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Bible Study for Amateurs #83 – Jonah 1:4-6

Hey, everyone! I’m Ben – the Amateur Exegete, and this is episode eighty-three of Bible Study for Amateurs. Today’s episode is, “Jonah 1:4-6.”1

We are continuing our series on the book of Jonah, using the tools from our Amateur Toolbox.2 (As a reminder, if you’re interested in digging deeper, the script for each episode can be found at my website – amateurexegete.com – and include endnotes that offer citations and further discussion.) In the last episode, we looked at Jonah 1:3, a verse wherein the prophet turns tail and runs. In this episode, we will look at the consequences of that decision.

Yahweh Hurled

Here is Jonah 1:4-6 as it appears in the NRSVue:3

4 But the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a mighty storm came upon the sea that the ship threatened to break up. 5 Then the sailors were afraid, and each cried to his god. They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten it for them. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. 6 The captain came and said to him, “What are you doing sound asleep? Get up; call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.”

Is it just me or is there some measure of sitcom-level hilarity going on here? There is a massive storm brewing, it’s freaking out the sailors, the ship is rocking so hard that it might break apart, but Jonah is sawing logs in the hold of the ship, unconcerned. I suppose running from Yahweh is exhausting.

But obviously there is no running from the deity. Though the prophet has hired a vessel (as suggested in the previous episode) and has gone in the entirely opposite direction of Nineveh, he has not escaped the reach of the god of Israel. In v. 4 we are told that “Yahweh hurled a great wind upon the sea.” That word rendered “hurled” (ṭûl)4 is repeated again in v. 5 where we read that the sailors “threw [yāṭīlû]5 the cargo that was in the ship into the sea.” Later on, in v. 12, the verb appears yet again when Jonah tells the crew, “Pick me up and throw me [wahăṭîlūnî]6 into the sea.” The use of the verb adds a measure of vividness to the scene, depicting Yahweh as a divine Bo Jackson,7 throwing a mighty wind from heaven all the way down to the waters below. (If you don’t know who Bo Jackson is, well, what have you done with your life?)

As the tempest rages, we are told at the end of v. 4 in the NRSVue that “the ship threatened to break up.” At first glance, this may seem like an uninteresting way of saying that the vessel was being rocked so hard that it could come apart at any moment. But in her notes for the Women’s Bible Commentary, Kelly Murphy sets the phrase in the overall context of vv. 4-5 wherein characters in the story react to the storm. This vessel has apparently been anthropomorphized to highlight the grave danger everyone is facing. She writes, “Even the ship responds appropriately; the Hebrew literally says, ‘and the ship thought it would break apart.’”8

The sailors react similarly to their boat, as we see in v. 5. In the first three independent clauses9 of the verse, the sailors 1) become afraid, 2) cry out to their own gods, and 3) begin hurling cargo into the deep. They are panicked, and rightly so. We learn here for the first time that they are non-Jews, pagans for lack of a better word.10 They “each cried to his god.” In v. 6, the captain of the ship calls on Jonah to pray to his own god, apparently to cover all their bases.

If the first three independent clauses of v. 5 highlight the activity of these pagan sailors, the final three highlight Jonah’s: he 1) had gone down into the ship, 2) laid down, and 3) fell into a deep sleep. Two things stand out here. First, Jonah continues his descent, going down into the hold of the vessel just as he had gone down to Joppa and down into the ship in v. 3. Second, Jonah apparently thinks that by this descent he is safe and secure from the deity since, as the end of v. 5 notes, he “was fast asleep.” In his notes for The Jewish Study Bible, Ehud Ben Zvi notes that this was “perhaps akin to a trance.”11 I am more inclined to think of this as either a way for Jonah to further escape the deity or a sign that he thinks he is safe and secure from him.12 It also sets up for v. 6 when the captain, exasperated in my mind,13 asks Jonah what he’s doing “sound asleep.” In any event, there is a contrast made between the sailors on the one hand and Jonah on the other. As Michael Coogan observes in his introduction to the Hebrew Bible, “More pious than the prophet, who is snoring in the ship’s hold, the non-Israelite sailors pray to their gods for help.”14

