This chapter is the chapter where God truly explains the His purpose to Jonah: He loves His children, all of His children, and doesn't want any to perish (though He was ready to destroy them if they did not repent, a fact that we cannot brush off). We find this out in the last statement that God makes to Jonah in the chapter, and we see God's lesson to Jonah through the event with the gourd.
The story of the gourd is the story of the Gentile nations. God uses various plants to symbolize various nations at various times. The fig tree is often used to symbolize Israel. The vine is used to illustrate Judah. The key here is that the gourd is only used in this story, and is symbolic of a foreign nation. We know this because the word used - kikayon - is an Egyptian word. It's foreign. It is also not used anywhere else in the Bible but in Jonah, so there is no confusion as to what it represents. It's thought to be a cucumber (and is kind of close to, but not really, the word for cucumbers in Numbers 11:5 - kishu). The point is that it represents this foreign nation. The worm, a red worm sometimes translated as "scarlet", is Satan (well, actually, I believe it is the false prophecies and false prophets of Satan), who corrupts and dries up the fruit of the plant. The east wind and the rising of the sun represent the tribulation end of this age and when Christ returns (see Hosea 13:15 & 16 and Malachi 4:2). God wants His prophets to have pity on all of the plants (nations) and to warn them - that is the teaching lesson to Jonah. And we can see that Jonah is hard-headed enough to need this direct lesson. He just about seems ready to die for anything that he feels is right! I think God loves Jonah's tenacity, and knows just exactly how to get through to him, in spiritual language. (All of God's prophets understand spiritual language, that is to say "spiritual imagery"... and it should be our goal to understand it too.)
Many references that I have seen have then translated God's last statement, "wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle," to mean that God is talking about little children. They use it to say that, if there are 120,000 children (a "score" being twenty = 6 x 20 x 1,000 = 120,000), then there must be at least 600,000 people in total in the city. I would say rather that God was talking about all of the people of the city when He states the sixscore thousand. I believe He was using "spiritual language" again, meaning that, spiritually, all of the people of the city were like children because they had no understanding of God. While I believe that God loves all of His animals, I also believe that the reference to cattle (the word "cattle" meaning all types of livestock and is more often translated "beasts" rather than "cattle") is also a reference to people, whom God often refers to as animals (an example being "His flock" - see Luke 12:32). The reason I don't believe that He is not refering to actual animals is that I don't believe that animals go to hell; I don't believe that actual animals have the capacity to sin, thereby making them worthy of judgment to hell. So, I believe that the passage is saying that God wants to save the people of Nineveh, both the spiritual and the (human) animal representations. He sent His "dove" (Jonah) to accomplish this.
What a beautiful short book of the Bible. It certainly helps us when we are considering how we are to treat our enemies. I hope you enjoyed my take on the story. God bless.
