Jonah 1:6 So the shipmaster came to him, and said to him, What mean you, O sleeper? arise, call on your God, if so be that God will think on us… To the end the Lord may discover the guilty man, and cause of this tempest, as he made the mariners sensible themselves, so the shipmaster is set on work to awaken Jonah, to try his interest with his God (whom they knew not yet to be the true God), if possibly He had more power or goodwill to such as worshipped Him than theirs had. Which is the first step to His discovery. Doctrine — 1. A child of God may sometimes miscarry, so far through infirmity, negligence, and temptation, that even a pagan, by nature's light, may see him reproveable and blameworthy, for so is Jonah reproved by the shipmaster. 2. It is deeply censurable and absurd, even to nature's eye, to be secure in trouble. 3. Variety of false gods hold men in suspense and uncertainty. Therefore every "man having cried unto his God," yet they are not settled, but will have Jonah to essay his God, if He be better than the rest. 4. Nature's light will acknowledge that He who is the true God hath power to deliver in most extreme dangers; for in this great tempest they assert it, — "If God think on us, we will not perish." 5. Howsoever in a calm day, nature conceit and boast of merit, yet in a strait, natural men are forced to have their recourse only to the favour of God. For this pagan shipmaster hath no ground of hope that they shall not perish, but in God's thinking (or being bright and shining, as the word also signifies, that is, looking favourably) on them. (George Hutcheson.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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. |
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