"And Jehovah said, Doest thou well to be angry?" Now this gave Jonah a little hope that God might kill his despised neighbors even if they had bitterly repented and turned to the Lord for forgiveness. Accordingly, Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side where he could see and gloat over the destruction of his converts, in case the Lord did intend to destroy them after all. In the meantime, Jonah made himself just as comfortable as possible by constructing a booth where he could sit in the shade. And our satirist causes God to add a little touch of comfort by causing a gourd "to come up over" His darling, "Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to deliver him from his evil case." Now, the contemptible Jonah had no business being there in the sun; he should have been at home helping his wife, if he had nothing else to do. But better still, he should have been in Nineveh rejoicing with the converts who had been redeemed from destruction by his preaching. Note the fine sarcasm of our author, "So Jonah was exceedingly glad of the gourd." However, when the gourd was smitten by a worm, and the sultry wind blew, and the sun shone hot upon his head, our mean little Jonah again asked God to kill him. Now Jonah, "Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd?" "Yes, I do well to be angry even unto death." Were ever such words of irony spoken! O Israel, you are smitten with grief because of your poor little gourds, but don't you think you might have a little pity for all those innocent people who were so untaught morally that they did not know their right hand from their left? It would be well for us to remember that we, as well as ancient Israel, fret and fume over a lot of little nothings. Little griefs and little deprivations vex us sorely. But while our brothers and sisters over much of the earth go naked and starved and diseased, we feel no pity. We are very tender-hearted over little things, we are deeply moved over some fictitious story; but for the appalling tragedies of dark continents and exploited peoples, our hearts are flint. Obviously, Israel understood only too well the biting sarcasm and bitter irony of Jonah's ringing satire. If the author of this parable could know that a generation has since risen, with so little historical and literary acumen as to believe that Jonah is literal history, I think his body would turn over in its grave. If he knew that he had set people to wrangling over the question of whether a fish could swallow a man, instead of sending them out as missionaries to all the Ninevehs of the earth, he would feel sorry that he ever wrote the book.