Albert Barnes Commentary Jonah 1:6

"So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not." — Jonah 1:6 (ASV)

What meanest thou?—or rather, “what is wrong with you?” (literally, “what is to you?”). The shipmaster speaks of it (as it was) as a sort of disease, that he should be asleep in this way in the common peril. The shipmaster, charged as he was by his office with the common welfare of those on board, would, in the common peril, have one common prayer. It was the prophet’s office to call the pagans to prayer and to calling upon God. God reproved the Scribes and Pharisees by the mouth of the children who cried Hosanna (Matthew 21:15); Jonah by the shipmaster; David by Abigail (1 Samuel 25:32–34); Naaman by his servants. Now too, he reproves worldly priests by the devotion of laymen, and skeptic intellect by the simplicity of faith.

If so be that God will think upon us—(literally “for us”), i.e., for good; as David says (Psalms 40:17), I am poor and needy, the Lord thinketh upon (literally “for”) me. Their calling upon their own gods had failed them. Perhaps the shipmaster had seen something special about Jonah, his manner, or his prophet’s garb.

He does not only call Jonah’s God, “thy” God, as Darius says to Daniel thy God (Daniel 6:20), but also “the God,” acknowledging the God whom Jonah worshiped to be “the God.” It is not any pagan prayer which he asks Jonah to offer. It is the prayer of the creature in its need to God who can help; but knowing its own unworthiness, and the separation between itself and God, it does not know whether He will help it. So David says (Psalms 25:7), Remember not the sins of my youth nor my transgressions; according to Thy mercy remember Thou me for Thy goodness’ sake, O Lord.

“The shipmaster knew from experience that it was no common storm, that the surges were an infliction borne down from God and above human skill, and that there was no good in the master’s skill. For the state of things needed another Master who orders the heavens, and craved the guidance from on high. So then they too left oars, sails, cables, gave their hands rest from rowing, and stretched them to heaven and called on God.”