The Divine argument for mercy in these last verses is, if we may say so without irreverence, a masterpiece of Divine skill and simplicity. There are many single texts of the New Testament which express quite as strongly the unfailing readiness of the mercy of God to sinful men. But the beautiful peculiarity of this passage is, that it is an actual instance of the exercise of that mercy.
I. See how simply the argument begins. As a lily was text enough for our Lord for a sermon on providence, so a gourd serves this occasion for a proclamation to all the world of mercy. "Thou hast had pity on the gourd."
II. It is not the life of the plant, but the feeling of the man about it, that constitutes the true symbol of the Divine love. "Thou hast had pity on the gourd." May not I have pity, too? It is much to have, thus, direct sanction given to the validity, Tightness, of our instinctive feelings. Our natural pity, our sensibility, our sympathy with all life, these are right and good. We are wrong as to our moral condition, but these are right.
III. It is an argument from the less to the greater. "How much more" seems to sound in these two last verses, and all through them. In every point there is contrast, clear and strong. (1) You had pity on a gourd. What is a plant to a human being? (2) The gourd was but one. Would you spare the one, and must I slay the many? (3) The contrast touches the quality of relative performance. (4) Jonah had not laboured for the, gourd. God had waited for the coming of each soul, and laboured with all the energies and harmonies of His providence, that each might come in his own "fulness of time." (5) Another touch of God's thoughtful tenderness is the mention of the children. Many great and fruitful truths lie couchant here. It is manifest: (a) that infants are regarded by God as personally innocent; (b) that unconscious beings may have really have a great moral power and place in the universe; (c) that life is good. Better to live even in such a place as Nineveh, where alas! the wickedness is only arrested for a little, and not extinguished, than not to live at all. (6) And also much cattle. The condescending God, stooping down to the children, sees, reaches far below them. But the cattle are far above the gourd. They, too, in their dumb, dull way, are suppliants. He who makes them feeds them, recognizes their right to be fed. He who owns "the cattle upon a thousand hills," has the thousand hills forthe cattle as well as for the service of man.
A. Raleigh, The Story of Jonah,p. 297.
References: John 4:10; John 4:11. E. W. Shalders, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xv., p. 168. John 4:11. J. Baldwin Brown, Ibid.,vol. xv., pp. 369, 394.