Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Jonah · About this commentary
Thrown to the Sea
Jonah 1:11-16
11 Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea may be calm to us?” For the sea grew more and more stormy. · WEB
The pagan crew try everything to avoid killing the prophet, and end the chapter worshiping his God.
Jonah's answer to the sailors is the first thing he does in the book that is not evasion: throw me over. It is not repentance — he asks to be removed, not restored, and the next chapter will show him praying only once the water closes over him. But it is honest, and it costs him.
What the sailors do next is the point of the scene. They refuse. They row for the dry land — the same dry land Jonah's creed had just credited to Yahweh — and they row until it is obvious they cannot make it. Only then do they act, and even then they pray first, asking not to be charged with innocent blood and acknowledging that Yahweh does as he pleases. These are men the reader was invited to write off in verse 5 as each praying to his own god.
The sea stops the instant Jonah is in it. And the chapter closes on the sailors, not the prophet: they fear Yahweh with a great fear, and sacrifice, and make vows. The two verbs that opened the storm — fear, and cry out — end it with a different object. The men who were praying to nothing are now worshiping the God his prophet ran from.
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