Albert Barnes Commentary Jonah 1:9

"And he said unto them, I am a Hebrew; and I fear Jehovah, the God of heaven, who hath made the sea and the dry land." — Jonah 1:9 (ASV)

I am a Hebrew—This was the name by which Israel was known to foreigners. It is used in the Old Testament, only when they are spoken of by foreigners, or speak of themselves to foreigners, or when the sacred writers mention them in contrast with foreigners. So Joseph spoke of his land (Genesis 40:15), and the Hebrew midwives (Exodus 1:19), and Moses’ sister (Exodus 2:7), and God in His commission to Moses (Exodus 3:18; Exodus 7:16; Exodus 9:1) as to Pharaoh, and Moses in fulfilling it (Exodus 5:3).

They had the name, as having passed the River Euphrates, “emigrants.” The title might serve to remind themselves, that they were strangers and pilgrims (Hebrews 11:13), whose fathers had left their home at God’s command and for God, “passers by, through this world to death, and through death to immortality.”

And I fear the Lord—that is, I am a worshiper of Him, most commonly, one who habitually stands in awe of Him, and so one who stands in awe of sin too. For none really fear God, none fear Him as sons, who do not fear Him in act. To be afraid of God is not to fear Him. To be afraid of God keeps men away from God; to fear God draws them to Him.

Here, however, Jonah probably meant to tell them that the Object of his fear and worship was the One Self-existing God, He who alone is, who made all things, in whose hands are all things. He had told them before that he had fled “from being before Yahweh.” They had not thought anything of this, for they thought of Yahweh only as the God of the Jews. Now he adds that He, Whose service he had thus forsaken, was the God of heaven, Who made the sea and dry land, that sea, whose raging terrified them and threatened their lives. The title, “the God of heaven,” asserts the doctrine of the creation of the heavens by God, and His supremacy.

Hence, Abraham uses it to his servant (Genesis 24:7), and Jonah to the pagan mariners, and Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 2:37, Daniel 2:44); and Cyrus in acknowledging God in his proclamation (2 Chronicles 36:23; Ezra 1:2). After his example, it is used in the decrees of Darius (Ezra 6:9–10) and Artaxerxes (Ezra 7:12, Ezra 7:21, Ezra 7:23), and the returned exiles use it in giving account of their building the temple to the Governor (Ezra 5:11–12). Perhaps, from the habit of contact with the pagan, it is used once by Daniel (Daniel 2:18) and by Nehemiah (Nehemiah 1:4–5; Nehemiah 2:4, Nehemiah 2:20). Melchizedek, not perhaps being acquainted with the special name, Yahweh, blessed Abraham in the name of God, the Possessor or Creator of heaven and earth (Genesis 14:19), that is, of all that is.

Jonah, by using it, at once taught the sailors that there is One Lord of all, and why this evil had fallen on them, because they had himself with them, the renegade servant of God. “When Jonah said this, he indeed feared God and repented of his sin. If he lost filial fear by fleeing and disobeying, he recovered it by repentance.”