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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comJamieson Fausset Brown Commentary - Jonah 4:5 - 4:5
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made him a booth - that is, a temporary hut of branches and leaves, so slightly formed as to be open to the wind and sun’s heat.
see what would become of the city - The term of forty days had not yet elapsed, and Jonah did not know that anything more than a suspension, or mitigation, of judgment had been granted to Nineveh. Therefore, not from sullennesss, but in order to watch the event from a neighboring station, he lodged in the booth. As a stranger, he did not know the depth of Nineveh’s repentance; besides, from the Old Testament standpoint he knew that chastening judgments often followed, as in David’s case (2Sa 12:10-12, 2Sa 12:14), even where sin had been repented of. To show him what he knew not, the largeness and completeness of God’s mercy to penitent Nineveh, and the reasonableness of it, God made his booth a school of discipline to give him more enlightened views.