There is a little bit of numeric symmetry in this last
chapter of Jonah: God asks three questions, and because Jonah’s animosity
toward the people of Nineveh and his disappointment at God’s delay in judging
them are so intense, the prophet three times asks God to allow him to die.
There are also three things in chapter 4 that God is said to have “appointed”,
so there are three sets of three. Perhaps the symmetry is not so
accidental.
Needless to say, it is fairly obvious Jonah’s request to die
went ungranted, or else his story would never have been written.