Jonah’s Displeasure at God’s Mercy

4 But it greatly displeased Jonah and he resented it. ² So he prayed to Adonai and said, “Please, Lord, was not this what I said when I was still in my own country? That’s what I anticipated, fleeing to Tarshish—for I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and full of kindness, and relenting over calamity. ³ So please, Adonai, take my soul from me—because better is my death than my life.”

⁴ Yet Adonai said, “Is it good for you to be so angry?”

⁵ So Jonah went out from the city and sat east of the city. There He made a sukkah and he sat under it, in the shade, until he saw what would happen in the city. ⁶ Then Adonai God prepared a plant and it grew up over Jonah, to give shade over his head to spare him from his discomfort. So Jonah was very happy about the plant. ⁷ But God at dawn the next day prepared a worm that crippled the plant and it withered away. ⁸ When the sun rose, God prepared a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he became faint. So he implored that his soul would die, saying, “My death would be better than my life!”

⁹ Then God said to Jonah, “Is it good for you to be so angry about the plant?”

“It is,” he said, “I am angry enough to die!”

¹⁰ But Adonai said, “You have pity on the plant for which you did no labor or make it grow, that appeared overnight and perished overnight. So shouldn’t I have pity on Nineveh—the great city that has in it more than 120,000 people who don’t know their right hand from their left—as well as many animals?”