) means to pity, to look with compassion, to grieve over. God's closing argument is from the lesser to the greater: Jonah "spared" (pitied) a gourd he neither made nor grew; how much more should the Creator pity a city of living souls He made? The "sixscore thousand" (120,000) "that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand" likely means young children, or a people in spiritual ignorance, either way, helpless ones God loves. And "also much cattle": God's compassion even reaches the animals. This is the great revelation of the book: the true God is not a tribal deity who loves only Israel, but the Creator whose mercy reaches to the pagan nations, the ignorant, the little ones, and even the beasts. His heart is far wider than His prophet's.
Explanation
God stages a living parable. He "prepared a gourd" to shade Jonah's head, "and Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd", the sulking prophet is delighted by his own comfort. Then God "prepared a worm" that killed the plant, and "a vehement east wind" and blazing sun, until Jonah, miserable, again wishes to die. God asks a second time, now about the plant, "Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd?" And Jonah, hardened, insists, "I do well to be angry, even unto death."
Now God springs the lesson. Jonah had "pity on the gourd," a mere plant he "hast not laboured" for, that "came up in a night, and perished in a night." If Jonah could grieve over a withered weed, then, God argues, "should not I spare Nineveh, that great city," with its "sixscore thousand" helpless souls "that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand", and "also much cattle"? The contrast is devastating: Jonah cared more for his comfort than for a hundred thousand people. And the book ends right there, on God's question, with no reply recorded from Jonah. The silence is deliberate; the question is left hanging for the reader to answer.
Gospel Focus
The book of Jonah ends with a question, and that is the point. "Should not I spare Nineveh?" is aimed past Jonah at every reader. God has shown that His compassion is vast, reaching to a brutal pagan city, to a hundred and twenty thousand helpless souls, even to the cattle, and He asks whether we will share His heart or shrink from it like Jonah. The whole book is a mirror: are we glad for the mercy that saves us but resentful of the mercy that saves those we despise? God's love is wider than our prejudices, and He will not let His people rest in a narrow heart. "God so loved the world" (John 3:16), not one nation only, but the world.
See the tender picture of God here. He cares for the ignorant, "that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand," the little children, the spiritually blind, the helpless, and He labors patiently even with an angry prophet, teaching him with a plant rather than crushing him with a rebuke. This is the God who came seeking sinners in Jesus Christ, who "when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd" (Matthew 9:36). The unanswered question at the end of Jonah is really an invitation: come, share the heart of God. Care about the lost as He cares. Let His compassion for the "great city" become yours, and go, like a better Jonah, to preach mercy to those who do not yet know their right hand from their left.
Chapter 4 and the Book of Jonah in Review
Jonah 4 turns the searchlight from the city to the prophet's heart. Jonah is "very angry" that God spared Nineveh, and confesses that he fled in the first place because he knew God to be "a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness." He would rather die than see his enemies forgiven. So God teaches him with a gourd that grows and a worm that kills it, and presses the lesson home: if Jonah grieves over a plant he never made, "should not I spare Nineveh, that great city," with its multitude of helpless souls and even its cattle? The book ends on that question, unanswered, aimed at every heart too small for God's mercy.
So closes the book of Jonah, one of the most surprising in Scripture. It began with a prophet running from God and ends with a prophet resenting God's grace, and in between it displays a God who pursues the runaway, hears the cry from the deep, gives second chances, saves a pagan city that repents, and patiently enlarges the heart of His narrow servant. For the Apostolic reader Jonah is a book about the width of God's mercy, mercy that reaches beyond Israel to all nations, mercy that spared Nineveh and still spares all who turn. It gave us "the sign of the prophet Jonas," Christ's three days in the tomb and His rising again, and it leaves us with God's own question ringing in our ears: will we share His compassion for the lost, or sit sulking under our booths? "Salvation is of the LORD," and His heart is wide as the world. May ours be too.
- It is possible to affirm God's mercy in theory and resent it in practice (4:2; Luke 15:28; Matthew 20:15).
- God gently questions our anger to let us see our own hearts: "Doest thou well to be angry?" (4:4; Genesis 4:6).
- God sovereignly "prepares" great things and small, fish, plant, worm, wind, to accomplish His purpose (4:6-8; 1:17).
- God's compassion reaches pagans, the ignorant, the helpless, even the animals (4:11).
- The book ends with God's question, "should not I spare?", inviting us to share His heart for the lost (4:11; John 3:16).
- Jonah's three days in the deep are the sign of Christ's death and resurrection (Matthew 12:40).
Questions for Reflection
- Is there anyone whose salvation you would secretly resent? What does that reveal?
- Do you care more about your own comfort (the "gourd") than about lost souls?
- Can you let God's gentle question search your anger instead of defending it?
- How will you answer the book's final question, "should not I spare?"
References & Sources
Scripture is quoted from the King James Version (KJV). Key terms: manah ("prepared," appointed, verses 6, 7, 8; and 1:17); chus ("spare," pity, verses 10-11). God's self-revelation as gracious and merciful: Exodus 34:6-7; Numbers 14:18; Psalm 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Nahum 1:3. Resentment at grace given to others: Genesis 4:5-7; Matthew 20:1-16; Luke 15:25-32; Acts 22:21-22. God's gentle, searching questions: Genesis 3:9; 4:6; 16:8; 1 Kings 19:9, 13. God's sovereign use of creation: Psalm 148:8; Amos 4:9; Jonah 1:17; Matthew 8:27. God's wide compassion for the nations and the helpless: Psalm 145:9; Ezekiel 33:11; Luke 15:1-10; John 3:16; 1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9. God's care even for animals: Genesis 9:9-10; Psalm 36:6; 104:27-28; Matthew 6:26; 10:29. The sign of Jonah: Matthew 12:39-41; Luke 11:29-32. If anything here does not look right, a verse, a reference, or a wording, please tell us at info@FruitBearers.net. Thank you for helping us keep Bible Learning error free.
- Jonah's anger at grace and God's searching question: Jonah 4:1-5; Exodus 34:6; Matthew 20:15.
- The lesson of the gourd and God's compassion for the great city: Jonah 4:6-11; John 3:16; 2 Peter 3:9.