Text -- Jonah 4:5 (NET)

4:5 Jonah left the city and sat down east of it. He made a shelter for himself there and sat down under it in the shade to see what would happen to the city.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Jon 4:5

¹ tn Heb “from the east” or “from the front.” When used to designate a location, the noun קֶדֶם (qedem) may mean “front” (BDB 869 s.v. קֶדֶם 1.a) or “east” (BDB 869 s.v. 1.b). The construction קֶדֶם + preposition מִן (min, “from”) means “from the front” = “in front of” (Job 23:8; Ps 139:5; Isa 9:11) or “from the east” = “eastward, on the east side” (Gen 3:21; 12:8; Num 34:11; Josh 7:2; Ezek 11:23). Because the morning sunrise beat down upon Jonah (v. 8) and because the main city gate of Nineveh opened to the east, the term probably means “on the east side” of the city. But “in front of” the city would mean the same in this case.

² tn Heb “of the city.” For stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy, the noun “city” has been replaced here by the pronoun (“it”) in the translation.

³ sn Apparently Jonah hoped that he might have persuaded the Lord to “change his mind” again (see 3:8-10) and to judge Nineveh after all.