Doest Thou Well to Be Angry?

Jonah sits on a hill, furious that a plant has died. God does not strike him. He asks him a question, twice, and then shows him what is really worth caring about.

Jonah 4:1-11; Romans 8:20-26; Ephesians 4:26-27; Psalm 4:4; James 3:9-10

Opening

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And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death. Then said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?

Jonah 4:9-11 (KJV)

The last three verses of the book. A prophet sits in the sun, furious about a plant, and God asks him a question.

HEBREW

חָרָהcharah

khah-RAH

to burn, to be kindled, to grow hot; used of anger

This is the verb behind “angry” in Jonah 4. God’s question in verse 4 is three Hebrew words, ha-heitev charah lakh. Read literally it asks, Is it good, this burning in you? The same question comes back in verse 9, and Jonah throws the same words back: it is good that it burns in me, even to death.

One chapter earlier, the king of Nineveh hopes that God will turn from the burning of His nose, His fierce anger. The noun there comes from the same root. God does turn from His burning. And the very next thing the book says is that Jonah began to burn. The old Greek translators rendered every one of these burns as grief. Are you very much grieved? Their choice lets us hear the sorrow that can sit underneath anger.

Angry About a Plant

Jonah is sitting on a hill outside Nineveh. He has preached, the city has repented, and God has spared it. Jonah is furious about that.

So he builds a rough shelter and sits in its shade to watch. Overnight God makes a leafy plant grow up over him, and for the first time in the book Jonah is glad.

The next morning God appoints a worm. The plant withers. Then comes a scorching east wind and a hard sun. Jonah is faint, and he says he would rather die.

God asks him a question. Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd?

Jonah answers without a pause. I do well to be angry, even unto death.

Then God says something that is gentle and sharp at once. You had pity on a plant. You did not plant it. You did not make it grow. It came up in a night and perished in a night. And should I not care about a city full of people?

If you are angry at your tools this week, this is your passage. The plant was a gift Jonah did not labour for. When it failed him, his anger was total. And God did not strike him down for it. He asked him a question, and He showed him what was really worth caring about.

REFLECT

Do this today: when a tool fails you, say out loud what it cost you, then ask God His question: is this burning good? Do not answer quickly. Give Him ten seconds before you touch the keyboard again.

Your writing is kept to your account, and only yours.

A Two-Minute Prayer

Lord, I have been angry enough to die over things that came up in a night. You asked Jonah a question instead of striking him. Ask me too, and give me the honesty to answer. Teach me to care about what You care about. Amen.

IN YOUR OWN WORDS

Your writing is kept to your account, and only yours.

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live. Then said the Lord, Doest thou well to be angry? So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city.

Jonah 4:1-5 (KJV)

The chapter opens right after the great city turns to God. Everyone is spared. The prophet is the only one who is upset.

Angry Enough to Die

Today we are in the time of the KINGDOM, when Israel and Judah had kings. Second Kings mentions Jonah, son of Amittai, a prophet in the days of Jeroboam the Second, in the eighth century before Christ. When the book about him was written is debated, but its setting is that century. Nineveh was one of the great cities of Assyria, the empire that would later destroy the northern kingdom of Israel.

God sent Jonah to preach to that city. Jonah ran the other way. After a storm and a great fish, he went, preached, and the whole city repented.

Then chapter 4 opens with a line no preacher wants written about him. It displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.

He was angry that it worked. He was angry that God was kind to people he wanted punished.

You may not share Jonah's reason. But you probably know the feeling. You have been working on something for months. It should have taken weeks. The tools you were promised would help keep failing you. They forget what you told them an hour ago. They tell you a thing is done when it is not. They wander off from what you asked and do something else. You have explained it again and again, and the project keeps sliding.

The anger builds until it is not about one broken file any more. It is about everything. It comes out of your mouth in words that shock you. Some days it feels like something dark is working against you, and maybe against God's purpose in your life.

Jonah would understand. He told God it would be better for him to die than to live.

Notice two things before we go further.

The first is that Jonah prayed his anger. And he prayed unto the Lord, and said. He did not only shout at the sky or at the city. He brought the rage to God, in words. The Psalms are full of it, and God never rejects that kind of prayer for being too honest.

