Manna-eating worms

I owe to my friend John Goulding the following observation:

In Jonah 4, God provided a plant to shield Jonah from the heat. The verb "to provide" is a key-word in Jonah - it's מָנָה (manah). The worm that ate the manah / the provided plant was a תּוֹלָע (tola`). That's not a common word in the Old Testament (39x). 27 of those are in the book of Exodus, where the usual meaning is (by metonymy) the purple die made from a particular type of worm. But one is Exodus 16:20. The people who wanted to keep / store / possess / hoard their God-provided manna found it eaten by maggots.

That certainly wouldn't be something I'd bring into a sermon on Jonah 4, but I think it does shed some light into the covetous relationship Jonah had with the plant God graciously provided for him. We can clearly see that he regarded God's protection and shelter for him as a right - a right he didn't wish to extend to the Ninevites. This little detail adds colour to that: He regards God's compassion to him as something he can possess, even control - it's his to own, rather than God's to dispense as he sovereignly determines.