Four short clauses, and the whole comfort of v. 6 is undone. The verb that gave Jonah his shade is the verb that now gives the worm: וַיְמַן, “and he appointed,” the fourth of the book’s four divine appointments (1:17; 4:6, 7, 8). God is as sovereign over the withering as over the growth.

Three things carry the weight. First, the divine name shifts: v. 6 had the unique compound יְהוָה־אֱלֹהִים, this verse has the articular הָאֱלֹהִים, v. 8 has bare אֱלֹהִים, and v. 9 bare אֱלֹהִים again before YHWH returns in v. 10. The name that gives the gift is not the name that takes it away, and the narrator seems to be doing that deliberately.

Second, the agent is derisory: a single תּוֹלַעַת, a grub — the word used of the maggots in the manna (Exod 16:20) and of Israel in its weakness (Isa 41:14). Nineveh needed a storm and a fish; Jonah’s theology needs one worm.

Third, the timing is exact and pointed: בַּעֲלוֹת הַשַּׁחַר לַמָּחֳרָת, “at the going up of the dawn on the next day.” The plant had “gone up” (וַיַּעַל) in v. 6; now the dawn “goes up” and the plant goes down. The verb of the worm’s action, וַתַּךְ (“and it struck”), recurs verbatim in v. 8 with the sun as subject — worm and sun deliver the same blow, both on appointment.

Proposed — pending reviewJack M. Sasson, Jonah: A New Translation with Introduction, Commentary, and Interpretation, Anchor Bible 24B, New York: Doubleday, 1990

וַיְמַן is piel of מָנָה, “appoint, assign, designate.” HALOT and BDB agree that the piel is the stem of official or deliberate assignment (cf. Dan 1:5, 10–11, where the officer “appoints” food). Per the standing glossary decision, every occurrence in Jonah is rendered appoint — 1:17 (the fish), 4:6 (the plant), 4:7 (the worm), 4:8 (the east wind). The series is the spine of the book’s argument about providence, and it only reads as a series if the English word does not vary.

“Prepared,” “provided,” “sent” would each be defensible in isolation and each would obscure the chain. “Provide” in particular would import benefaction, which is precisely what is at issue: the same verb governs the gift and the loss.

The syntax is bare transitive — subject, verb, undetermined object — with no infinitive of purpose. Contrast v. 6, where the appointment is followed by two purpose infinitives (לִהְיוֹת צֵל, לְהַצִּיל). The worm is given no stated purpose. The narrator withholds the explanation until v. 10–11.

Jonah 4 uses four different designations in five verses:

• v. 6 — יְהוָה־אֱלֹהִים, “YHWH-God,” the only occurrence of the compound in the book and otherwise most familiar from Gen 2–3
• v. 7 — הָאֱלֹהִים, “the God,” with the article
• v. 8 — אֱלֹהִים, bare
• v. 9 — אֱלֹהִים, bare
• v. 10 — יְהוָה

Per the project policy (§1) and the binding glossary, יְהוָה is rendered YHWH and אֱלֹהִים is rendered God; they are never harmonized. The article on הָאֱלֹהִים is not rendered in English (“the God” would read as a foreign idiom in the modern line, though the literal line keeps it), but it is worth noting: the articular form in Hebrew narrative often marks “God” as the known, definite deity, and in Jonah it has already appeared in the Gentile sphere (3:10, הָאֱלֹהִים sees their deeds).

תּוֹלַעַת is a soft-bodied larva or grub, not an earthworm in the modern zoological sense and not a caterpillar specifically. HALOT and BDB place it with the related forms תּוֹלֵעָה and רִמָּה in the general field of maggots and grubs; the word also stands metonymically for the crimson dye got from the kermes insect (תּוֹלַעַת שָׁנִי, Exod 25:4), which is a different usage and not in play here.

Its other biblical occurrences set the tone. It is the agent of corruption in the manna (Exod 16:20), of the crops under covenant curse (Deut 28:39), and of the body in the grave (Isa 14:11; Job 25:6). It is also the self-designation of abject weakness: “Fear not, worm Jacob” (Isa 41:14). Nothing in the word’s range makes it dignified.

The rendering is worm, singular and indefinite as the Hebrew has it. “A worm” rather than “worms” matters: the Hebrew names one creature, and the disproportion between one grub and the prophet’s collapse in v. 8 is part of the narrative’s design.

