Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Jonah · About this commentary
The Question That Ends the Book
Jonah 4:10-11
10 Yahweh said, “You have been concerned for the vine, for which you have not labored, neither made it grow; which came up in a night and perished in a night. · WEB
The book ends by putting God's mercy on trial, and lets God answer with a question.
Jonah's complaint is not that God is unjust. It is that God is merciful. He turns Israel's own creed of praise Exodus 34:6–7 into an accusation Jonah 4:2, and he is correct on every point. God did exactly what Jonah predicted he would do.
The answer is an argument from the lesser to the greater, and God makes it without a display of power. Jonah grieved over a plant he neither planted nor grew, which came up in a night and died in a night. God asks whether he may not grieve over a hundred and twenty thousand people he did make. The defense is the one Scripture gives wherever the charge is raised: God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked Ezekiel 18:23 Ezekiel 33:11, and the delay that looks like slowness is intent 2 Peter 3:9.
Then the book stops. Jonah never answers, and the silence is the point — the question has been handed past him to whoever is reading. Paul puts the same question to Rome in a single line Romans 3:29.
held with reason What this mark means