New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures — With References (Rbi8, en_US, 1984)
Jonah
Jonah, 4
1 To Joʹnah, though, it was highly displeasing, and he got to be hot with anger.
2 Hence he prayed to Jehovah*1 and said: “Ah, now, O Jehovah, was not this an affair of mine,*2 while I happened to be on my own ground? That is why I went ahead and ran away to Tarʹshish; for I knew that you are a God*3 gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abundant in loving-kindness,*4 and feeling regret over the calamity.
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3 And now, O Jehovah, take away, please, my soul*1 from me, for my dying is better than my being alive.”*2
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4 In turn Jehovah said: “Have you rightly become hot with anger?”
5 Then Joʹnah went out of the city and sat down east of the city; and gradually he made for himself there a booth, that he might sit under it in the shade until he would see what would become of the city.
6 Accordingly Jehovah God*1 appointed a bottle-gourd plant,*2 that it should come up over Joʹnah, in order to become a shade over his head, to deliver him from his calamitous state. And Joʹnah began to rejoice greatly over the bottle-gourd plant.
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7 But the [true] God appointed a worm at the ascending of the dawn on the next day, that it should strike the bottle-gourd plant; and it gradually dried up.
8 And it came about that, as soon as the sun shone forth, God*1 also went on to appoint a parching east wind, and the sun kept striking upon the head of Joʹnah, so that he was swooning away; and he kept asking that his soul*2 might die, and he repeatedly said: “My dying off is better than my being alive.”*3
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9 And God proceeded to say to Joʹnah: “Have you rightly become hot with anger over the bottle-gourd plant?” At that he said: “I have rightly become hot with anger, to the point of death.”
10 But Jehovah said: “You, for your part, felt sorry for the bottle-gourd plant, which you did not toil upon or make get big, which proved to be a mere growth of a night*1 and perished as a mere growth of a night.
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11 And, for my part, ought I not to feel sorry for Ninʹe·veh the great city, in which there exist more than one hundred and twenty thousand*1 men*2 who do not at all know the difference between their right hand and their left, besides many domestic animals?”
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