Jonah 4:4

"And Jehovah said, Doest thou well to be angry?"

Having extended mercy to a great pagan city, God extends mercy also to his servant. Anger and frustration over what God allows, or what God does, are understandable human reactions, wrong to be sure, but arising in part from an inadequate understanding of God's larger purpose. The Father was concerned for other nations besides Israel, incomprehensible as that might have seemed to Jonah.

"Doest thou well to be angry ...?" This remonstrance is a gentle endeavor on the part of the Lord to provoke in Jonah a self-examination of his own emotions and attitudes. How unreasonable it must appear in any objective examination of the facts, that a preacher whose business it was to convert men should have been angry when his efforts met with wholesale success!