2
就向耶和华祷告，说：“耶和华啊！我还在本国的时候，不是这样说过吗？我知道你是有恩典有怜悯的神，不轻易发怒，并且有丰盛的慈爱，转意不降灾祸，所以我才急忙逃往他施去。
3
耶和华啊！现在求你取去我的性命吧，因为我死了比活着还好。”
5
约拿出了城，在城东坐下；他在那里搭了一座棚，坐在棚荫之下，要看看那城究竟怎样。
6
耶和华神安排一棵蓖麻，使它长起来高过约拿，成了阴影遮盖他的头，免他受苦；约拿因这棵蓖麻，就大大欢畅。
7
次日黎明的时候，神安排一条虫子，蛀蚀这棵蓖麻，蓖麻就枯槁了。
8
日出的时候，神又安排炎热的东风。烈日晒在约拿的头上，以致发昏，他就为自己求死，说：“我死了比活着还好。”
9
神问约拿：“你因这棵蓖麻这样发怒，对不对呢？”约拿说：“我发怒以至于死都是对的。”
Napsal(a) New Christian Bible Study Staff
In this fourth chapter of the Book of Jonah, (Jonah 4), the prophet Jonah has a strange reaction to his success. He's angry, and sulky. He thinks he knows better than God does. What is this story about?
Rev. George McCurdy, in his exegesis of this chapter, offers a summary in his Study Guide for the Book of Jonah, which is available for free as a .pdf, for your use. Below, we've excerpted part of his summary, and edited it for use in this context.
The people of the Jewish church in Jonah's time didn't want to reconsider their belief in their "most-favored-nation status." They challenged the Lord. They couldn't understand why He wanted to save their enemies in Nineveh.
Despite the hard lessons in chapters 1 and 2, and his success as described in chapter 3, Jonah still thought he knew better than the Lord. He thought that God was being too soft and loving -- too forgiving -- and that He needed to come around to Jonah’s tougher view.
Jonah got so angry and vengeful that he preferred to die rather than approve of the Lord’s way to save the Ninevites. His self-love wanted shade -- protection for its concepts. The Lord needed to bring such thinking to an end; the worm brought about death to the gourd from within. The Lord then sent a vehement east wind, that represents a blowing away of the stagnant thinking of the church.
The Lord's heavenly sun shone upon Jonah, but he felt faint. Here, Jonah's insistence on his own troubling view of things made him uncomfortable with the Lord’s view. The Divine guidance offered him a way to learn to enjoy the success of his neighbors as his own, but he wouldn't take it.
For us, then -- what? This story is telling us that we can't just keep the truths of the Word for ourselves; we have to go to Nineveh and share them. And then, if people start to hear them, and use them to turn their lives around, we can't allow ourselves to get resentful that the Lord accepts their repentance and forgives them. It's a very human reaction; think of the disciples vying to be first in the Lord's command structure (Luke 9:46), or the brother of the prodigal son (Luke 15:28-29), or the workers in the vineyard who had worked all day for a denarius (Matthew 20:10-12). But... it's not a good reaction. The Lord doesn't admire it in Jonah, and doesn't admire it when it crops up in our minds, either.
Rev. Martin Pennington recommends several explanatory passages from Swedenborg's theological writings:
"Shade or shadow means the perception of good and truth lies in obscurity." (Arcana Coelestia 2367)
"A vine is spiritual good (the spiritual church)". (Arcana Coelestia 217)
"A worm represents falsity gnawing away and tormenting one." (Arcana Coelestia 8481)
"'And the sun grew hot' in the contrary sense means self-love and love of the world." (Arcana Coelestia 8487)
And... here's a link to an interesting (audio) sermon on this chapter, by Rev. Todd Beiswenger.
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