Jonah, 4

¹ To Joʹnah, though, it was highly displeasing, and he got to be hot with anger.

² Hence he prayed to Jehovah^*1 and said: “Ah, now, O Jehovah, was not this an affair of mine,^*2 while I happened to be on my own ground? That is why I went ahead and ran away to Tarʹshish; for I knew that you are a God^*3 gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abundant in loving-kindness,^*4 and feeling regret over the calamity.

³ And now, O Jehovah, take away, please, my soul^*1 from me, for my dying is better than my being alive.”^*2

⁴ In turn Jehovah said: “Have you rightly become hot with anger?”

⁵ Then Joʹnah went out of the city and sat down east of the city; and gradually he made for himself there a booth, that he might sit under it in the shade until he would see what would become of the city.

⁶ Accordingly Jehovah God^*1 appointed a bottle-gourd plant,^*2 that it should come up over Joʹnah, in order to become a shade over his head, to deliver him from his calamitous state. And Joʹnah began to rejoice greatly over the bottle-gourd plant.

⁷ But the [true] God appointed a worm at the ascending of the dawn on the next day, that it should strike the bottle-gourd plant; and it gradually dried up.

⁸ And it came about that, as soon as the sun shone forth, God^*1 also went on to appoint a parching east wind, and the sun kept striking upon the head of Joʹnah, so that he was swooning away; and he kept asking that his soul^*2 might die, and he repeatedly said: “My dying off is better than my being alive.”^*3

⁹ And God proceeded to say to Joʹnah: “Have you rightly become hot with anger over the bottle-gourd plant?” At that he said: “I have rightly become hot with anger, to the point of death.”

¹⁰ But Jehovah said: “You, for your part, felt sorry for the bottle-gourd plant, which you did not toil upon or make get big, which proved to be a mere growth of a night^*1 and perished as a mere growth of a night.

¹¹ And, for my part, ought I not to feel sorry for Ninʹe·veh the great city, in which there exist more than one hundred and twenty thousand^*1 men^*2 who do not at all know the difference between their right hand and their left, besides many domestic animals?”