God’s Tender Mercy (Ch. 4). 

        There came to Jonah the certainty that God had accepted the repentance of Nineveh (3:10). It offended his sense of what God should do (4:2), it spared Israel’s most dangerous enemy, and though he did not say so, it destroyed his reputation as a prophet, so he asked to die (ver. 3). Still he decided to watch out the forty days in case God changed His mind (ver. 5).

        His black spirits were slightly lightened by a gourd which grew up rapidly — “in a night” — and gave him a little shade. A worm at its root killed it and the hot sirocco wind both shriveled it up and threatened Jonah with heatstroke. In his depression the loss of the gourd seemed the last straw. God was then able to bring home to Jonah through the importance to him of a mere ephemeral plant what God’s creation must mean to the Creator. It seems likely that the 120,000 persons that could not “discern between their right hand and their left hand” are the younger children of two or three and under.

        The miracle of Jonah’s preservation has more relevance than we might think. To the Israelite the untamable sea was a picture of chaos, the enemy of all settled order. Jehovah’s control of the sea was also a picture of His control of chaos, and hence of everything. The great fish was doubtless a picture to Jonah of Leviathan, the monster lord of chaos, who meekly serves Jehovah as need arises.