The second is what God did with it. He did not answer with fire. He answered with a question. Doest thou well to be angry?

God will ask it again before the chapter ends. He is patient with an angry prophet. As we saw two days ago, patience is part of His name, and Jonah knew it. He quotes it at God in verse 2: thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger. He meant it as a complaint. It was the best news in the book.

An extreme close view of a thick green plant stem at dawn, low sun raking across it. A small pale worm has bitten into the stem, and above the wound the broad leaves have begun to droop and curl, while the dark sky behind is just beginning to turn gold. — God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day (Jonah 4:7). The thing that shaded Jonah came down because of something very small.

Jonah prayed his anger. He brought the rage to God, in words, and God answered with a question.

Is It Good, This Burning?

The Hebrew word behind angry in Jonah 4 is charah. It means to burn, to grow hot, to be kindled like a fire.

God's question in verse 4 is only three words in Hebrew. Ha-heitev charah lakh. Read literally, it asks: is it good, this burning in you?

The words can be heard two ways, and both are in them: is your burning right, and is it doing you any good?

There is a detail one chapter earlier that makes the question sharper. When Jonah preached, the king of Nineveh said, Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? The words fierce anger are literally the burning of His nose. The noun comes from the same root as charah.

So in chapter 3, God turns from His burning. In chapter 4, verse 1, Jonah begins to burn. The prophet has taken up the anger that God set down.

The old Greek translators did not translate charah as anger. They translated it as grief. Jonah was grieved with a great grief. And God's question becomes: are you very much grieved?

That is worth sitting with. Often under our anger there is grief. Grief for time that is gone and will not come back. Grief for a project that was supposed to be finished by now. The anger is louder, so we hear it first. The grief is underneath, and it is usually what God is asking about.

So when you are furious at the work this week, try asking the question the way God asked it. Is this burning good for me? And then the second question, the one the Greek translation raises. What am I grieving?

You may find that the machine is not really the point. The months are. The months you expected to spend differently, the family time the project took, the vision that feels stuck. God can meet you there. The rage you aim at a screen goes nowhere. Grief brought to God is something He knows exactly what to do with.

For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Romans 8:20-22; 8:26 (KJV)

Paul, in the chapter after his cry of O wretched man, explains why the whole world feels like it is working against us.

It Came Up in a Night

Read the middle of Jonah 4 again, and notice a word that repeats. The Lord God prepared a gourd. God prepared a worm. God prepared a vehement east wind. The same word was used in chapter 1 for the great fish.

The plant that shaded Jonah, the worm that brought it down and the hot wind that followed were all in God's hand. None of it was random. God was teaching an angry man something, and He used a gift and its loss to do it.

Now listen carefully to what God says about the plant. Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night.

Jonah did nothing to make that plant. It appeared overnight, as a gift. He loved it while it lasted. When it failed him, his anger was total.

It is hard to read that sentence now without thinking of the tools that came up in a night in our own time. The software that writes, the assistants that promise to do in an hour what used to take a week. We did not labour for them. We did not make them grow. They arrived almost overnight, and many of us came to depend on them.

And when they fail us, when they forget, and wander, and tell us the job is done when it is not, the anger can be total. I do well to be angry, even unto death.

God's answer to Jonah is not that the plant did not matter. He says Jonah had pity on it. The Hebrew verb is chus, to feel for, to care about. Then God uses the same verb about Himself. And should not I spare, should not I feel for, Nineveh?

The parallel is exact. You cared about the plant. Should I not care about the people?

Your frustration shows you what you care about. That is not all bad. You care about the work. You care about finishing what God put in your hands. But God is asking you to look up from the plant to the city. Who is the work for? What people are on the other side of this project? Who is standing next to you while you rage at the screen?

Paul adds something to this in Romans 8.

He says the whole creation was made subject to vanity. The Greek word is the one the Greek Bible used for the vanity of Ecclesiastes, meaning futility, frustration, things that do not work as they should. Since the fall, the world has been subject to it. Genesis says the ground itself would bring forth thorns and thistles to the one who works it.

So when your tools break and your plans slide, you are not imagining it. You are living in a creation that groans. Things really do not work as they should yet. That frustration is not proof that God has left the project.

