Verse 8
The scorching east wind that God provided was the dreaded sirocco. The following description of it helps us appreciate why it had such a depressing effect on Jonah.
"During the period of a sirocco the temperature rises steeply, sometimes even climbing during the night, and it remains high, about 16-22˚F. above the average . . . at times every scrap of moisture seems to have been extracted from the air, so that one has the curious feeling that one’s skin has been drawn much tighter than usual. Sirocco days are peculiarly trying to the temper and tend to make even the mildest people irritable and fretful and to snap at one another for apparently no reason at all." [Note: Dennis Baly, The Geography of the Bible, pp. 67-68.]
Why did Jonah not move into the city and live there? Apparently he wanted nothing to do with the Ninevites whom he despised so much. He probably still did not know if God would spare Nineveh or destroy it catastrophically. Earlier he had wished to die because, as God’s servant, he was not happy with God’s will. Now he longed for death because he was unhappy with his circumstances. Divine discipline had brought him to the place where even the loss of a plant affected him so deeply that he longed to die.
"The shoe Jonah wanted Nineveh to wear was on his foot now, and it pinched." [Note: Allen, p. 233.]
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