When Jonah reached the stage of praying for his death

[Mary Naeem]

Pope Shenouda III


Jonah

When Jonah reached the stage of praying for his death, God started to talk the matter over with him. He said to him: "Is it right for you to be angry?"(Jon. 4:4) Are you angry because of God's wisdom and mercy?

Jonah replied: "It is right for me to be angry, even to death” (Jon. 4:9)! I lost my word and my dignity, and now You have deprived me of the shade of the plant, and You do not expect me to be angry that?

Although that manner of speech on Jonah's part was not nice from the spiritual point of view, yet it indicates his honesty with God and his revealing of his true inner depths.

God began to reason with Jonah and convince him. He said to him: "You have had pity, on the plant for which you have not labored, nor made it grow which came up in a night and perished in a night. And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand person?" (Jon. 4:10 & 11).