God's Anger/Jonah's Anger

In Jonah 4.1, this morning. The Hebrew is quite clear about Jonah's reaction to God saving Nineveh. It was evil to Jonah, a great evil and it burned him. This pretty much sums up Jonah's reaction. It's interesting that the LXX translates the words here much less harshly than the actual Hebrew would imply. A rough translation of the LXX would be: And Jonah was pained with great pain, and he was confused. Not exactly what the Hebrew was getting at.

The New English Translation notes points out the contrast between God's anger and Jonah's anger: The verb ‏חָרָה‎ (kharah, “to burn”) functions figuratively here (hypocatastasis) referring to anger (BDB 354 s.v. ‏חָרָה‎). It is related to the noun ‏חֲרוֹן‎ (kharon, “heat/burning”) in the phrase “the heat of his anger” in 3:9. The repetition of the root highlights the contrast in attitudes between Jonah and God: God’s burning anger “cooled off” when the Ninevites repented, but Jonah’s anger was “kindled” when God did not destroy Nineveh.

The most intriguing interpretation of Jonah's reaction comes from Fairbarn via JFB.

If Nineveh had been the prominent object with him, he would have rejoiced at the result of his mission. But Israel was the prominent aim of Jonah, as a prophet of the elect people. Probably then he regarded the destruction of Nineveh as fitted to be an example of God’s judgment at last suspending His long forbearance so as to startle Israel from its desperate degeneracy, heightened by its new prosperity under Jeroboam II at that very time, in a way that all other means had failed to do. Jonah, despairing of anything effectual being done for God in Israel, unless there were first given a striking example of severity, thought when he proclaimed the downfall of Nineveh in forty days, that now at last God is about to give such an example; so when this means of awakening Israel was set aside by God’s mercy on Nineveh’s repentance, he was bitterly disappointed, not from pride or mercilessness, but from hopelessness as to anything being possible for the reformation of Israel, now that his cherished hope is baffled. But GOD’S plan was to teach Israel, by the example of Nineveh, how inexcusable is their own impenitence, and how inevitable their ruin if they persevere. Repenting Nineveh has proved herself more worthy of God’s favor than apostate Israel; the children of the covenant have not only fallen down to, but actually below, the level of a heathen people; Israel, therefore, must go down, and the heathen rise above her. Jonah did not know the important lessons of hope to the penitent, and condemnation to those amidst outward privileges impenitent, which Nineveh’s preservation on repentance was to have for aftertimes, and to all ages. He could not foresee that Messiah Himself was thus to apply that history. A lesson to us that if we could in any particular alter the plan of Providence, it would not be for the better, but for the worse [FAIRBAIRN].