Jonah 4:10

Jonah 4:10. Then said the Lord Jonah having thus showed his love and pity for the gourd, God proceeds to judge him out of his own mouth; Thou hast had pity on the gourd, &c. Thou deplorest the loss of the gourd, and thinkest it a severe misfortune to thee, and hard that thou shouldest be deprived of it, though it was not made by thee, came up without any labour of thine, and was by its nature of a short duration: if this is the case with thee in regard to a mean, short-lived plant, think how unjustly thou judgest, when thou condemnest my mercy toward the Ninevites! How much more severe would it have been to have destroyed a whole city, in the ruin of which many innocent creatures, as children and brute animals, must necessarily have been involved; and, what is still more awful, many immortal beings have been plunged into everlasting misery! If thou supposest I ought to have spared or preserved the gourd, because it shaded thee from the heat; think how much more my essential goodness and kindness toward my creatures, the work of my hands, must incline me to spare them whenever it can be done any way consistently with my justice or the laws of my government.