But Paul says the futility was imposed in hope. The creation itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Freedom again, the word of this whole week. The frustration will not have the last word.

And in the meantime, the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities. The Greek verb for helpeth is a rare one. It means to take hold of something together with someone, from the other side. It appears in only one other place in the New Testament. Martha, frustrated and overworked with all the serving, says to Jesus: bid her therefore that she help me.

The Spirit does for you what Martha wanted from her sister. He takes hold of the other end of the load. When you do not even know what to pray, He groans with you, with groanings too deep for words.

You are not carrying this project alone, and you are not groaning alone.

A wide field of thorns and thistles under a heavy dark sky, seen from low down among the stalks. In the middle distance a simple wooden plough stands abandoned, its blade caught in the tangled ground, and a thin line of hard gold light burns along the horizon. — Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee (Genesis 3:18). Work has been hard since the fall, and Romans 8 says the whole creation groans with it.

Give No Place

Paul says something about anger in Ephesians that most people only half remember. Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the devil.

The first line is a quotation. Paul is quoting Psalm 4, word for word, from the Greek Bible of his day. The Hebrew word in that psalm means to tremble, to quiver with strong feeling. That is why the King James translators could render it stand in awe, while the Greek translators rendered it be angry.

The psalm does not stop there, and the next line is the one to hold on to. Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still.

So the full instruction is this. When you tremble with anger, do not sin. Before you sleep, have it out with your own heart in God's presence, and then be still.

Paul's next words fit the psalm's bedtime instruction. Anger that is brought to God before sleep can be laid down. Anger that is kept overnight becomes something else. It hardens into resentment, and resentment is a door left open.

Neither give place to the devil. The word for place is topos. It means room, a foothold, an opening.

If the tools you work with have ever felt demonic to you, this verse is worth reading slowly. We do wrestle against spiritual powers, as Paul says later in the same letter. But notice where he says the devil gets his foothold. He does not say it is in a tool, or a machine, or a piece of software. He says it is in the anger we keep. The devil's opening is not on the screen. It is in the heart that has been burning all day and goes to bed still burning.

John Chrysostom, preaching on this verse in the fourth century, put it bluntly. Never has the devil such place as in our enmities. He added that the devil only needs a beginning.

That is sobering, and it is also good news. The battle is real, but it is fought on ground you can reach. You cannot fix the software tonight. You can bring your anger to God tonight, on your bed, and be still.

Anger usually comes out through the mouth. James writes it plainly. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.

If you have been cursing, at the screen, at yourself, at the day, do not hide from that verse. It is not written to crush you. It is written because the mouth that curses in the afternoon is the same mouth that prays in the morning, and God wants that mouth whole.

Jesus said that out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. So the cure is not only a tighter jaw. It is a heart that has somewhere else to pour. Jonah poured his into prayer. You can too. Tell God what is underneath what you were about to say to the screen. Tell Him plainly, the way Jonah did.

Book of Jonah Summary: A Complete Animated Overview — Nine minutes on the whole book of Jonah. Watch how it ends: not with Jonah's answer, but with God's open question about the plant and the city. The reader is left to answer it.BibleProject

The Devil Only Needs a Beginning

John Chrysostom was one of the great preachers of the early church. In a sermon on Ephesians 4 he spoke about anger with the frankness of someone who knew his congregation well. “It were good indeed never to be angry. Yet if ever any one should fall into passion, still let him not fall into so great a degree.” He does not pretend anger will never come. He asks that it not be allowed to grow. Then he explains why Paul links anger to the devil: “never has the devil such place as in our enmities.” And a little later he describes how the foothold works. “In every case he needs only a beginning, and this is the thing which it is difficult to accomplish; but this done, he makes room on all sides for himself.” The first moment of kept anger is the beginning. Laying it down before sleep takes that beginning away.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Chrysostom preached his homilies on Ephesians in the late fourth century, in Antioch or Constantinople. The quotations are from the fourteenth homily, on Ephesians 4:25 to 27, in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, volume 13 (1889).

The Ground Must Be Laboured Over Again

On the night of the eleventh of March, 1812, the mission printing office at Serampore, near Calcutta, burned down. William Carey was not there. He was in Calcutta, where he taught, starting a letter to his nephew.