בַּעֲלוֹת הַשַּׁחַר is בְּ + qal infinitive construct of עָלָה with שַׁחַר as its subject: “at the going up of the dawn,” the standard Hebrew way of saying daybreak (cf. Gen 19:15; 32:24 [Heb 32:25], where Jacob wrestles until the dawn goes up). The literal line keeps the infinitival shape; the modern line gives “at daybreak.”

The root choice is not accidental. In v. 6 the plant וַיַּעַל — “went up” — over Jonah’s head. Here what goes up is the dawn, and the plant comes down. One root, two directions of fortune.

לַמָּחֳרָת is ל + the article + מָחֳרָת, a fixed adverbial noun meaning “the following day” (Gen 19:34; Num 11:32). Stacked after the dawn phrase it is not redundant: it fixes which dawn. The plant grew and Jonah rejoiced on day one; the worm comes at first light on day two.

The accents support the phrasing: ṭipḥa on הַשַּׁ֖חַר and ʾatnaḥ on לַֽמָּחֳרָ֑ת mark the whole temporal expression as a unit closing the first half of the verse, with the two result clauses following. The Masoretic phrasing and the syntax agree here.

וַתַּךְ is hiphil wayyiqtol 3fs of נָכָה, the ordinary verb for striking a blow — of a man striking a man (Exod 2:11), of YHWH striking Egypt (Exod 3:20), of hail striking crops (Exod 9:25). The feminine agrees with תּוֹלַעַת.

Two reasons to render it strike rather than “attack,” “eat” or “gnaw.” First, the verb says nothing about mandibles; “gnaw” supplies a mechanism the Hebrew leaves out. Second, and decisively, the identical form וַתַּךְ recurs in v. 8 with the sun as subject (וַתַּ֥ךְ הַשֶּׁ֛מֶשׁ עַל־רֹאשׁ יוֹנָה). Worm and sun strike the same blow with the same word, the first at the plant and the second at Jonah’s head. A varied English rendering would hide that pairing, which is one of the tightest links in the chapter.

The transitive construction here (with אֶת) differs from v. 8 (with עַל + head), and the English keeps that distinction: struck the plant / struck on Jonah’s head.

וַיִּיבָשׁ is qal wayyiqtol 3ms of יָבֵשׁ, “be dry, dry up, wither.” Masculine, agreeing with the masculine קִיקָיוֹן; the change of gender from וַתַּךְ (fem., the worm) to וַיִּיבָשׁ (masc., the plant) is what marks the change of subject in a clause with no expressed subject.

The verb’s field is the loss of moisture — of watercourses (Isa 19:5–6), of grass and flowers (Isa 40:7–8), of bones (Ezek 37:11), of a hand (1 Kgs 13:4). The literal line keeps dried up, which is the root’s own image and matches the sun and east wind that follow in v. 8. The modern line uses withered, which is what English says of a plant.

There is a canonical echo worth naming, though it is a matter of shared vocabulary rather than citation: Isa 40:7–8, where grass dries (יָבֵשׁ) because the breath of YHWH blows on it. Jonah’s plant dries at the appointment of God, and a wind arrives the next verse.

The noun occurs five times, all in Jonah 4 (vv. 6, 7, 9, 10 — twice in v. 6). The identification is genuinely open.

This apparatus keeps the transliterated qîqāyôn in the literal line (§4: retain a term with no secure English equivalent rather than force-fit one) and uses castor-plant in the modern line, flagging the identification as probable rather than settled. What the narrative actually requires of the plant is only that it grew fast, gave shade, and died fast.

Proposed — pending reviewHans Walter Wolff, Obadiah and Jonah: A Commentary, Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986

The Greek reads, for the opening clause, καὶ προσέταξεν ὁ θεὸς σκώληκι ἑωθινῇ τῇ ἐπαύριον, καὶ ἐπάταξεν τὴν κολόκυνθαν, καὶ ἀπεξηράνθη.

Three points of interest.

προσέταξεν + dative. Where the Hebrew has God appoint a worm as a direct object, the Greek has God give orders to a worm (dative σκώληκι). The translator has turned an act of designation into a command issued to a creature. The same verb and construction serve the other appointments in the chapter, so it is the translator’s consistent equivalence for מָנָה piel, not a variant Hebrew text.

