Jonah 4:7

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 14:11, and other passages. Thus the special intervention of Almighty God again accommodates itself to nature. "The destruction may have been altogether in the way of nature, except that it happened at that precise moment, when it was to be a lesson to Jonah. -On warm days, when a small rain falls, black caterpillars are generated in great numbers on this plant, which, in one night, so often and so suddenly cut off its leaves, that only their bare ribs remain, which I have often observed with much wonder, as though it were a copy of that destruction of old at Nineveh." " Pusey.