The next morning his colleague arrived with the news. According to his colleague’s son, Carey was so staggered that for some time he could not speak.

Then he finished the letter. The printing office was totally consumed by fire, he wrote, and nothing had been saved but the presses. Twelve months of hard labour would not put it back.

Over the next weeks he counted the cost. Manuscripts in five languages were gone. So were two Old Testament books he had translated into Sanskrit, pages of his Bengali dictionary, and his whole grammar of Telugu. Worst of all were the materials he had been gathering for years toward a dictionary of every language descended from Sanskrit.

A chaplain named Thomas Thomason walked the smoking ruins with him. Thomason wrote that tears stood in Carey’s eyes, and he recorded Carey saying that the labours of years had been consumed in one short evening.

On a Sunday soon after, Carey preached on Psalm 46. Be still, and know that I am God. He told the congregation that God has a right to dispose of us as He pleases, and that we ought to accept what He does.

In a letter written two weeks after the fire he added something else. Travelling a road the second time, he said, is usually done with greater ease and certainty than the first.

“The ground must be labored over again, but we are not discouraged.”

They began recasting the type the day after the fire.

Carey lost years of work in one evening, through no fault he could name. His first response was silence, then grief, then a sermon on being still, then the work begun again. His letters do not pretend it was easy. He called the providence exceedingly dark. What they show is a man who could grieve a loss without letting it master him. The quotations are from his own letters, printed in his nephew Eustace Carey’s Memoir of 1836, except the line about one short evening, which is Thomason’s report of what Carey said.

Where This Sits in the Story

ANCIENT TRUTH

Jonah belongs to the time of the KINGDOM, in the eighth century before Christ, when Assyria was rising. God’s mercy to a foreign and violent city is the scandal of the book, and a prophet’s anger at that mercy is its closing scene.

Jonah quotes the name God gave Moses at Sinai, slow to anger, and complains about it. The patience that Day 2 called the fruit of the Spirit is the very thing Jonah found hardest to accept in God.

MODERN APPLICATION

The things that come up in a night in our time are often tools. We come to depend on them quickly, and their failures can make us furious out of all proportion. Jonah’s plant is a mirror for that anger, and God’s question is still the right one.

NEW TESTAMENT ECHO

Romans 8:20 to 26 says the whole creation groans under futility, in hope of the glorious liberty of the children of God, and that the Spirit takes hold of our weakness with us. Jesus Himself pointed to Jonah as a sign in Matthew 12:39 to 41.

REFLECT

If God asked you today, is it good, this burning in you, what would you honestly answer?

Your writing is kept to your account, and only yours.

What gift in your life came up in a night, and how have you reacted when it failed you?
What are you grieving underneath the anger at your work?
What anger are you carrying tonight that should not see the sun go down?
Who are the people on the other side of your project, the Nineveh that God cares about more than the plant?

Scripture to Carry

Memorise one verse to have ready at the moment of provocation. This uses the first-letter method, which works well for short verses.

Read it three times aloud

James 1:19. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.

Write the first letters

On a card or a sticky note, write only the first letter of each word, keeping the commas where the verse pauses.

Recite from the letters

Look only at the letters and say the whole verse. Repeat until you can do it without stopping.

Put it where you work

Stick the card on the edge of your screen or the front of your desk, where your eyes go when the work breaks.

Use it once today

The next time you feel the heat rise, look at the card and say the verse under your breath before you say anything else.

The Question Left Open

The book of Jonah ends with a question mark.

And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?

We never hear Jonah's answer. The book stops there, on purpose. The question is handed to the reader.

So answer it tonight, in your own words.

Perhaps like this. Lord, I have cared more about my tools than about Your people. I have been angry about things that came up in a night. I have burned all day, and I have said things I am ashamed of. Is it good, this burning in me? No. It is not doing me good, and it is not doing the work good.

Then do what the psalm says. Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still.

Lie down. Tell God the whole day, the failures of the machine and the failures of your own mouth. Leave nothing out. Let Him take hold of the other end of it. Then let the sun go down on the day, and not on the anger.

