Jonah 4:9

9 Then God asked Jonah, “Have you any right to be angry about the plant?” “I do,” he replied. “I am angry enough to die!”

Jonah 4:9 Meaning and Commentary

Jonah 4:9

And God said to Jonah, dost thou well to be angry for the
gourd?
&c.] Or, "art thou very angry for it?" as the Targum: no mention is made of the blustering wind and scorching sun, because the gourd or plant raised up over him would have protected him from the injuries of both, had it continued; and it was for the loss of that that Jonah was so displeased, and in such a passion. This question is put in order to draw out the following answer, and so give an opportunity of improving this affair to the end for which it was designed: and he said, I do well to be angry, [even] unto death;
or, "I am very angry unto death", as the Targum; I am so very angry that I cannot live under it for fretting and vexing; and it is right for me to be so, though I die with the passion of it: how ungovernable are the passions of men, and to what insolence do they rise when under the power of them!

Jonah 4:9 In-Context

7 When dawn came the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant so that it withered.

8 As the sun was rising, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint and wished to die, saying, “It is better for me to die than to live.”

9 Then God asked Jonah, “Have you any right to be angry about the plant?” “I do,” he replied. “I am angry enough to die!”

10 But the LORD said, “You cared about the plant, which you neither tended nor made grow. It sprang up in a night and perished in a night.

11 So should I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well?”