‘But it displeased Jonah greatly, and he was angry.'
Jonah was not at all pleased that God had had mercy on the Ninevites, indeed he was more than displeased he was very angry. The greatness of his anger is stressed by the repeating of the idea. But why was he so angry? There are a number of possibilities:
Firstly it may have been because he considered that it made a mockery of his prophetic ability. He had prophesied the destruction of Nineveh but it had not happened. And the consequence of that was that he could well have been described by some as a ‘false prophet'. He may have felt that God had made a fool of him.
· Secondly it may have been because he did not believe that YHWH's mercy should be available to non-Israelites. However, as he had clearly expected YHWH to have mercy on the mariners, and had himself been willing to die to make it possible for them to be spared, this seems not to be a likely option.
· Thirdly it may have been because the Assyrians had at some stage performed atrocities in northern Israel which had affected Jonah's family so that he did not like the idea of Assyrians being forgiven. But as he will now tell YHWH that he knew all the time that He would forgive the Assyrians that may be seen as weakening this idea, although as his thinking was clearly not too rational (he knew that he was opposing YHWH) it may be that he was simply irrationally angry at being connected with the forgiving of Assyrians.
The truth is that we are given no clue as to why Jonah was angry so that it is difficult to dogmatically determine between the options. That therefore makes it clear that that was not the issue that the prophecy was strictly concerned with. Indeed, as we have seen, the issue that is emphasised in the prophecy is that of the fact that God will show His mercy to all who are truly repentant. This is what is emphasised in all four Chapter s. Jonah's anger only had to be mentioned because it led up to emphasising that fact. The silence would, however, be strange if the point of the prophecy was as a polemic against Jewish exclusivism.