Albert Barnes Commentary Jonah 1:14

"Wherefore they cried unto Jehovah, and said, We beseech thee, O Jehovah, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man`s life, and lay not upon us innocent blood; for thou, O Jehovah, hast done as it pleased thee." — Jonah 1:14 (ASV)

Therefore they cried to the Lord – They cried no more “each man to his god,” but to the one God, whom Jonah had made known to them. To Him they cried with an earnest, submissive cry, repeating the words of entreaty, as men do in great earnestness: “We beseech You, O Lord, let us not, we beseech You, perish for this man’s life” (i.e., as a penalty for taking it, as it is said, “we will slay him for the life of his brother” (2 Samuel 14:7), and, “life for life” (Deuteronomy 19:21)). They seem to have known what is said in Genesis 9:5-6: “Your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man.

Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God He made man” (Genesis 9:5–6). Do not these words of the sailors seem to us to be the confession of Pilate, who washed his hands and said, ‘I am clean from the blood of this Man’? The Gentiles did not want Christ to perish; they protest that His Blood is innocent.

And lay not upon us innocent blood – innocent as to them, although, regarding this thing, guilty before God; and yet, before God also, more innocent, they would think, than they themselves were. For, strange as this was, Jonah’s one disobedience stood in contrast to their whole lives, which they now knew were lives of disobedience to God; his life, in their eyes, was but one sinful act in an otherwise obedient life. If God so punishes one sin of the holy, “where shall the ungodly and sinner appear?” (1 Peter 4:18). Terrible to the awakened conscience is God’s discipline on what seems to be a single offense of those whom He loves.

For You, Lord, (Who know the hearts of all men,) have done as it pleased You – A wonderful, concise confession of faith in these new converts! Psalmists said it: “Whatsoever God wills, that He does in heaven and in earth, in the sea and in all deep places” (Psalms 135:6; Psalms 115:3). But these men had only just come to know God, and they resolve the whole mystery of human agency and God’s Providence into three simple words, effectively saying, “You willed, You did.” One commentator observes: “That we took him aboard, that the storm arises, that the winds rage, that the billows lift themselves, that the fugitive is betrayed by the lot, that he points out what is to be done—it is of Your will, O Lord.” Another adds: “The tempest itself speaks, that ‘You, Lord, have done as You willed.’ Your will is fulfilled by our hands.”

A further reflection is: “Observe the counsel of God, that of his own will, not by violence or necessity, Jonah should be cast into the sea. For the casting of Jonah into the sea signified the entrance of Christ into the bitterness of the Passion, which He took upon Himself of His own will, not by necessity. ‘He was offered up, and He willingly submitted Himself’ (Isaiah 53:7).”

And as those who sailed with Jonah were delivered, so are the faithful in the Passion of Christ. As Jesus said, “If you seek Me, let these go their way, that the saying might be fulfilled which He spoke, ‘Of them whom You gave Me, I have lost none’” (John 18:8–9).