The Storm and the Sleeper
4 But Yahweh sent out a great wind on the sea, and there was a mighty storm on the sea, so that the ship was likely to break up. 5 Then the mariners were afraid, and every man cried to his god. They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone down into the innermost parts of the ship and he was laying down, and was fast asleep. 6 So the ship master came to him, and said to him, “What do you mean, sleeper? Arise, call on your God! Maybe your God will notice us, so that we won’t perish.”
God hurls a wind after the runaway, and a pagan captain has to tell a prophet to pray.
The verb is violent. God hurls a great wind at the sea, and the same word will be used three more times before the chapter ends: the sailors hurl the cargo overboard, Jonah tells them to hurl him after it, and finally they do. Everything in this storm is thrown by somebody, and the throwing begins with God.
The sailors respond exactly as men who fear the sea would: they pray, then they lighten the ship. Both are sensible. Neither works. Meanwhile the one man aboard who knows whose storm this is has gone down into the hold and fallen asleep — the third down in four verses.
Then the captain finds him, and the scene turns. His words are almost the words God used in verse 2: get up, call out. A pagan sailor issues the prophet's own commission back to him, and does it without knowing that is what he is doing. The prophet who would not cry out against Nineveh is now told to cry out by a man whose gods have just failed him. Nothing in the verse says Jonah prayed.
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