Jonah 4
1 And it is grievous to Jonah—a great evil—and he is displeased at it;
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.
2 and he prays to YHWH, and he says, “Ah, now, O YHWH, is this not my word while I was in my own land—therefore I was beforehand [going] to flee to Tarshish—that I have known that You [are] a God, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in kindness, and relenting of evil?
And he prayed to the LORD, and said, I pray you, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before to Tarshish: for I knew that you are a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repent you of the evil.
3 And now, O YHWH, please take my soul from me, for better [is] my death than my life.”
Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech you, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.
4 And YHWH says, “Is doing good displeasing to you?”
Then said the LORD, Do you well to be angry?
5 And Jonah goes forth from the city, and sits on the east of the city, and makes a shelter for himself there, and sits under it in the shade, until he sees what is in the city.
So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city.
6 And YHWH God appoints a gourd, and causes it to come up over Jonah, to be a shade over his head, to give deliverance to him from his affliction, and Jonah rejoices because of the gourd [with] great joy.
And the LORD God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd.
7 And God appoints a worm at the going up of the dawn on the next day, and it strikes the gourd, and it dries up.
But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered.
8 And it comes to pass, about the rising of the sun, that God appoints a cutting east wind, and the sun strikes on the head of Jonah, and he wraps himself up, and asks for his soul to die, and says, “Better [is] my death than my life.”
And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat on the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live.
9 And God says to Jonah: “Is doing good displeasing to you, because of the gourd?” And he says, “To do good is displeasing to me—to death.”
And God said to Jonah, Do you well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even to death.
10 And YHWH says, “You have had pity on the gourd, for which you did not labor, neither did you nourish it, which came up [as] a son of night, and perished [as] a son of night,
Then said the LORD, You have had pity on the gourd, for the which you have not labored, neither made it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night:
11 and I—do I not have pity on Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than one hundred twenty thousand of mankind, who have not known between their right hand and their left—and much livestock?”
And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?