Tomorrow the week comes to the lakeshore, to a man who cursed and swore on the worst night of his life. He was given breakfast, and then he was given work again. That is where this is going for you too.

Seen from above in a dark stone room at night, a man lies on a simple woven mat under a rough blanket, turned on his side away from us. Beside the mat a small clay lamp burns low, and its gold light makes a small circle on the floor. — Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still (Psalm 4:4). Paul quotes this psalm when he says, let not the sun go down upon your wrath.

Prayer

Lord, You asked Jonah a question when You could have struck him, and You are asking me. Is it good, this burning? No, it is not. I have been angry at tools and deadlines and delays until the anger took over my mouth. I have cursed in rooms where no one could hear me but You. I have treated gifts that came up in a night as if I were owed them forever. Forgive me. Under the anger there is grief, for time lost and plans stalled, and I bring that to You too. Thank You that the whole creation groans, and that I am not imagining how hard it is. Thank You that Your Spirit takes hold of the other end of the load. Before this day ends, I lay the anger down. Do not let it become a foothold. Make my mouth whole again, one that blesses and does not curse. Turn my eyes from the plant to the people. And give me Your pity for them. Amen.

BREATH PRAYER

Inhale: Is it good, this burning? — Exhale: I lay it down

IN YOUR OWN WORDS

Your writing is kept to your account, and only yours.

Today's Commitment

I will not let the sun go down on my anger. Tonight, before I sleep, I will tell God the whole day, name what I am grieving, and lay the anger down.

LEAVING AT THE CROSS

The anger I aim at tools that came up in a night
The curses that have come out of the same mouth that prays
The resentment I have been taking to bed

RECEIVING FROM THE CROSS

A God who answers my anger with a question
The Spirit who takes hold of the other end of the load
Hope that the whole groaning creation is headed for freedom

One Question

How did the old Greek translators render the Hebrew word for Jonah’s burning anger in chapter 4?

The Voice Behind Today

Jonah son of Amittai

a prophet from Gath-hepher in the northern kingdom of Israel, in the days of Jeroboam the Second, in the eighth century before Christ

Second Kings remembers Jonah as the prophet who promised that Israel’s borders would be restored. His own book remembers him very differently: running from God, sleeping through a storm, preaching reluctantly, and sulking on a hill when a violent city was spared. It is one of the few books in Scripture that ends with the prophet in the wrong.

I do well to be angry, even unto death.

— Jonah son of Amittai

LESSON FOR US

Jonah is not a model of patience. He is a model of how patient God is with an angry person. He prayed his anger, and God answered it with questions, a plant, a worm and a city. The book invites us to answer the question Jonah never did.

Why a Good God Gets Angry — Five minutes on the Hebrew phrase slow to anger, long of nostrils, which Jonah throws back at God in chapter 4. It shows how God's anger differs from ours: real, just and slow.BibleProject

Sources & Further Study

RELATED SCRIPTURES

FOR DEEPER STUDY

Hebrew: charah, Strong’s H2734, “burn, be kindled,” at Jonah 4:1, 4 and 9; God’s question ha-heitev charah lakh uses the Hiphil infinitive of yatab as an adverb, “is it good,” and lakh is the pausal masculine “to you.” The noun charon (H2740) with aph (H639), “the burning of his nose,” is at Jonah 3:9. The Septuagint renders the burning of chapter 4 as lupe, grief. Qiqayon, H7021, occurs only in Jonah 4; BDB suggests the castor-oil plant or the bottle gourd; Jerome and Augustine argued over its translation (Augustine, Letter 71; Jerome, Letter 75). The verb chus, H2347, appears in both 4:10 and 4:11. Jonah 4:2 recites the Exodus 34:6 creed in the form found in Joel 2:13. Greek: mataiotes, G3153, Romans 8:20, is the Septuagint’s word for the hebel of Ecclesiastes; sunantilambanomai, G4878, “take hold together with,” occurs only at Luke 10:40 and Romans 8:26. Ephesians 4:26 quotes Psalm 4:4 (4:5 in Hebrew and Greek numbering) word for word from the Septuagint; the Hebrew verb ragaz means to tremble or quiver; topos, G5117, is “place, room, foothold.” On the dating of Jonah: most critical scholars place its composition after the exile; traditional readers place it near the prophet’s lifetime. Sources 1. John Chrysostom, Homily 14 on Ephesians, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, vol. 13 (1889). Christian Classics Ethereal Library. 2. William Carey, letters of 12 and 25 March 1812, in Eustace Carey, Memoir of William Carey, D.D. (Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1836), pp. 349 to 354. 3. John Sargent, The Life of the Rev. T. T. Thomason (1833), pp. 204 to 205, for Thomason’s eyewitness account. 4. J. C. Marshman, The Life and Times of Carey, Marshman, and Ward (1859), vol. 1, p. 469. Further: Timothy Keller, “The Healing of Anger” and “Should I Not Love that Great City?” (Gospel in Life).

