Jonah 4

1But it was a great evil for Jonah, and his anger burned.

2He prayed to Yahweh and said, "Please, Yahweh, was this not my word when I was still in my land? Therefore I hastened to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, great in mercy, and who relents from harm."

3Now, Yahweh, please take my life from me, for death is better for me than life.

4Yahweh said, "Is it good for you to be angry?"

5Jonah went out from the city and sat east of it, where he made himself a booth and stayed beneath it in the shade until he could see what would happen to the city.

6Yahweh God appointed a gourd and made it grow over Jonah to provide shade for his head and deliver him from his distress. Jonah rejoiced with great joy over the gourd.

7God appointed a worm at the rising of the dawn the next day, and it struck the gourd, and it withered.

8When the sun rose, God prepared a scorching east wind, and the sun beat on Jonah's head so he fainted, asked that his life end, and said, "Better my death than my life."

9God said to Jonah, "Is it right for you to be angry over the gourd?" He said, "It is right for me to be angry, even to death."

10Yahweh said, "You spared the gourd for which you did not toil or rear it—which came up in a night and perished in a night."

11And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city where more than one hundred twenty thousand persons dwell who do not know their right hand from their left hand, and also much livestock?