Useful Bible Studies > Jonah Commentary > chapter 1

Jonah tells the men to throw him into the sea

Jonah 1:12

The sailors had asked Jonah what they should do for God to save them from the storm.

The correct answer to this question is the same as the king of Nineveh’s instructions in Jonah 3:7-9. If people want God to save them, they must be humble towards God. In other words, they must stop their proud attitudes. They must give up their evil behaviour and they must ask God to save them. Then God will act in kindness towards them.

Those were the attitudes that the sailors were already starting to show. For that reason, they had asked Jonah, as a holy man of the true God, what they should now do.

Jonah had a serious duty, as one of Israel’s people, to teach these foreigners the truth about God. However, he did not do that (Romans 2:17-24). He was still trying to escape from his responsibilities towards God. Although the sailors wanted to turn to God, Jonah himself still refused to turn back to God.

As a prophet (holy man), Jonah had the authority to speak on God’s behalf. Although Jonah was behaving wrongly, God had not taken this gift away from him (Romans 11:29). So Jonah told the men what would happen in the future. When they threw him into the sea, the storm would end. It seemed better to Jonah to die than to obey God’s command to go to Nineveh.

This was terrible advice and the men knew it. They were not from Israel, so they had not studied God’s law. However, God has given some knowledge about these matters to all people (Romans 2:14-15). God has declared that murder is wrong for people from every nation (Genesis 9:5-6). These sailors knew that it would be wrong to kill Jonah.

However, Jonah insisted that they must do it. He declared that the storm was because of God’s anger against him, and not them. Therefore, they must kill him to save their own lives.

Next part: The sailors try to save Jonah (Jonah 1:13)

Please use the links at the top of the page to find our other articles in this series. You can download all our articles if you go to the download page for our free 1000+ page course book.