Jonah1chapter 1

Jonah 1:1-3

The word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai identifies him with the prophet named at 2 Kings 14:25, in the reign of Jeroboam the second, which the commentators take as fixing Jonah in Israel's own history rather than in a parable with no author behind it. Nineveh is called that great city, its wickedness come up before the Lord, the same Assyrian capital that within a century would carry Israel itself away. Gill and Calvin both read the flight to Tarshish as a plain and culpable refusal of the commission rather than simple fear, the text itself naming the destination twice, from the presence of the Lord, in the space of one verse.

Jonah 1:4-6

But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea turns the fugitive's own passage into the instrument of his arrest, the ship ready to break apart while the pagan sailors each cry to his own god and pitch the cargo overboard to lighten her. Jonah alone is undisturbed, gone down into the sides of the ship and fast asleep, a stillness the commentators read as exhaustion, or as a conscience already resigned to what is coming. The shipmaster's rebuke, what meanest thou, O sleeper, puts a pagan captain in the place of calling a prophet of the Lord back to prayer, which Henry and Wesley both name as one of the book's standing ironies, Gentiles behaving better than the man sent to preach to Gentiles.

Jonah 1:7-9

Come, and let us cast lots treats the lot as a recognized way of finding out a hidden offender among the crew, and it falls on Jonah exactly as his own flight had already marked him out before any question was asked. The sailors press him with a string of questions, occupation, country, people, and his answer overturns them all at once: I am an Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land. Gill and Keil both note the irony of the confession, a man who has just tried to run from this God now naming him as maker of the very sea presently trying to kill him.

Jonah 1:10-11

Why hast thou done this? follows the moment Jonah's own words confirm what the lot had already shown, and the men's fear turns exceeding not merely at the storm but at learning a prophet has fled from his own God. The sea keeps working and growing more tempestuous even as they put the next question to him, what shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us, so that the remedy must come from the fugitive himself rather than from anything they can do. Barnes and Jamieson Fausset and Brown both read the sailors' restraint here, still asking rather than acting on their own, as evidence the narrative means them to be seen as decent men caught inside another man's judgment.

Jonah 1:12-13

Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea is Jonah's own answer to the sailors' question, the fugitive accepting the judgment on his flight rather than begging to be spared it, and naming the tempest as upon them for his sake. The men do not act on his word at once; they row hard to bring the ship to land instead, refusing on their own initiative to throw a man to his death while another course still seems open to them. Wesley and Clarke both credit this attempt to save Jonah first as evidence the book paints Gentile conscience with more sympathy than a simple morality tale would require.

Jonah 1:14-16

Let us not perish for this man's life is addressed to the Lord by name, pagan sailors now praying to Jonah's own God rather than each to his own god as at verse 5. Once they cast him into the sea and it ceases from her raging, the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord, and made vows, a turning recorded without a single word of Jonah's own preaching anywhere in the chapter. Calvin and Keil both point out that the sailors end this chapter doing what the reluctant prophet was sent to Nineveh to produce, fearing the Lord and worshipping him, before Jonah has preached to anyone at all.

Jonah 1:17

Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah turns the sea that was about to kill him into the means of his rescue, three days and three nights in its belly fixed by the text before any explanation of the mercy is given. The Lord Jesus took the detail as history rather than metaphor when he told the scribes and Pharisees that as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, repeating the sign again at Matthew 16:4 and Luke 11:30 as the one sign that generation would be given. Keil and Pusey both read the Lord's own usage as settling how the sign is to be received, its force resting on Jonah's swallowing being a real event rather than a story he invented.