God does not argue with Jonah or grant his request to die. He asks Jonah to judge his own anger. Gill calls it "a mild and gentle reproof" that shows God to be the very thing Jonah complained about: gracious and slow to anger. Gill hears an emphasis on "thou": a creature angry with his Creator, a man who had just received mercy now angry at mercy shown to others. Barnes adds that the question is about whether the anger is right, since Jonah was angry at people rather than at sin.

Jonah gives no answer. Instead, he "went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city" and made a booth, "till he might see what would become of the city" (Jonah 4:5). Gill reads the silence as a sign Jonah may have been self-convicted. God does not drop the question. He asks it again after the gourd withers (Jonah 4:9).

God's question asks whether Jonah's anger is right, not just whether he is angry. It opens with hetev, "Is it right?" or "Is it good?" "To be angry" is the Hebrew charah, which properly means to glow or grow warm, and figuratively to blaze up in anger. Not everyone has read the question the same way. Gill reports that the Aramaic Targum, an ancient Aramaic translation of the Old Testament, renders it "art thou exceeding angry?", and some Jewish and Christian interpreters understand it of the strength of his anger. On that reading God asks how fierce Jonah's anger is. Either way, the question turns Jonah's eyes to his own anger.

This question shows God's patience in action. Jonah had just described God as "slow to anger" (Jonah 4:2), and God now proves it toward Jonah himself. He could have answered Jonah's death wish in judgment. Instead, as Gill notes, He "only puts this question, and leaves it with him to consider of."

God's way with Jonah is the same as His way with Nineveh. He calls for a turning rather than destroying at once. The question also keeps the book from ending on Jonah's terms. God keeps the conversation open through the gourd and the wind until His final question in Jonah 4:11.