What Does Jonah 4:1 Mean in the King James?
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The Hebrew makes another’s withheld calamity feel to Jonah like a great evil, and names his anger as burning.
THE MEANING
When mercy reaches someone you judge, it can feel to you like a great evil, and anger can burn as if that feeling proves the mercy is wrong. Jonah’s doubled intensifiers show how completely that heat fills the moment.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Another person’s reprieve can be mercy even when your anger experiences it as injury.
THE ROOT
וַיִּחַר
wayyiḥar
GROWS FROM
חרה
ḥ-r-h (חָרָה): to burn or become hot; by extension, to be kindled with anger.
“was very angry” in this verse is wayyiḥar. The verb says Jonah is kindled: anger appears as heat rising, not only as a considered judgment. Elsewhere, the same verb with אַף (ʾaf, nostril) pictures anger as heat in the nostrils.
ALSO GROWS
ḥārâ: To burn, become hot, or be angry.
חָרָה
This is the root’s lexical form; it shows the heat carried by the verb translated “angry.”
wayyiḥar ʾaf: Anger burned; literally, the nostril burned.
וַיִּחַר אַף
The same verb with אַף (ʾaf, nostril) makes anger bodily heat; Jonah’s verb carries that burning image on its own.
וַיֵּרַע
wayyēraʿ
GROWS FROM
רעע
r-ʿ-ʿ (רָעַע): to be bad or evil; in this form, to be displeasing.
The verb frames the event as evil to Jonah, then the verse intensifies that judgment with רָעָה (raʿāh, evil or calamity), “a great evil.” “Displeased” conveys the response; the Hebrew also gives it the language of badness and calamity.
ALSO GROWS
rāʿaʿ: To be bad or evil; to act wickedly.
רָעַע
This is the verbal root behind Jonah’s “it was displeasing” and supplies its language of badness.
raʿ: Bad, evil.
רַע
This related form makes the verse’s moral vocabulary audible: Jonah experiences the event as evil, not merely disappointing.
THE PATTERN
When judgment is withheld from someone, the observer’s anger can expose how mercy feels like injustice to them.
And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?And he was angry, and would not go in: therefore came his father out, and intreated him.THE THREAD
And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.In Jonah 3:10, רָעָה (raʿāh, evil or calamity) names the disaster God withholds; in 4:1, the same word names what Jonah feels has happened to him. One Hebrew word links Nineveh’s reprieve with Jonah’s inward verdict: what is spared from the city becomes “a great evil” in his eyes.
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