ἑωθινῇ. The Greek compresses בַּעֲלוֹת הַשַּׁחַר into a single adjective, “at dawn,” losing the עָלָה that links back to the plant’s going up in v. 6. Shortening, not a different reading.

κολόκυνθαν. The Greek identifies the plant as a gourd, as it does at every occurrence in the chapter. This is the translator’s identification of an obscure Hebrew noun and carries no weight against the Hebrew; the long Latin and patristic afterlife of “gourd” (see Reception) rests on it.

Nothing here requires a Hebrew text different from the WLC. The Göttingen edition of the Twelve should be consulted for the detail of the Greek witnesses; this note describes the main Greek reading and does not depend on a disputed variant.

Draft — witness readings here are an AI’s recollection and have not been checked against the apparatus (BHQ, the Göttingen Septuagint, DJD). Verify before relying on them.

The WLC is unproblematic here and I am aware of no significant variant that affects the sense. The orthography וַיִּיבָשׁ, with yod written for the first radical of יָבֵשׁ, is the normal spelling of the qal wayyiqtol of this verb.

One minor point of vocalization: לַֽמָּחֳרָת carries a ḥaṭef-qameṣ under the ḥet, the expected reduction in this noun. Nothing turns on it.

The apparatus of BHS and BHQ should be checked before this section is promoted past draft; I record here only that I know of no reading in the Hebrew witnesses that changes the meaning of the verse.

Draft — witness readings here are an AI’s recollection and have not been checked against the apparatus (BHQ, the Göttingen Septuagint, DJD). Verify before relying on them.

The verse is the second movement of a four-part sequence built on one verb:

1. 1:17 — YHWH appoints a fish to swallow Jonah. The appointment saves him from drowning.
2. 4:6 — YHWH-God appoints a qîqāyôn to shade him. Jonah rejoices with a great joy (שִׂמְחָה גְדוֹלָה) — the only joy in the book, and the book’s leitwort גָּדוֹל is attached to it.
3. 4:7 — God appoints a worm. The gift is removed.
4. 4:8 — God appoints an east wind. The removal becomes unbearable.

The sequence is a single pedagogy, and v. 7 is its turn. The rhetorical point lands only in v. 10: Jonah pitied (חַסְתָּ) a plant he did not labour for, which “was a son of a night and perished a son of a night” — and the worm is how it perished (אָבָד, v. 10, the book’s recurring verb of perishing: 1:6, 1:14, 3:9).

Note also the structural inversion. In ch. 1 the appointed creature saved a man who wanted to die. Here the appointed creature kills a plant and so brings a man to want to die again (v. 8, repeating word for word the death-wish of v. 3). The same providence, the opposite effect, because the man has not changed.

Proposed — pending reviewPhyllis Trible, Rhetorical Criticism: Context, Method, and the Book of Jonah, Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994

Patristic. The plant of Jonah 4 became famous in the Latin church through the dispute between Jerome and Augustine over how to render it. Jerome translated the Hebrew noun with a word for ivy (hedera) rather than the cucurbita (“gourd”) of the Old Latin tradition, which stood on the Greek κολόκυνθα; Augustine, in his correspondence with Jerome, reports the disturbance caused in a congregation when the familiar gourd disappeared from the reading. The episode is cited in the history of translation precisely because it shows a community’s attachment to a received rendering set against a translator’s appeal to the Hebrew — the argument of §V of this project’s guiding document, several centuries early. Both renderings are identifications of an uncertain Hebrew word; neither is evidence for what קִיקָיוֹן denotes.

Jewish tradition. Rabbinic and targumic reading of Jonah 4 characteristically treats the worm and the wind as instruments of instruction, with the created order mobilized to teach the prophet — the same reading the Hebrew’s own fourfold מָנָה invites. The specific attributions should be checked against the editions before any locator is given here.

Later Christian reading. The verse is a standard text in homiletic treatments of providence, where the point taken is that God’s sovereignty extends to a grub and that his gifts are held on loan. That is a legitimate extension of the fourfold appointment, but it is reception: the Hebrew says that God appointed a worm, and leaves the moral to vv. 10–11.

Proposed — pending reviewJerome, Commentariorum in Ionam Prophetam Liber Unus (CCSL 76), ad 4:6 · Augustine, Epistulae 71 and 82 (to Jerome), CSEL 34

Draft — the later uses cited here (New Testament, rabbinic, patristic) are an AI’s recollection and have not been checked against the sources. Verify before relying on them.