Jonah 4:10 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Thou hast had pity on the gourd— God confutes the impatient grief of Jonah by a similitude. "You acquiesced in that plant, which afforded you a shade; I acquiesce in the repentance of the Ninevites. Therefore you ought not to grieve because I spare them, unless you prefer your own advantage and reputation to my glory and will." That Jonah is an allegorical person, our blessed Saviour does not suffer us to doubt; who, when he taught that Jonah was a type of his resurrection, shewed at the same time, when those things would have their completion which were meant by the allegory: for as by the miracles which happened in the mission of Jonah, the miracles of the rising church were presignified; so in the disposition of Jonah was pointed out the future disposition of the Jews, who would seek their own glory, and prefer it to the salvation of the Gentiles; who would glow with envy against the Gentiles, though their salvation or Saviour was to spring from the Jews themselves; whom God would not yet utterly desert as a nation, though separating themselves from those converted to him; as he deserted not Jonah, separating himself from the city of Nineveh; but yet whose envy God would not regard, when they would have him indulge and spare their antiquated law, as a dry and withered stem, because he will not forsake the multitude of the Gentiles returning to him, that the Jews themselves may at length become imitators of the Gentiles. By this allegory, which derived its authority from our Saviour, the extraordinary miracles related in this book will be sufficiently explained. It may not be improper to add, that possibly God might design this call to the Ninevites, as a pledge and assurance of his future admission of the people of all nations into the privileges of the Christian covenant. This certainly he might have under his immediate view, to shew the disparity between his nominal people and heathens; and upon the comparison of their several behaviours, to shame them for living unreclaimed, under the constant preaching of his prophets for so many years; when a people, whom they despised, as being strangers to the covenant of the promise, had by the mighty power of his word, been converted or awakened to repentance in the space of three days. See Houbigant, and Calmet.