BACK TO SERIES

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CLIPPINGS

BEFORE YOU GO

Anything you want to keep from today?

Your writing is kept to your account, and only yours.

EUANGELION

Angry About a Plant

Jonah is sitting on a hill outside Nineveh. He has preached, the city has repented, and God has spared it. Jonah is furious about that.

So he builds a rough shelter and sits in its shade to watch. Overnight God makes a leafy plant grow up over him, and for the first time in the book Jonah is glad.

The next morning God appoints a worm. The plant withers. Then comes a scorching east wind and a hard sun. Jonah is faint, and he says he would rather die.

God asks him a question. Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd?

Jonah answers without a pause. I do well to be angry, even unto death.

Angry Enough to Die

God sent Jonah to preach to that city. Jonah ran the other way. After a storm and a great fish, he went, preached, and the whole city repented.

Then chapter 4 opens with a line no preacher wants written about him. It displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.

He was angry that it worked. He was angry that God was kind to people he wanted punished.

Jonah would understand. He told God it would be better for him to die than to live.

Notice two things before we go further.

The second is what God did with it. He did not answer with fire. He answered with a question. Doest thou well to be angry?

Is It Good, This Burning?

The Hebrew word behind angry in Jonah 4 is charah. It means to burn, to grow hot, to be kindled like a fire.

God's question in verse 4 is only three words in Hebrew. Ha-heitev charah lakh. Read literally, it asks: is it good, this burning in you?

The words can be heard two ways, and both are in them: is your burning right, and is it doing you any good?

So in chapter 3, God turns from His burning. In chapter 4, verse 1, Jonah begins to burn. The prophet has taken up the anger that God set down.

The old Greek translators did not translate charah as anger. They translated it as grief. Jonah was grieved with a great grief. And God's question becomes: are you very much grieved?

It Came Up in a Night

Jonah did nothing to make that plant. It appeared overnight, as a gift. He loved it while it lasted. When it failed him, his anger was total.

And when they fail us, when they forget, and wander, and tell us the job is done when it is not, the anger can be total. I do well to be angry, even unto death.

The parallel is exact. You cared about the plant. Should I not care about the people?

Paul adds something to this in Romans 8.

The Spirit does for you what Martha wanted from her sister. He takes hold of the other end of the load. When you do not even know what to pray, He groans with you, with groanings too deep for words.

You are not carrying this project alone, and you are not groaning alone.

Give No Place

Paul says something about anger in Ephesians that most people only half remember. Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the devil.

The psalm does not stop there, and the next line is the one to hold on to. Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still.

So the full instruction is this. When you tremble with anger, do not sin. Before you sleep, have it out with your own heart in God's presence, and then be still.

Neither give place to the devil. The word for place is topos. It means room, a foothold, an opening.

John Chrysostom, preaching on this verse in the fourth century, put it bluntly. Never has the devil such place as in our enmities. He added that the devil only needs a beginning.

Anger usually comes out through the mouth. James writes it plainly. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.

The Question Left Open

The book of Jonah ends with a question mark.

And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?

We never hear Jonah's answer. The book stops there, on purpose. The question is handed to the reader.

So answer it tonight, in your own words.

Then do what the psalm says. Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still.

Jonah son of Amittai

a prophet from Gath-hepher in the northern kingdom of Israel, in the days of Jeroboam the Second, in the eighth century before Christ

I do well to be angry, even unto death.

— Jonah son of Amittai

LESSON FOR US