Daily Devotional | The Lord’s Compassion

I’m the type of person who wants a movie to wrap up all the loose ends before it’s over. I especially love when a movie tells you what happened to the characters after the movie, like Alejandro went on to be a US senator, and John played three seasons for the Blue Jays. Jonah doesn’t give us an ending like that, though. Rather than tying together the loose threads and telling us what becomes of Jonah, the book ends without any real resolution.

In verse 9 the Lord confronts Jonah over his anger about the plant (see July 15): “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” To which Jonah—for the third time in the book—says he’d rather be dead than live: “It is [right]…And I’m so angry I wish I were dead” (v. 9). At this point the Lord responds with one of the most haunting statements in Scripture, a statement we would do well to meditate upon when we find ourselves angry or frustrated about how the Lord works and what He chooses to do. “The LORD said, ‘You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?’”

God could have communicated His point in a million different ways, but He chose to put Jonah’s concern for a measly plant next to His own concern for an entire city and all the animals within it. In this framing, Jonah’s anger would be laughable were it not so tragic. And that’s how the book ends, with an implicit invitation to put ourselves in Jonah’s shoes.