In the concluding verses the Lord has the last word and ends by putting a question to Jonah that receives no answer. The situation is summed up when the Lord sets out the contrast between two causes for concern. On the one hand, Jonah is concerned because a fragile plant has withered, and on the other hand, God is concerned for the well-being of thousands of innocent people. These two verses simply make explicit what is implied in God’s questions to Jonah in 4.4, 9. Jonah had failed to make an effective defense for his anger on either occasion. So now it is God’s turn to draw the contrast between the triviality of Jonah’s indignation at the death of a plant and the seriousness of the fate of the inhabitants of Nineveh.

The phrase This plant must be altered to “That plant” in some languages, since the plant was no longer existing. Furthermore, it may be necessary to translate disappeared the next as “died the next night” or perhaps “withered and died before the next day,” since according to verse 7 it was at dawn the next day that the worm attacked the plant.

You didn’t do anything for it may be rendered as “you didn’t help it at all.”

The same word in Hebrew is used for feel sorry in verse 10 and have pity in verse 11, but it is not so natural in English to use the same word in both contexts. The difficulty arises partly because in the one case the plant was destroyed, and in the other the people were spared, which makes it inappropriate for God to speak of “being sorry” for them, as in New English Bible. A hint at a suitable meaning is found in 1 Sam 24.10, where David “spares” Saul’s life. This is a suitable verb for the Lord’s treatment of Nineveh, and Jonah could be said to wish to “spare” the plant. As is so often the case, the area of meaning of a word in one language does not coincide with the area of a word that apparently corresponds to it in another (compare Gen 18.24, 26, where the word used for God’s sparing of Sodom is not the same as is used here with regard to Nineveh).

Yet you feel sorry for it may be better expressed in some languages as “yet you feel sorry for what happened to it” or “… what happened to the plant.”

The verb translated have pity occurs about two dozen times in the Old Testament, and in three-quarters of these it is used with a negative, mostly in the form of a prohibition. Apart from this passage in Jonah, God is the subject four times, twice in a prayer (Neh 13.22 and Joel 2.17) and twice in statements emphasizing God’s refusal to pity his own people (Jer 13.14; Ezek 24.14). Here, on the contrary, God is determined to show pity towards foreigners.

Have pity on may be expressed as “show mercy to” or “show special kindness to.” The concept of pity may be expressed in some languages in figurative ways, for example, “to have my heart go out to,” “to show my feelings to,” or “to embrace with kindness.”

The author emphasizes also the contrast between Jonah’s relation to the plant and God’s relation to the people of Nineveh. Jonah didn’t do anything for it and … didn’t make it grow, whereas by implication the people of Nineveh were created by God. This plant grew up in one night and disappeared the next (literally, “which came into existence as the son of a night and perished as the son of a night”). But human beings, Jonah must learn, cannot be regarded as expendable to suit the whim of a prophet. The innocence of those whose destruction Jonah wished for is emphasized by the expression in verse 11, “who cannot tell their right hand from their left.” Good News Translation takes this as a reference to innocent children. Similarly, Moffatt and An American Translation have “infants,” and New Jerusalem Bible, with its “persons who do not yet know,” suggests children without actually saying so. Living Bible illustrates the peril of trying to “spiritualize” the Bible by reading into the text something neither expressed nor implied by the author: “a great city like Nineveh with its 120,000 people in utter spiritual darkness,” though the literal meaning is given in a footnote, “with its 120,000 children who don’t know their right hands from their left.” Most translations have “persons” (for example, Revised Standard Version), but Knox evidently supposed that all the people of Nineveh were equally unskilled in distinguishing between one hand and another, “Here is a great city, with a hundred and twenty thousand folk in it, and none of them can tell right from left.” Here it is best to follow Good News Translation with innocent children, rather than adopt the Hebrew idiom with its reference to the right hand and the left. Obviously no conclusions can be drawn regarding the total population of Nineveh on the basis of the figures in this verse.

The transitional phrase After all must often be expanded if it is to indicate the appropriate relationships; for example, “when everything has been considered,” “when everything has been mentioned,” or “when our thoughts have included all that has happened,” or “… all that is involved.” One may even employ a somewhat idiomatic expression; for example, “when you really think about it.”

Innocent children may be expressed simply as “children who have no guilt,” or “children who have done no wrong,” or “children who cannot be blamed for what happened.”

It may be meaningless to speak of “a city having innocent children in it.” More commonly, one would speak of “innocent children dwelling in a city” or “… having their homes in the city.” Such an expression, however, would require the many animals to be spoken of in a somewhat different way; for example, “and there are many animals there also” or “within the city are many animals,” referring, of course, to domestic animals.

God’s concern for the people of Nineveh, a concern that included their many animals, resembles the expression in Jer 18.7, 8 and Ezek 18.23. Nothing is said here in the conclusion about the repentance of the people of Nineveh; God’s appeal to Jonah’s conscience is based on their humanity rather than their piety.

Quoted with permission from Clark, David J. et al. A Handbook on the Book of Jonah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1978, 1982, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .