Albert Barnes Commentary Jonah 1:10

"Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto him, What is this that thou hast done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of Jehovah, because he had told them." — Jonah 1:10 (ASV)

Then were the men exceedingly afraid – Before, they had feared the tempest and the loss of their lives. Now they feared God. They feared, not the creature but the Creator. They knew that what they had feared was the doing of His Almightiness. They felt how awesome a thing it was to be in His Hands. Such fear is the beginning of conversion, when people turn from dwelling on the distresses that surround them, to God who sent them.

Why hast thou done this? – They are words of amazement and wonder. Why have you not obeyed so great a God, and how did you think to escape the hand of the Creator? “What is the mystery of your flight? Why did one, who feared God and had revelations from God, flee, rather than go to fulfill them? Why did the worshiper of the One true God depart from his God?” “A servant flee from his Lord, a son from his father, man from his God!” The inconsistency of believers is the marvel of the young Christian, the repulsion of those outside, the hardening of the unbeliever.

If people really believed in eternity, how could they be so immersed in things of time? If they believed in hell, how could they so hurry there? If they believed that God died for them, how could they so repay Him? Faith without love, knowledge without obedience, conscious dependence and rebellion, to be favored by God yet to despise His favor, are the strangest marvels of this mysterious world.

All nature seems to cry out to and against the unfaithful Christian, “Why hast thou done this?” And what a why it is! A scoffer has recently said so truthfully: “Avowed scepticism cannot do a tenth part of the injury to practical faith, that the constant spectacle of the huge mass of worldly unreal belief does.” It is nothing strange that the world or unsanctified intellect should reject the Gospel. It is a matter of course, unless it is converted. But, to know, to believe, and to DISOBEY!

To disobey God, in the name of God. To propose to halve the living Gospel, as the woman who had killed her child (1 Kings 3:26), and to think that the poor quivering remnants would be the living Gospel any longer! As though the will of God might, like those lower forms of His animal creation, be divided endlessly, and, whatever fragments we keep, it would still be a living whole, a vessel of His Spirit!

Such unrealities and inconsistencies would be a severe trial of faith, had not Jesus, who , knew what is in man, forewarned us that it should be so. The scandals against the Gospel, so contrary to all human opinion, are only all the more a testimony to the divine knowledge of the Redeemer.