Jonah chapter 4

After reading chapter 4:

* God has not destroyed the Ninevites as he (actually Jonah) threatened. This made Jonah mad. He complained to Yahweh that he knew this was going to happen. That's why he tried to run away to Tarshish. He knew that Yahweh was a softy and would change his mind. Like he did during the flood, the death of all the first born Egyptians, Sodom and Gommorrah, the Canaanite masacres?

Now, because Yahweh did not destroy the Ninevites, Jonah is says, "Just kill me." Do you get the feeling that Jonah had been looking forward to the annhiliation? Or is it just that he feels like a fool, having predicted the destruction, only to find out it won't happen. After all, the measure of a prophet is whether his predictions come true.

Jonah goes outside the city to wait and watch whatever would happen to the city. He had built a shelter and Yahweh supposedly made a vine grow over it to give him shade. As a gardener, I can tell you, any type of vine is not going to get that big that quickly. We aren't told how long it was, but remember, back in Jonah 3:4 the Ninevites are told the city was to be overturned in forty days. Did Jonah wait for fourty days. (Where did he get food?) That could possibly be long enough for a vine to grow over a shelter, even without divine intervention.

At dawn the next day (the next day from when?) God provided a worm to chew the vine. Oh! So that's where vine borers come from! If I kill the vine borers in my garden, am I obstructing the work of God? Jonah's vine died. Jonah lost his shade and got overheated. He again expressed a desire to have his life terminated. God asked him if he had a right to be angry about the vine. He said he did, angry enough to die. Wow! Jonah didn't have anything else to live for? Poor guy.

Yaweh says Jonah is sorry for a vine that he didn't even plant or tend. It sprang up in one night and died overnight. Wait, this was not a forty day vine, it was a one day vine? That makes it officially a miracle! Also, my study Bible says it may have been  a castor oil plant, not a vine at all. Do castor oil plants get tall and shady in one day? Nope. Also, castor oil plants are toxic to many insect pests as well as humans. It is often used as a natural insecticide. It is not likely to be killed by a chewing worm.

Any way, Yaweh tells Jonah that the great city of Nineveh has more than one hundred twenty thousand people, shouldn't he be concerned about them? (Not to mention all the cattle. ) Amazingly enough, the actual number of inhabitants in Nineveh at its peak probably was very close to one hundred twenty thousand. It truly was a great city of antiquity, and there is proof of its existence. Strangely enough, there is not one shred of proof of the nomadic tribe of two million (!) Hebrew people, not to mention their animals, who spent forty years in the desert of the Sinai peninsula. And people have looked.

Burning question: Why didn't Yahweh send prophets to the Canaanites, warning them to turn from their evil ways, before he had them slaughtered. Why wasn't he always a humanitarian?