Do You Have the Right To Be Angry?

Jonah 4:4: "But the LORD replied (to Jonah), "Do you have any right to be angry?"



The book of Jonah is somewhat anticlimactic in its final chapters, for one finds that Jonah does not respond to God's mercy the way we might expect. As one reads through the early chapters of Jonah's life experience (i.e. his disobedience against the LORD by not going to Nineveh, his subsequent punishment by being swallowed by the great fish and residing there for three days, his repentance while in the belly of the fish, and his deliverance from the fish by the power of God) one would expect to find Jonah a person yielded completely to the will of God and excited about God's grace. Yet, as we will see, Jonah was grateful for God's mercy towards himself, but he was not so thrilled when that same mercy was bestowed to others . . . particularly the pagan Ninevites.

Once he was freed from the great fish, Jonah made haste to follow the Lord's command to go to Nineveh; he made his way quickly to the pagan city of Nineveh and proclaimed judgment upon the city if they did not repent. Yet in his indignation, Jonah wanted to see God's execution of judgment upon the people. After all, he had made the long journey to the city to do what God had told him to do. Now, he wanted to see the fruit of his labor.

To Jonah's surprise, the people of Nineveh listened to his words of stern rebuke. The king and his subjects of Nineveh fasted from food, put on sackcloth (as a sign of mourning), and called upon the mercy of God. God, in response, had compassion on the city and withheld His judgment against them.



Jonah was enraged at this outcome. In his prayers to the Lord, he in effect said, "Didn't I tell you that this would happen Lord? I know that you O Lord are compassionate and gracious, and I knew that if they repented you would withhold your judgment. Boy, this was a wasted trip . . . here I stuck out my neck to do what you asked me to do and nothing ultimately came from it. This was why I didn't listen to you the first time and fled to Tarshish. Why don't you just go ahead and take my life . . . I'm ready to die!"



Jonah then went outside the city and sat under a vine provided by the Lord for shade. He just sat for hours . . . sulking at his miserable lot. Still, God was resolved to teach Jonah an important lesson about grace even through the prophet's passive aggression. The next day, God caused a worm to chew up the vine that He had provided so that it withered and no longer provided shade for the prophet. Jonah was even more frustrated at lack of good fortune. As the sun blazed on Jonah's head, he grew faint and again petitioned God to take his life.



In response, God said to Jonah a second time, "Do you have a right to be angry . . . " God then used the vine as an illustration to the sulking prophet. He essentially said to Jonah, "here you are so worked up about this vine that you neither created nor tended, and yet Nineveh has more than 120,000 people that I created and thus am genuinely concerned that they have been misled in their disobedience towards me. Should I not be concerned about these people whom I created and to whom I desire fellowship?"



We don't know the response that Jonah gave to the Lord, for the book ends with God's questioning of Jonah's disposition at the course of events. Nevertheless, we can glean some important words of wisdom from this narrative account:



1. God is gracious and compassionate by nature, slow to anger and abounding in love (to the repentant). Jonah quickly forgot his own receipt of God's compassion, and in his "righteous indignation" wanted to see God's wrath befall these pagan Ninevites. Jonah should have been praising the Lord that the people of Nineveh had received the same mercy that he himself had experienced when the Lord delivered him from the belly of the great fish.



2. God has genuine concern that humanity (the pinnacle of his creation) experience propitiation (the turning away of His wrath). God is not sitting in heaven with lightning bolts in hand, ready to feed his insatiable desire to destroy his creation. In fact, he takes no delight in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 18:23), but he desires that all come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). God's kindness toward the sinner is with the hope that it will lead him to repentance (Romans 2:4).



3. Although we (like Jonah) are quick to point out the shortcomings of others, while minimizing our own sins, God still is willing to teach us to appreciate his mercy which is afforded to all who would respond with submission, humility, and repentance. God's hope for us all is that we would be overwhelmed with His love and mercy, and that we would respond to His offering by being surrendered to Him as Lord.