And Jehovah said, Thou hast pity on the gourd, for which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night
God ends the book of Jonah not with a verdict but with a question, and He builds it out of a plant. Jonah has just insisted he is right to be furious over a dead vine. The Lord takes that feeling and turns it into the argument that closes the story.
The Lord does not scold Jonah for his outburst. He follows it to its end.
He convicts him out of his own mouth, and makes his own words correct him. He shows him that he cannot keep both his proud sorrow and his angry one. He must stop grieving either over mercy to Nineveh or over judgment on the gourd... For Nineveh was to the Lord just what the gourd had been to the prophet. If the prophet would gladly spare the gourd, he must allow the Lord to spare Nineveh.
The heart of the verse is what Jonah did not do for the plant — older translations call it a gourd. That one phrase carries the whole comparison.
"You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow." What does that tell us? It tells us of God's tender care, not for the gourd alone, but for the many thousands of Nineveh. Each individual life in that great city was precious in God's sight. Each one was the work of God's hand, for each one He had laboured, and it was God alone who had "made each one to grow."
One writer looks at what that labour cost God.
He lets Jonah learn something more: He had laboured for them. Unlike Jonah with his gourd, He would bring His creatures back to Himself at the cost of His own toil.
Notice what God does not say.
The Lord did not rebuke Jonah for having pity on the gourd. There was nothing wrong in that. The wrong was this: he gave more pity, more thought, more care to a gourd. It came up in a night and perished in a night. He gave less to the crowded, perishing thousands of a great city. It is not by accident that God used that word, "perished," in a night. It is the fourth time in this little book we have heard that word "perish."
Both the shade and the worm came from the same hand. Then God asks Jonah a question about His own heart.
The same hand that raised the gourd raised the worm that struck it. The same hand that sent the one sent the other... What does God say to him? "Look at you — you never laboured for the gourd. You never toiled for it. It came up in a night and perished in a night, and you have compassion on it. Will you not allow Me to have compassion? Am I not to have a heart? Am I not to have affections? Am I not to exercise them?"
Watch which name for God appears in this last speech.
Not God, Elohim, the name of Him as Creator, speaks, but it is Jehovah, the Lord... Jonah felt pity and was angry over a small vine he had not planted or made to grow. Should not God then have far more right to show mercy on His creatures, whom He created and sustained? This silenced Jonah; he could not reply. The last word belongs to Jehovah. He showed that His infinite compassion holds not Israel alone, but all His creation — the Gentile world and even the animals.
Writers on this passage turn the picture on us.
How many of us care far more about our gourds and our flowers, our houses and our business, our cars and our radios? We care far less about the millions of perishing souls all around us — souls that will never die... And we are "exceedingly displeased" and "very angry" if anything happens to disturb our comfort and upset our settled way of life... Self always takes the first place, unless the Lord has taught us to lift up our eyes and look off to JESUS.
- Pity exposed. God does not argue Jonah out of his feeling; He uses it. Jonah's own words about the plant become the words that correct him.
- Pity unearned. The gourd cost Jonah nothing — no labour, no growing. That is what makes the contrast work.
- Pity earned. God made and sustained every life in Nineveh, and He would bring His creatures back at the cost of His own toil.
- Pity enlarged. It reaches past Israel to the whole Gentile world, and even to the animals God made.
- Pity redirected. Jonah could not reply, so the question comes to us: which do I care about more — my comfort, or people who are perishing?
and I, should not I have pity on Nineveh, the great city, wherein are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?
The book of Jonah ends with a question, not a verdict. Jonah pitied a plant, yet he wanted a whole city destroyed. God asks him why He should not pity that city.
God takes the pity Jonah felt for his plant and turns it into the argument against him.
The prophet's delight in the gourd is only a faint reflection of the Lord's delight in mercy. That mercy visits the creatures of His hand — at Nineveh, at Jerusalem, or anywhere else. The place makes no difference. And if Jonah wants the gourd spared, he must allow repentant Nineveh to be spared. He will be judged out of his own mouth: Jonah will testify for the Lord against himself.
The comparison turns on work. Who made these lives, and who keeps them growing?
It tells us of God's tender care, not for the gourd alone, but for the many thousands of Nineveh. Each individual life in that great city was precious in God's sight. Each one was the work of God's hand. For each one He had labored, and God alone had "made each one to grow." This was true of the grown men and women. It was true of the little children too, and of the cattle, whom God singles out in these verses.
How large was Nineveh? The count in the verse gives a clue.
There were 120,000 who could not tell their right hand from their left. These were probably children. That would give a population of about 600,000.
That God counted them at all says something about how He governs the world.
We should weigh the last verse of the Book of Jonah with care. It gives us a delightful insight into the heart of God as Creator... So God, in His government of the earth, took account of 120,000 helpless children in Nineveh, "and also much cattle." And it made Him glad that the repentance of the king and his people let Him put the sword of judgement back in its sheath, at least for the time being.
The verse ends with animals. Why mention cattle at all?
Does God care about oxen? Yes, He does. That is why the book of Jonah ends by telling us that there were also "much cattle" in Nineveh. Had Nineveh been destroyed, the cattle in it would have perished; but God showed mercy on the men and on the poor animal creation too.
That small clause is treated as the proof of a principle that runs far wider than one city.
There were two things which the prophet (and, may we not add, many Christians also?) had not yet learned. First, that God's tender mercy is over all His works. (Psalm 145:9.) How beautifully this is shown by the words, "and also much cattle"!
Jonah wanted the sentence carried out in full. God's answer explains why He warns anyone at all.
He would refuse God the right to show mercy to His helpless creatures. He would demand that God carry out the sentence on the Gentile world in full, without even leaving space for repentance. God answers him. At first He does not unfold the counsels of His grace. He appeals instead to the rights of His sovereign goodness, to His nature, to His own character. Nineveh has listened to God. Now, if God threatens, it is so that man may turn from his sin and be spared. Why else should He warn the sinner? Why not leave him to ripen unwarned for judgment? But these are not the ways of God.
That such a book survived at all is itself remarkable.
Yes, He is the God of all grace, the God not of Jews only but of Gentiles also, whose mercies as the faithful Creator are over all His works. What Jew, what Rabbi, would ever have let such a book into the accepted collection of Scripture, if God had not written it for that purpose?
The book stops without telling us how Jonah answered.
The book thus closes abruptly. Jonah was left to answer the challenge as best he could, and the reader of today is left to answer it for himself.
And the challenge lands closer to home than we would like.
How many of us care far more about our gourds and our flowers, our houses and our business, than about the millions of perishing, yet never-dying, souls all around us... And we are "exceedingly displeased" and "very angry" if anything happens to disturb our comfort.
- Pity — Jonah pitied a plant, and God used that pity as the case against him.
- Labor — the plant cost Jonah nothing; every life in Nineveh was God's own work, made and grown by Him.
- Reach — that pity stretches down from the 120,000 children to the cattle, showing mercy over all He has made.
- Right — God is free to spare. He warns people so they will turn from sin, not to ripen them for judgment.
- Answer — the book ends on a question. Each reader must decide: does my own comfort matter more than perishing people?