Neville Goddard on Jonah 4:2-4 - Mystical Bible Interpretation

Read Jonah 4 in context

Scripture Focus

2And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.

3Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.

4Then said the LORD, Doest thou well to be angry?

Jonah 4:2-4

Biblical Context

Jonah confesses he fled Tarshish because he knew God is gracious and merciful; he would rather die than witness mercy offered to Nineveh. God then questions his anger, exposing the inner conflict between a life of grace and a life of grievance.

Neville's Inner Vision

Jonah's prayer exposes a mind clinging to a story that life is separate from God. Tarshish is the old habit of escape from truth; the line that God is gracious reveals the truth he resists is the mercy that is his own I AM. When he asks that God take his life, he casts himself as defined by fear and anger, not by the creative life within. The inward question is not a verdict but a wake-up call to acknowledge grace as the natural state of consciousness. The message is a shift of attention from doom to the certainty of benevolence: repentance here means turning the mind back to the fact that mercy has always been the current of being. If you revise your assumption to identify with the I AM, being slow to anger and rich in kindness, you dissolve the conflict and live in the steady glow of grace.

Practice This Now

Imaginative act: Close your eyes, place your hand on your chest and affirm that I AM is within me, slow to anger and full of mercy; hold this conviction until the old anxious story dissolves and you feel the truth of grace.