Jonah 4

¹ Jonah was very indignant at this; he fell into a rage.

² He prayed to Yahweh and said, ‘Ah! Yahweh, is not this just as I said would happen when I was still at home? That was why I went and lied to Tarshish: I knew that you were a God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in graciousness, relenting from evil.

³ So now Yahweh, please take away my life, for I might as well be dead as go on living.’

⁴ Yahweh replied, ‘Are you right to be angry?’

⁵ Jonah then went out of the city and sat down to the east of the city. There he made himself a shelter and sat under it in the shade, to see what would happen to the city.

⁶ Then Yahweh God arranged that a castor-oil plant should grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head and soothe his ill-humour; Jonah was delighted with the castor-oil plant.

⁷ But at dawn the next day, God arranged that a worm should attack the castor-oil plant – and it withered.

⁸ Next, when the sun rose, God arranged that there should be a scorching east wind; the sun beat down so hard on Jonah’s head that he was overcome and begged for death, saying, ‘I might as well be dead as go on living’.

⁹ God said to Jonah, ‘Are you right to be angry about the castor-oil plant?’ He replied, ‘I have every right to be angry, to the point of death’.

¹⁰ Yahweh replied, ‘You are only upset about a castor-oil plant which cost you no labour, which you did not make grow, which sprouted in a night and has perished in a night.

¹¹ And am I not to feel sorry for Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, to say nothing of all the animals?’