_it displeased Jonah, &c._ Lit. IT WAS EVIL TO JONAH, A GREAT EVIL, AND IT (viz. anger) KINDLED TO HIM. Comp. Nehemiah 2:10. It is clear that the immediate cause of Jonah's anger and vexation was the preservation of Nineveh and the non-fulfilment of the threat which he had been sent to pronounce. It... [ Continue Reading ]
Jonah 4:1-11. Jonah's Displeasure, and its Rebuke Greatly displeased at the clemency of God towards Nineveh, Jonah confesses that it was the expectation that that clemency would be exercised, which rendered him unwilling to undertake the divine mission at the first, and in his annoyance and chagrin... [ Continue Reading ]
_he prayed_ His better mind had not altogether forsaken him. He did not as before flee from the presence of the Lord, but betook himself to Him, even in his irritation and discontent. _I pray thee_ A particle of entreaty. In Jonah 1:14 it is translated "we beseech thee." _I fled before_ Lit. I PRE... [ Continue Reading ]
_take … my life from me_ So had Moses prayed (Numbers 11:15) and Elijah (1 Kings 19:4), both with better cause, and in nobler spirit, but both in the same utter weariness of life as Jonah. No one of them, however, attempts to take his own life. They all regard it as a sacred deposit, entrusted to th... [ Continue Reading ]
_Doest thou well to be angry_?] Two other translations of these words have been suggested. One, which though perhaps possible is far-fetched and highly improbable, is, "Does (my) doing good (that is, to Nineveh in sparing it) make thee angry?" the reproof then being similar to that in Matthew 20:15,... [ Continue Reading ]
_So Jonah went out of the city_ It has been proposed to take the verbs in this verse as pluperfects: "Now Jonah had gone out of the city, and abode on the east side of the city, &c." The verse will then be a parenthesis introduced to relate what had really taken place before Jonah's anger and compla... [ Continue Reading ]
_prepared_ Rather, APPOINTED. And so in Jonah 4:7. See Jonah 1:17, note. _a gourd_ This is the only place in the Old Testament in which the Hebrew word here translated _gourd_occurs. It is quite a different word which is rendered _gourd_in 2 Kings 4:39, and (of architectural ornaments) in 1 Kings 6:... [ Continue Reading ]
_a worm_ This of course may mean a single worm which either by attacking the root or gnawing the stem, still young and tender and not yet hardened by maturity, suddenly destroyed the palmchrist. It is better, however, to take the word in its collective sense, _worms_, as in Deuteronomy 28:39; Isaiah... [ Continue Reading ]
_a vehement east wind_ Margin, _silent_. This, or _sultry_, R.V., is probably the true meaning of the word. "We have two kinds of sirocco," writes Dr Thomson, "one accompanied with vehement wind which fills the air with dust and fine sand … The sirocco to-day is of the quiet kind, and they are often... [ Continue Reading ]
_even unto death_ "_Art thou rightly angry for the palmchrist? I am rightly angry, (and that) unto death:_" i. e. "my anger is so great that it well-nigh kills me, and even in that excess it is justified by the circumstances." In like manner it is said of Samson that "his soul was vexed unto death... [ Continue Reading ]
_for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow_ The principle on which the contrast implied by these words rests is that the effort which we have bestowed upon any object, the degree in which our powers of mind or heart or body have been expended upon it, in a word what it has cost us... [ Continue Reading ]
.] The final appeal is forcible and conclusive, a grand and worthy climax to this remarkable book. The contrasts are striking and designed: THOU and I (the pronouns are emphatic, and each of them introduces a member of the comparison), man and God; the short-lived palmchrist and Nineveh that great c... [ Continue Reading ]
_that cannot discern &c._ The idea that the whole population of Nineveh is thus described, the reference being to their moral condition of heathen ignorance and darkness, has nothing to recommend it. On the contrary, the moral susceptibility of the Ninevites, although they are heathen, is, as we hav... [ Continue Reading ]