And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.
| Word | Hebrew | Strong’s | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| prayed | וַיִּתְפַּלֵּ֨ל vai.yit.pa.Lel | H6419 | to judge (officially or mentally) · conjunction + verb, hithpael sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular |
| LORD | יְהוָ֜ה Yah.weh | H3068 | Jehovah · proper noun, a title |
| said | וַיֹּאמַ֗ר vai.yo.Mar | H559 | to say (used with great latitude) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular |
| pray | אָנָּ֤ה 'a.Nah | H577 | oh now! · interjection |
| LORD | יְהוָה֙ Yah.weh | H3068 | Jehovah · proper noun, a title |
| saying | דְבָרִ֗י de.va.Ri | H1697 | a word · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix |
| country | אַדְמָתִ֔י 'ad.ma.Ti | H127 | soil (from its general redness) · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix |
| fled | לִבְרֹ֣חַ liv.Ro.ach | H1272 | to bolt · preposition + verb, qal infinitive construct |
| before | קִדַּ֖מְתִּי ki.Dam.ti | H6923 | to project (one self) · verb, piel perfect, 1st person common singular |
| Tarshish | תַּרְשִׁ֑ישָׁה tar.Shi.shah | H8659 | Tarshish · proper noun, a place name + directional suffix |
| knew | יָדַ֗עְתִּי ya.Da'.ti | H3045 | to know (properly · verb, qal perfect, 1st person common singular |
| gracious | חַנּ֣וּן cha.Nun | H2587 | gracious · adjective, masculine singular absolute |
| God | אֵֽל 'el- | H410 | strength · noun, common masculine singular absolute |
| merciful | וְרַח֔וּם ve.ra.Chum | H7349 | compassionate · conjunction + adjective, masculine singular absolute |
| slow | אֶ֤רֶךְ 'E.rekh | H750 | long · adjective, masculine singular construct |
| anger | אַפַּ֙יִם֙ 'a.Pa.yim | H639 | properly · noun, common masculine dual absolute |
| great | וְרַב ve.rav- | H7227 | abundant (in quantity · conjunction + adjective, masculine singular construct |
| kindness | חֶ֔סֶד Che.sed | H2617 | kindness · noun, common masculine singular absolute |
| repentest | וְנִחָ֖ם ve.ni.Cham | H5162 | properly · conjunction + verb, niphal active participle, masculine singular absolute |
| evil | הָרָעָֽה ha.ra.'Ah | H7451 | bad or (as noun) evil (natural or moral) · definite article + noun, common feminine singular absolute |
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
my saying--my thought, or feeling. fled before--I anticipated by fleeing, the disappointment of my design through Thy long-suffering mercy. gracious . . . and merciful, &c.--Jonah here has before his mind ; as Joel () in his turn quotes from Jonah.
I know that thou art a gracious God - See the note on Exo 34:6.
And he prayed unto the Lord,.... But in a very different manner from his praying in the fish's belly: this was a very disorderly prayer, put up in the hurry of his spirit, and in the heat of passion: prayer should be fervent indeed, but not like that of a man in a fever; there should be a warmth and ardour of affection in it, but it should be without wrath, as well as without doubting: this is called a prayer, because Jonah thought it to be so, and put it up to the Lord as one. It begins in the form of a prayer; and it ends with a petition, though an unlawful one; and has nothing of true and right prayer in it; no celebration of the divine Being, and his perfections; no confession of sin, or…
Read the whole note in the consoleJonah 4:2 2. And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. 2. Et oravit ad Jehovam et dixit, Obsecro Jehova, an non hic sermo meus, quum adhuc essem in terra mea? Propterea festinavi fugere in Tharsis, quia noveram quod tu sis Deus propitius (vel, plenus gratiae,) et misericors, tardus ad iram, multus clementia, et qui poenitentia duceris super malo. It seems by no means befitting that Jonah should have said here that he prayed; for prayer ought to be calm; but…
Read the whole note in the consolePartly Jonah prays, partly he complains, saying he did not wish to flee.
"[And he prayed unto the LORD, and said], I pray you, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that you are a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and you repent of the evil. Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech you, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live." LXX: 'O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still in my country? This is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish. For I know that you are rich in mercy and are kind, patient, and full of compassion, and ready to repent for the evils that you promised. But now all-powerful Lord, take my spirit, because it is better for me to die than to live.' What I have interpreted as 'I pray you' and which the Septuagint has translated as 'O indeed' [[Gr. 'w dh']] is read as anna in Hebrew, which seems to me to express the prayer with a kind of coaxing . For when he had said quite justly that he wanted to flee his prayer accuses the Lord of injustice in a certain manner, and he tempers his complaints by a suppliant and rhetorical speech. Was this not what I said when I was in my country? I knew that you would do this. I am not unaware that you are merciful: this is why I refused to denounce you as harsh and cruel. Therefore I wanted to flee to Tarshish, to be free to think, and I preferred the quiet and rest on the sea of this age. I abandoned my home and left my inheritance, I left your lap and came here. If I had said that you are merciful, gentle, that you pardon wickedness, no one would have repented. If I had denounced you as a cruel God only fit to judge, I should have know that such is not your nature. In this dilemma I preferred to flee, rather than to deceive the repenters with mildness, or to preach things about you that you are not. "Therefore Lord take my spirit for death is better for me than life." [3 Kings 19:4] "Take my spirit which has been sad even until death." [Mt. 26:38; Mk. 14:34] "Take my spirit. I place my spirit in your hands." [Ps. 30:6; Lk. 23:46] I was not able to save the whole nation of Israel by living, but I will die and the whole world will be saved. The story is clear and regarding the prophet's character, we can note as has often been said before that he is saddened and wants to die so that Israel should not be destroyed for ever after the conversion of such a…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Jonah, provoked at the sparing of Nineveh, prayed in his displeasure to Jehovah to take his soul from him, as his proclamation had not been fulfilled (Jon 4:1-3). ויּרע אל י, it was evil for Jonah, i.e., it vexed, irritated him, not merely it displeased him, for which ירע בּעיניו is generally used. The construction with אל resembles that with ל in Neh 2:10; Neh 13:8. רעה גדולה, "a great evil," serves simply to strengthen the idea of ירע. The great vexation grew even to anger (יחר לו; cf. Gen 30:2, etc.). The fact that the predicted destruction of Nineveh had not taken place excited his discontent and wrath. And he tried to quarrel with God, by praying to Jehovah. (Note: Calvin observes upon…
Jonah expresses his motive in originally fleeing from the Lord (1:3): He knew that the Lord would not destroy the wicked Ninevites if they repented. • I knew: Jonah practically quotes Exod 34:6-7, a passage set in the context of Israel’s covenant relationship with the Lord. Even in the Old Testament, God was concerned to spread salvation to the nations (cp. Matt 28:18-20).
was this not my contention—I know that, if they repent, You will not destroy them, and I will appear to them as a liar.
Henry, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, Clarke, Gill, Calvin and Keil & Delitzsch are in the public domain; Tyndale Open Study Notes © Tyndale House Publishers, CC BY-SA 4.0 — all from the Free Use Bible API (bible.helloao.org). Rashi: the Rosenbaum & Silbermann Pentateuch (public domain) and the Judaica Press and Metsudah Tanakh (CC BY), via Sefaria. Spurgeon's Treasury of David: public domain (lyteword's markdown edition, CC0).
