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Prophets and Kings
ship ready to sail, “he paid the fare thereof and went down into it, to
go with them.”
Verse 3
.
In the charge given him, Jonah had been entrusted with a heavy
responsibility; yet He who had bidden him go was able to sustain
His servant and grant him success. Had the prophet obeyed unques-
tioningly, he would have been spared many bitter experiences, and
would have been blessed abundantly. Yet in the hour of Jonah’s despair
the Lord did not desert him. Through a series of trials and strange
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providences, the prophet’s confidence in God and in His infinite power
to save was to be revived.
If, when the call first came to him, Jonah had stopped to consider
calmly, he might have known how foolish would be any effort on his
part to escape the responsibility placed upon him. But not for long
was he permitted to go on undisturbed in his mad flight. “The Lord
sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in
the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners were
afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that
were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone
down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep.”
Verses
4, 5
.
As the mariners were beseeching their heathen gods for help, the
master of the ship, distressed beyond measure, sought out Jonah and
said, “What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so
be that God will think upon us, that we perish not.”
Verse 6
.
But the prayers of the man who had turned aside from the path of
duty brought no help. The mariners, impressed with the thought that
the strange violence of the storm betokened the anger of their gods,
proposed as a last resort the casting of lots, “that we may know,” they
said, “for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the
lot fell upon Jonah. Then said they unto him, Tell us, we pray thee,
for whose cause this evil is upon us; what is thine occupation? and
whence comest thou? what is thy country? and of what people art
thou?
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“And he said unto them, I am an Hebrew; and I fear the Lord, the
God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land.
“Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto him, Why
hast thou done this? For the men knew that he fled from the presence
of the Lord, because he had told them.