Jonah 4:9

9 God said to Jonah, "Is your anger about the shrub a good thing?" Jonah said, "Yes, my anger is good—even to the point of death!"

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 But God provided a worm the next day at dawn, and it attacked the shrub so that it died.

8 Then as the sun rose God provided a dry east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah's head so that he became faint. He begged that he might die, saying, "It's better for me to die than to live."

9 God said to Jonah, "Is your anger about the shrub a good thing?" Jonah said, "Yes, my anger is good—even to the point of death!"

10 But the LORD said, "You ‘pitied' the shrub, for which you didn't work and which you didn't raise; it grew in a night and perished in a night.

11 Yet for my part, can't I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than one hundred twenty thousand people who can't tell their right hand from their left, and also many animals?"