I’ve been reading about Jonah who was angry at God and God asked him if he should be. He was angry because God wouldn’t destroy Nineveh. It just kind of ends there. What happened to Jonah?
You are referring to Jonah 4:1-4 which we will look at, along with the rest of the chapter. I’m assuming you have read the whole book and how Jonah was called of God (as a prophet) to go to Nineveh to “cry out against it for their great wickedness” (1:1-2) yet Jonah disobeyed God and went in the other direction. God had to humble Jonah so he would repent and obey God’s command to preach to the city of Nineveh. We have the well-known story of the great storm at sea and Jonah being cast out of a ship and into the belly of a great fish (1:4-2:10 which resulted in Jonah repenting and going to preach the message of judgment to the people of Nineveh (3:1-4). The reaction by the citizens of Nineveh was striking, for we read, “the people of Nineveh BELIEVED God, proclaimed a FAST, and put on SACKCLOTH, from the greatest to the least of them” (verse 5). In other words, everyone in Nineveh received the word of God by faith and manifested true repentance for their wickedness. In verse 10 we read, “Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.”
Now let’s read 4:1-3, “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. So he prayed to the Lord, and said, ‘Ah, LORD, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm. Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” We learn here exactly why Jonah disobeyed God initially. Though we do not read about his words to the Lord in chapter one, we learn here that he told God that he knew He was a loving, gracious and merciful God and that He might have mercy on the people of Nineveh if they would believe and repent and thus he refused to go to them with God’s message of judgment. How sad, for was not Jonah himself an object of God’s love and mercy (as is everyone who has been “saved by His amazing grace”)? Jonah’s hatred for his enemies and desire to see them destroyed blinded him to God’s will and desire to save them! So here we see him not only ANGRY but DEPRESSED and asking the Lord to take his life. No doubt he also had his “reputation as a prophet in mind,” for he had prophesied that God would destroy the city in 40 days (3:3-4). God’s response to Jonah was simple and clear, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Of course, the obvious answer is, “No, he was NOT RIGHT.” He was called of the Lord to represent him to the inhabitants of by proclaiming His impending judgement, revealing God’s HOLINESS. Once they believed and repented, Jonah should have rejoiced in God’s LOVE and MERCY in sparing the whole city.
If you read the rest of the chapter you will see Jonah “went out of the city…made himself a shelter…till he might see what would become of the city” (verse 5). He still hoped that God would fulfill the prophecy that he had proclaimed and overthrow the city! God then “prepared a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be shade for his head to deliver him from this misery” and “Jonah was very grateful for the plant” (verse 6). The next day God “prepared a worm, and it so damaged the plant that it withered” and then “the sun beat on Jonah’s head, so that he grew faint” and “wished for death for himself” (verses 7-8). God then said, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” and he said, “It is right for me to be angry, even to death” (verse 9). Again, we see the failure of Jonah to discern God’s ways resulting in unrighteous anger. God then told 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 persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left—and much livestock” (verses 10-11)? The lesson is clear and convicting. If Jonah could have pity on a relatively worthless plant, why shouldn’t God have pity on precious, immortal souls who had repented of their sins? And should not Jonah himself, who was a prophet of God who represented Him, show the same pity on them as He had?
This is the “end of the story” and we never read of what happened to Jonah. Did he learn the lesson God had for him? We do not know. What we do know is expressed beautifully in the words of an able commentator: “Jonah is silenced: he could not reply. The last word belongs to Jehovah, who thus demonstrated that in His infinite compassion He embraces not Israel alone, but all His creation, the Gentile world and even animal creation” (Arno C. Gaebelein). Another commentator says this: “The argument of the object lesson is irresistible, and the author refrains from adding anything which might detract from the force of the question with which he concludes. Whether or not Jonah was convinced, and what happened to him afterwards, are unimportant matters compared with the lesson which is so convincingly taught.” (DO) (647.5)