It is clear that Jonah, without deliberation or hesitation, disobeyed God and refused to comply with His command. This is a response unique in the record of the Bible. It is true that there are many occasions of unfaithfulness amongst God’s servants recorded but no act of disobedience was committed with such directness and defiance. Jonah did not reluctantly undertake his duty or half-heartedly comply. No! he utterly refused!

Jonah sought to withdraw from that place with which the Lord’s presence was associated, like Adam of old, Genesis 3:8. 

I. PLEASE OBSERVE THE FOLLY OF HUMAN WISDOM

Jonah was a good man, one that feared the Lord, and yet he turned his back upon the command of God because it was not in keeping with his thinking.

I have no doubt we have the explanation of his actions in 4:2. This is the key to the book!

1. Jonah would have preferred the divine destruction of Nineveh. 

The general principle governing the purpose of God in the OT age was stated by the Saviour. “But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” Matthew 15:24. And yet, in the passage in Matthew 15, we see grace making an exception to that general rule for the Saviour blessed the woman of Canaan. It was with this “difficulty” the apostles wrestled with in the early church, Acts 22:21-22; Gal 2:11-14.

2. It was not a mean and uncharitable spirit that lay behind Jonah’s action.

As is evident from 4:2, Jonah was not rebuked by the Lord for acting in a mean and selfish manner. No, the Lord showed understanding and sympathy toward His servant and set out to teach his error!

Jonah’s sin lay in a mistaken notion of how better it would be for Israel if God were to show His wrath rather than His mercy toward Nineveh. 

Jonah likely thought that maybe such a display of wrath would have the result of working repentance amongst his sinful fellow-Israelites. This was Jonah’s thinking.

3. The best of men may give way to human wisdom. 

Sadly, such actions will take *you far away from God and *work much grief and vexation in your soul and *bring misery to others, in this case the sailors.