Jonah 4:1-11
4 To Joʹnah, though, it was highly displeasing,+ and he got to be hot with anger.
2 Hence he prayed to Jehovah* and said: “Ah, now, O Jehovah, was not this an affair of mine,* while I happened to be on my own ground? That is why I went ahead and ran away to Tarʹshish;+ for I knew that you are a God* gracious and merciful,+ slow to anger and abundant in loving-kindness,*+ and feeling regret over the calamity.+
3 And now, O Jehovah, take away, please, my soul*+ from me, for my dying is better than my being alive.”*+
4 In turn Jehovah said: “Have you rightly become hot with anger?”+
5 Then Joʹnah went out of the city and sat down east of the city; and gradually he made for himself there a booth, that he might sit under it in the shade+ until he would see what would become of the city.+
6 Accordingly Jehovah God* appointed a bottle-gourd plant,* that it should come up over Joʹnah, in order to become a shade over his head, to deliver him from his calamitous state.+ And Joʹnah began to rejoice greatly over the bottle-gourd plant.
7 But the [true] God appointed a worm+ at the ascending of the dawn on the next day, that it should strike the bottle-gourd plant; and it gradually dried up.+
8 And it came about that, as soon as the sun shone forth, God* also went on to appoint a parching east wind,+ and the sun kept striking upon the head of Joʹnah, so that he was swooning away;+ and he kept asking that his soul* might die, and he repeatedly said: “My dying off is better than my being alive.”*+
9 And God proceeded to say to Joʹnah: “Have you rightly become hot with anger over the bottle-gourd plant?”+
At that he said: “I have rightly become hot with anger, to the point of death.”
10 But Jehovah said: “You, for your part, felt sorry for the bottle-gourd plant, which you did not toil upon or make get big, which proved to be a mere growth of a night* and perished as a mere growth of a night.
11 And, for my part, ought I not to feel sorry for Ninʹe·veh the great city,+ in which there exist more than one hundred and twenty thousand* men* who do not at all know the difference between their right hand and their left, besides many domestic animals?”+
Footnotes
^ See App 1C §2.
^ “An affair of mine.” Or, “my word.”
^ “A God.” Heb., ʼEl; Lat., Deʹus.
^ Or, “loyal love.” Heb., cheʹsedh.
^ Or, “my life.”
^ Or, “castor-oil plant.” Heb., qi·qa·yohnʹ.
^ “God.” Heb., ʼElo·himʹ; Gr., ho The·osʹ; TVg, “Jehovah”; Sy, “Jehovah God.”
^ “His soul.” Heb., naph·shohʹ; Gr., psy·khenʹ; Lat., aʹni·mae. See App 4A.
^ Or, “than my life.” Heb., me·chai·yaiʹ.
^ Or, “just a night old.” Lit., “a son of a night.”
^ Lit., “twelve ten-thousands.”
^ Or, “earthling men.” Heb., ʼa·dhamʹ.