Jonah does not come across looking great, and it doesn’t help that in v. 6 the pagan captain of the ship calls on Jonah to do something he should have been doing all along. In the NRSVue, the captain calls on Jonah, “Get up; call on your god!” As noted in the previous episode, while the NRSVue has Yahweh telling Jonah to “go at once to Nineveh” in v. 2 and depicts the prophet as “set[ting] out to flee” in v. 3, the underlying Hebrew text uses the Hebrew verb qûm15 which perhaps is better rendered as “arise” or “get up.” The verb is repeated here, this time in the mouth of the pagan sailor. So, not only has Jonah’s god commanded him to “get up,” now this captain, one who doesn’t worship (or, perhaps, even know) Yahweh, tells him to “get up” and “call on” the deity. The prophet is not coming out looking very good here. Writes Kelly Murphy in the Women’s Bible Commentary,

The captain – an “Other” – demonstrates insight into the efficacy of Jonah’s deity, underscoring Jonah’s inappropriate and indifferent response to the storm. In the upside-down world of Jonah, the non-Israelites aboard the ship respond appropriately to divine displeasure, while the Deity’s own prophet sleeps through the unfolding disaster, his eyes closed to the reality around him.16

Murphy goes on to note that that the captain’s reaction is foreshadowing for how the king of Nineveh will respond to the prophetic call of doom later in the book.

Jonah must awake from his slumber, both literally and figuratively. Lives are on the line and as a prophet of Yahweh his actions have consequences. What, then, will he do?

That’s it for this episode of Bible Study for Amateurs.  I’ll see you next time! If you’d like to support this podcast, share it on social media, subscribe to it on the listening platform of your choice, or head over to amateurexegete.com and click on the support button. Or do all three! And, most importantly, remember, in the words of Richard Elliot Friedman, “One does not need to deny what is troubling [about the Bible] in order to pay respect to what is heartening.”17

  1. Throughout the endnotes readers will find various abbreviations. For a list of what abbreviations I use and the works to which they refer, please see the page “Commonly Used Abbreviations.” ↩︎
  2. You can find the episodes on that toolbox here. ↩︎
  3. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations of biblical texts are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. ↩︎
  4. טוּל. ↩︎
  5. יָּטִ֨לוּ. The verb is in the Hiphil. ↩︎
  6. וַהֲטִילֻ֣נִי. The verb is in the Hiphil. ↩︎
  7. For those who don’t know Bo Jackson, here is just a taste of his phenomenal baseball arm. As a kid, Nike had Bo Jackson shoes that I wanted desperately from the mall, but my mother refused to buy them for me. The trauma is real, folks. ↩︎
  8. Kelly J. Murphy, “Jonah,” in Women’s Bible Commentary, edited by Carol A. Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe, and Jacqueline E. Lapsley, third edition (Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 322. See also Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (W.W. Norton & Co., 2019), 2:1289; Susan Niditch, Jonah: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Fortress Press, 2023), 41-42; Jack M. Sasson, Jonah: A New Translation with Introduction, Commentary, and Interpretations, AYB 24B (Doubleday, 1990), 96-97. ↩︎
  9. See W. Dennis Tucker Jr., Jonah: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text (Baylor University Press, 2006), 20. ↩︎
  10. Cf. Paula Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle (Yale University Press, 2017), 34. ↩︎
  11. Ehud Ben Zvi, “Jonah,” in The Jewish Study Bible, edited by Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, second edition (Oxford University Press, 2014), 1189. ↩︎
  12. See Niditch, Jonah, 42. Cf. Jon 1:5 LXX: Ιωνας δὲ κατέβη εἰς τὴν κοίλην τοῦ πλοίου καὶ ἐκάθευδεν καὶ ἔρρεγχεν: “But Jonah laid down in the hold of the boat and fell asleep and snored” (my translation). Sasson (Jonah, 101) writes that “the LXX is simply introducing humor that will sharpen when the helmsman frantically turns to Jonah for help.” ↩︎
  13. Jione Havea (Jonah: An Earth Bible Commentary [T&T Clark, 2020], 25) writes, “When the captain woke him up, there is a clear tone of disbelief: how could he sleep so soundly!” See also James Limburg, Jonah: A Commentary, OTL (Westminster John Knox Press, 1993), 50; Niditch, Jonah, 43. ↩︎
  14. Michael D. Coogan, The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, third edition (Oxford University Press, 2014), 521. ↩︎
  15. קוּם. ↩︎
  16. Murphy, “Jonah,” 322. ↩︎
  17. Richard Elliot Friedman, The Exodus: How It Happened and Why It Matters (HarperOne, 2017), 214. ↩︎

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