Jonah Reading Plan | Week 1 – Day 3
Jonah Reading Plan | Week 1 – Day 3
Jonah 1:5-6 ESV
Jonah Flees the Presence of the Lord
5 Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. 6 So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.”
Blue Letter Bible Commentary
2. (Jonah 1:5-6) The sailors of the ship seek their superstitious gods.
Then the mariners were afraid; and every man cried out to his god, and threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten the load. But Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship, had lain down, and was fast asleep. So the captain came to him, and said to him, “What do you mean, sleeper? Arise, call on your God; perhaps your God will consider us, so that we may not perish.”
a. Every man cried out to his god: When in trouble, man does his best to fix the problem. In this case, they threw the cargo overboard. When that isn’t enough, man also instinctively turns to his god. If we don’t know the true God — the God of the Bible — before we are in trouble, we may sincerely turn to a false and imaginary god, one of our own making.
i. Many people assume that they can put off doing their business with God until they choose a “better” time to do it. Nevertheless, it is presumptuous to think that in the moment of crisis we will be able to call upon the true God if we have not dealt with Him before.
b. Was fast asleep: While the storm raged, Jonah slept. Perhaps because the storm outside seemed insignificant to him in comparison to the storm inside, the storm that came from his resistance against God.
i. What a curious and tragic scene! All the sailors were religious men, devout in their prayers to their gods. Yet their gods were really nothing, and could do nothing. There was one man on board who had a relationship with the true God, who knew His Word, and who worshipped Him — yet he was asleep!
ii. “Jonah was asleep amid all that confusion and noise; and, O Christian man, for you to be indifferent to all that is going on in such a world as this, for you to be negligent of God’s work in such a time as this is just as strange. The devil alone is making noise enough to wake all the Jonahs if they only want to awake… All around us there is tumult and storm, yet some professing Christians are able, like Jonah, to go to sleep in the sides of the ship.” (Spurgeon)
c. What do you mean, sleeper? Arise, call on your God: The captain knew that his crew cried to their gods, but it did nothing. Perhaps Jonah’s God could do something in the crisis.
i. It must have seemed ironic to Jonah that the sailors demanded that he call on his God. His only reason for being on that ship was to escape his God.