Jonah 1.8-The Crew Interrogates Jonah (Doctrinal Bible Church in Huntsville, Alabama)

Doctrinal Bible Church

Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom

Sunday December 28, 2025

Jonah Series: Jonah 1:8-The Crew Interrogates Jonah

Lesson # 11

Jonah 1:8 records the crew interrogating Jonah.

Jonah 1:1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord. 4 Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. 5 All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. 6 The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us, and we will not perish.” 7 Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?” (NIV84)

“Asked” is the verb ʾā∙mǎr (אָמַר), which means “to interrogate” and is used here of the crew members interrogating Jonah and denotes that they asked Jonah questions to seek answers or information as to his relationship to the great storm and the gods, which Jonah considers secret.

“Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us?” reveals that the crew is demanding that Jonah provide them with information as to who is responsible for the storm striking the ship, what his occupation was, where he came from and what was his nationality.

The emphatic particle of entreaty nā(ʾ) (נָא) is used with the imperative form of the verb nā∙ḡǎḏ (נָגַד), “tell” to express this request for information from Jonah by the crew.

Here it emphasizes or heightens the sense of urgency and intensity of this desire for information from Jonah by the crew.

The crew already knew the answer to the first question (“who is responsible for this calamity”) since the lot answered that for them.

Also, before the casting of the lots, they knew since Jonah admitted to fleeing from his commission according to Jonah 1:10.

Jonah 1:9 He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.” 10 This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them so.) (NIV84)

Therefore, the sailors ask this first question for the purpose of soliciting confession.

The crew wants Jonah to admit his guilt that he brought this terrible storm upon them.

Reed Lessing writes, “The sailors already know the answer to their first request of Jonah because the lot answered it (and according to 1:10, Jonah himself previously had admitted as much). Therefore, some scholars advocate deleting ‘on whose account this evil has come to us!’ Yet people may request information or ask a question when they already know the answer for the purpose of soliciting confession. This was Yahweh’s strategy in Gen 3:11 when he asked Adam, ‘Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?’ Yahweh wants Adam to confess, ‘Yes, I have. Please forgive me.’ But Adam’s response was hardly that; he blamed Eve and Yahweh for creating her as his companion (Gen 3:12). In like manner, the sailors want Jonah to say, ‘It is my fault. I have brought you to the brink of death.’ But guilty Jonah doesn’t fully confess his sin.” (Concordia Commentary: Jonah; pages 126-127)

Jonah does not answer the second question “what do you do?” because he has already told the crew that he was a prophet as implied by the fact that before the storm he admitted to the crew that he was fleeing from the commission of the Lord as recorded Jonah 1:10.

The last three questions are concerned with Jonah’s origin since by determining his nationality, they could figure out which god is responsible for the storm since nationality and religion went together in the ancient Near East.

Stuart writes, “The final three questions all concern Jonah’s origin. The answer to those also would have religious significance, since one’s national god was usually the most important divinity in one’s life at this point in history. The ancients believed in three kinds of gods: personal, family, and national. But the world increasingly organized itself by empires and nations (in contrast, for example, to the relative isolation of the city-state system that had prevailed in Palestine in most of the second millennium b.c.). By Jonah’s time, people’s personal destinies became inextricably linked with their national destinies, and national gods functioned increasingly as personal gods, at least in Palestine. Moreover, the crew certainly had reason to suspect that Jonah was a Palestinian of some sort, since the ship sailed from a Palestinian port, and Jonah presumably spoke and dressed like a Palestinian. If he had been Greek, or Egyptian, or Assyrian, for example, his fluency in the sailor’s native Canaanite (the broad dialect of Philista, Israel, Judah, Edom, Moab, Phoenicia, etc.) would have been less likely and his foreign accent more evident, to mention nothing of his dress. What they wanted to know specifically, then, was which of the Palestinian nations he was from. Each had a national god. That would tell them at least which god he was likely to ‘fear.’ (cf. 1 Kgs 11:5–7).” (Word Biblical Commentary volume 31, Hosea-Jonah, page 46)

The Lord is using the crew now to deal with Jonah’s disobedience.

First he used the storm.

Then, he used the captain and then the drawing of lots and now he uses the questions of the crew to get Jonah to face up to his guilt and disobedience in refusing to go to Nineveh and announce judgment against its inhabitants.

So the Lord is closing in on Jonah and is about to put him in a vice!