When God spoke, and a person answered
God and the Angry Jonah
The book of Jonah ends not with the prophet's repentance but with God's question, left hanging in the air. A sulking man, a withered plant, and a great city God will not stop loving.
“Then said the LORD, Doest thou well to be angry?”Jonah 4:4
The conversation
The conversation. After Nineveh repents and God spares it, Jonah is furious; he had feared exactly this, "for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness," and he asks God to take his life. God answers with a question: "Doest thou well to be angry?" Jonah does not answer; he goes out and sits east of the city to see what will happen. God prepares a gourd to shade him, and Jonah is "exceeding glad of the gourd." Then God prepares a worm that smites the plant so it withers, and a vehement east wind and sun that beat on Jonah's head until he faints and again wishes to die. God asks again, "Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd?" and Jonah snaps, "I do well to be angry, even unto death." Then God makes His case: "Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured... 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?" The book ends there, on God's question, unanswered.
What God was doing
What God was doing. God was exposing the smallness of His prophet's heart against the largeness of His own. Jonah could weep over a plant that cost him nothing and begrudge mercy to a hundred and twenty thousand souls. God was teaching by object lesson, giving and taking the gourd to make Jonah feel a pity he would not extend to people. He was defending His compassion, which is the very thing Jonah resented; the prophet fled in the first place because he knew God was too merciful to suit him. He was patient with an angry servant, questioning rather than crushing him, reasoning where He could have rebuked. And He was widening the frame to include even the cattle, the whole city, the ones who cannot tell right hand from left. This reveals a God whose mercy reaches beyond His people to their enemies, who values souls far above our comforts, and who pursues the hard heart of the reluctant messenger as tenderly as the lost city.
How it leads to Christ
How it leads to Christ. Jesus made Jonah a sign of Himself: "as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matt 12:40). Jonah went down into the deep and came up to preach to Gentiles reluctantly; Christ went down into death and rose to send salvation to all nations willingly, for "a greater than Jonas is here" (Matt 12:41). The God who pitied Nineveh is the God who "so loved the world" (John 3:16) that He gave His Son for enemies. Jonah begrudged mercy to the undeserving; Christ died for the undeserving without a word of grudging. God's closing question, "should not I spare," is answered forever at the cross, where sparing sinners cost God Himself. He who reasoned with a sulking prophet now speaks in the Son (Heb 1:2), and the Son is mercy in the flesh.
Questions people ask
Why was Jonah angry that God spared Nineveh?
Jonah admitted he fled at first because he knew God was "gracious and merciful, slow to anger," and he did not want Israel's enemies forgiven. He resented the very compassion of God, preferring judgment on Nineveh to its repentance.
Why does the book of Jonah end with a question?
God's final words, "should not I spare Nineveh," are left unanswered so the reader must answer them. The open ending presses each of us to examine whether our hearts share God's mercy for those we would rather see destroyed.
How is Jonah a sign of Christ?
Jesus said Jonah's three days in the whale prefigured His own three days in the heart of the earth before rising. Jonah reluctantly brought God's word to Gentiles; Christ willingly brought salvation to all nations, and He is "a greater than Jonas."