Jonah 1:4-6
Asleep in the Bottom of the Boat
4Then the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship was in danger of breaking apart.
5The sailors were afraid, and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the ship’s cargo into the sea to lighten the load. But Jonah had gone down to the lowest part of the vessel, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep.
6The captain approached him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call upon your God. Perhaps this God will consider us, so that we may not perish.”
Berean Standard Bible
Jonah is on a boat bound for Tarshish, which is not where God sent him. He has paid for the passage and gone aboard, and so far nothing has stopped him.
Then the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea
Hurled is a strong verb for weather, and the writer wants it. This is not weather that happened to arrive while a runaway prophet was at sea. God threw it, the way a person throws something to get another person's attention, and it is rough enough that the ship is in danger of breaking apart.
The sailors do everything a good crew can do. They are frightened, and every one of them prays, each to his own god, which is the wrong address said with real urgency. They pray, and over the side goes the cargo, their livelihood, into the water to save the lives on deck. They pray, then they act, and it is still not enough. And one man aboard is doing neither.
But Jonah had gone down to the lowest part of the vessel, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep.
Down again. He went down to Joppa, down into the ship, and now down to the floor of it, as far from the open sky as the boat will let him get. He is not pacing the deck. He is not standing at the rail working out what he has done. The man who caused this is the only one asleep in it. The captain has to come below and find him himself, and what he says is not what you would expect from a man whose whole job is the ship.
How can you sleep? Get up and call upon your God. Perhaps this God will consider us, so that we may not perish.
Get up. Those are the words God used in verse 2, and they come back here out of the mouth of a sailor who has been calling on some other else, standing over a sleeping prophet.
He says perhaps, because he does not know. He is hoping, on behalf of a crew he is responsible for, that some god somewhere is awake and listening, and he is willing to shake a stranger and ask him to try. There is more faith in that than the prophet is showing, and the one man aboard who has actually heard God speak is lying underneath it all, asleep.
How We Know
Joppa was a working seaport, not a name chosen at random. Second Chronicles 2:16 has cedar floated down from Lebanon to Joppa for Solomon's temple, and Ezra 3:7 has the same route used again for the second temple. A man wanting a ship out of Israel went to Joppa, and that fit supports an account set in a real harbor and a real trade.
The book does not say where the crew came from. What it does say is that in verse 5 every sailor calls on his own god, and in verse 9 Jonah answers with the name of the LORD, which is the contrast the rest of the chapter works with.
Inside the passage, the captain's words in verse 6 are God's words from verse 2. Get up. A foreign sailor hands the prophet the same order he ran from, and the book sets it down without remarking on it.
Questions
1 Who sent the storm, and what word does the writer pick for it?
AnswerThe LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea. Hurled, the way you would throw something at a target. The weather did not happen to turn nasty while Jonah was aboard.
2 What do the sailors do about it?
AnswerThey are frightened, they each pray to their own god, and then they throw the cargo overboard to lighten the ship. They have the wrong address for their prayers and they pray anyway, and then they get to work.
3 Where is Jonah while all this is going on?
AnswerAt the very bottom of the ship, deep asleep. He has gone down to Joppa, down into the ship, and now down as far inside it as he can get. The one man who caused the storm is the only one sleeping through it.
4 Has anybody ever told you something you needed to hear, from somewhere you did not expect it? What does the captain say here?
AnswerGet up and call upon your God. Get up is what God said in verse 2, coming back now from a sailor who had been calling on a god of his own. Correction often arrives from outside the house, and it is not less true for that.
What This Means for Us
Going quiet is not the same as being at peace. The passage says he lay down and fell into a deep sleep, and does not say why. From the outside it passes for calm, and a family ought to be able to tell the two apart in each other.
The man who wakes him is not a priest or a prophet. The captain comes to him and tells him to get up and call on his God.
God will use a captain who does not know him to say exactly the right thing, so the voice that wakes this family may come from somebody none of us would have picked.
Prayer
Father, when we go quiet and still and hope a thing will pass, wake us up. Thank you that you sent a storm rather than letting Jonah sail. Thank you that you will use anybody at all to get our attention. Help us listen when it comes. Amen.