Week 26 Jonah 1
When Jonah went down to the port city and bought a ticket to Tarshish none of the ship’s crew knew he was renegading against the Lord (and at first he didn’t tell them). They only found that out when they were far out in the Mediterranean: as the ship was sailing along, suddenly the Lord flung a powerful wind over the sea, causing a violent storm that threatened to send them to the bottom.
In the modern world a marine weather forecaster looks at natural causes: wind & waves & atmospheric pressure & sea temperature – the usual meteorologically-calculable causes of ocean weather. But in Jonah’s case there was an added piece that a climate-guy wouldn’t have charted – the one about the Lord being Lord of Ocean Storms. Jonah should have known that. He would have read the psalm that said: the voice of the Lord echoes above the sea. The God of glory thunders. The Lord thunders over the mighty sea. But I guess he disregarded what he knew.
Anyway Jonah eventually admitted to the sailors: I am a Hebrew, and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land. If Jonah’s Lord was just Lord-of-the-land then…okay. But that extra bit about him superintending the ocean-deep changed things: the sailors were terrified when they heard this. “Oh, why did you do it?” they groaned .
Which when you get down to it was Jonah’s $64,000-Question.
Note: quotes from Jonah 1:4 9 10 & Psalm 29:3 (NLT)