God then asks Jonah the same question as in verse 4, but with the addition of about the plant, that is, on account of the disappearance of the plant. On that occasion Jonah was indeed angry, as is clear from 4.1. but here he is not so much angry as miserable, or bad tempered.

To be angry about the plant must be expanded somewhat as “to be angry because of what happened to the plant.” It is important not to imply that Jonah was angry at the plant itself but because the plant had withered and died.

Jonah did not reply to the question that was put to him in verse 4, but here he replies by asserting emphatically that he had every justification for being angry. Jonah’s response should be parallel to 4.4, but it may be very difficult to speak of “every right.” One may, for example, say “I’m completely justified in being angry,” or “I have a good reason to be angry,” or “my anger is completely reasonable.”

The words angry enough to die can be taken with a double meaning. One is the surface meaning, that his anger is sufficient to justify his request for death. The other meaning takes the words “even unto death” (King James Version) as an expression denoting the superlative (compare Moffatt and New English Bible, “mortally angry,” and Knox, “deadly angry”). The same expression as occurs here in Jonah is also found in a medieval letter written in Hebrew, also with the meaning “I was extremely angry.” It is difficult to do justice to both these senses in one translation, since by emphasizing the idiom expressing the superlative, the literal sense, angry enough to die, is likely to be concealed. The use of hyperbole by Jonah on this occasion is the more absurd when one takes into account the reasons for Jonah’s anger on both occasions: in verse 1, because he was humiliated by the sparing of Nineveh, and in verse 9, because he was inconvenienced by the withering of a plant.

It may be possible to combine the concepts of the intensity of anger together with Jonah’s suggestion of wanting to die (a reflection of verses 3 and 8) by translating “I am so angry that I want to die,” or “I am very, very angry and therefore prefer to die,” or “… want to die rather than live.”

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 .