But to the natural man in Israel the possibility of the heathen’s repentance was still so abhorrent, that he turned his back upon it. _Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the face of Jehovah._ In spite of recent arguments to the contrary, the most probable location of Tarshish is the generally accepted one, that it was a Phœnician colony at the other end of the Mediterranean. In any case it was far from the Holy Land; and by going there the prophet would put the sea between himself and his God. To the Hebrew imagination there could not be a flight more remote. Israel was essentially an inland people. They had come up out of the desert, and they had practically never yet touched the Mediterranean. They lived within sight of it, but from ten to twenty miles of foreign soil intervened between their mountains and its stormy coast. The Jews had no traffic upon the sea, nor (but for one sublime instance[1513] to the contrary) had their poets ever employed it except as a symbol of arrogance and restless rebellion against the will of God.[1514] It was all this popular feeling of the distance and strangeness of the sea which made our author choose it as the scene of the prophet’s flight from the face of Israel’s God. Jonah had to pass, too, through a foreign land to get to the coast: upon the sea he would only be among heathen. This was to be part of his conversion. _He went down to Yapho, and found a ship going to Tarshish, and paid the fare thereof, and embarked on her to get away with_ her crew[1515] _to Tarshish—away from the face of Jehovah_.
The scenes which follow are very vivid: the sudden wind sweeping down from the very hills on which Jonah believed he had left his God; the tempest; the behaviour of the ship, so alive with effort that the story attributes to her the feelings of a living thing—_she thought she must be broken_; the despair of the mariners, driven from the unity of their common task to the hopeless diversity of their idolatry—_they cried every man unto his own god_; the jettisoning of the tackle of the ship to lighten her (as we should say, they let the masts go by the board); the worn-out prophet in the hull of the ship, sleeping like a stowaway; the group gathered on the heaving deck to cast the lot; the passenger’s confession, and the new fear which fell upon the sailors from it; the reverence with which these rude men ask the advice of him, in whose guilt they feel not the offence to themselves, but the sacredness to God; the awakening of the prophet’s better self by their generous deference to him; how he counsels to them his own sacrifice; their reluctance to yield to this, and their return to the oars with increased perseverance for his sake. But neither their generosity nor their efforts avail. The prophet again offers himself, and as their sacrifice he is thrown into the sea.
_And Jehovah cast a wind[1516] on the sea, and there was a great tempest,[1517] and the ship threatened[1518] to break up. And the sailors were afraid, and cried every man unto his own god; and they cast the tackle of the ship into the sea, to lighten it from upon them. But Jonah had gone down to the bottom of the ship and lay fast asleep. And the captain of the ship[1519] came to him, and said to him, What art thou doing asleep? Up, call on thy God; peradventure the God will be gracious to us, that we perish not. And they said every man to his neighbour, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose sake is this evil_ come _upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. And they said to him, Tell us now,[1520] what is thy business, and whence comest thou? what is thy land, and from what people art thou? And he said to them, A Hebrew am I, and a worshipper of the God of Heaven,[1521] who made the sea and the dry land. And the men feared greatly, and said to him, What is this thou hast done? (for they knew he was fleeing from the face of Jehovah, because he had told them). And they said to him, What are we to do to thee that the sea cease_ raging _against us? For the sea was surging higher and higher. And he said, Take me and throw me into the sea; so shall the sea cease_ raging _against you: for I am sure that it is on my account that this great tempest is_ risen _upon you. And the men laboured[1522] with the oars to bring the ship to land, and they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. So they called on Jehovah and said, Jehovah, let us not perish, we pray Thee, for the life of this man, neither bring innocent blood upon us: for Thou art Jehovah, Thou doest as Thou pleasest. Then they took up Jonah and cast him into the sea, and the sea stilled from its raging. But the men were in great awe of Jehovah, and sacrificed to Him and vowed vows._