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.

1053. That 'and the bow will be in the cloud' means the state of that man is clear from what has been stated and shown already about the bow in the cloud, that is to say, in the next life a person or soul is known among angels from his sphere; and as often as it pleases the Lord that sphere is represented by means of colours like those of the rainbow, variously according to each person's state as to faith in the Lord and thus respectively as to goods and truths of faith. In the next life colours present themselves to view, which on account of their brilliance and splendour are immensely superior in beauty to colours seen with the eyes on earth. Each colour represents something celestial or spiritual.

[2] Those colours derive from the light in heaven, and from the variegation of spiritual light, as stated above. Indeed angels live in light so bright that the light of the world is in comparison no light at all. The light of heaven in which angels live, compared with the light of the world, is as the light of the sun at midday to the light of a candle that is put out and ceases to give any light at all when the sun rises. In heaven there is celestial light and there is spiritual light. Let me compare the two by saying that celestial light is as the light of the sun, while spiritual light is as the light of the moon. But all manner of variation exists depending on the state of the angel receiving the light. The same applies to colours since they are a product of the light. In the heaven of celestial angels the Lord Himself is the Sun, and in the heaven of spiritual angels the Moon. To people who have no conception of the life which souls lead after death these matters are unbelievable. They are nevertheless completely true.