The Plant, the Worm, and the Wind
5 Then Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city, and there made himself a booth and sat under it in the shade, until he might see what would become of the city. 6 Yahweh God prepared a vine and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head to deliver him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the vine. 7 But God prepared a worm at dawn the next day, and it chewed on the vine so that it withered. 8 When the sun arose, God prepared a sultry east wind; and the sun beat on Jonah’s head, so that he was faint and requested for himself that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” 9 God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the vine?” He said, “I am right to be angry, even to death.”
God teaches with a plant what he could not teach with a city.
Jonah leaves the city and builds himself a shelter east of it, then sits down to watch what will happen — still hoping, forty days having been announced, that something might. He has come out of a place where a hundred and twenty thousand people were spared to sit alone in the heat and wait for them to burn.
What follows is the fourth and last run of the appointing verb from chapter one. God appoints a plant, and Jonah is glad — the only time in the book he is glad about anything, and it is about shade. God appoints a worm, and the plant dies. God appoints a scorching east wind, and the sun beats on his head. Each creature obeys immediately. The pattern set at the fish holds to the end: everything in this book does what God says except the prophet.
Then the second question, deliberately narrowed: is it right for you to be angry about the plant? This time Jonah answers, and his answer is the argument God has been waiting for. Angry enough to die. He has now claimed the right to grieve over a shrub, in a book about whether God may grieve over a city — and he has claimed it out loud, in his own words, which is what makes the last two verses inescapable.
settled What this mark means