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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
And he said unto them; Jonah freely and readily gives account of himself.
I am a Hebrew; one that am descended from Heber, whose offspring by Abraham are well known, and probably to these mariners: he saith not, a Jew, because he was not in strictness of speech, for he was of the tribe of Zebulun; nor an Israelite, distinguished from the Jew, lest he should seem to own himself of that idolatrous faction.
I fear; I worship and serve the true God only; or possibly it may imply that his employment was in the immediate. service of God, as a religious person that had abdicated the world, and dedicated himself to God.
The Lord; the eternal and almighty God; yours are upstart gods, and have no power or might, nor can they do any thing.
The God of heaven; who first made, now ruleth, and ever will rule the heavens, which none of your gods can pretend to, those heavens from whence you see this storm falleth.
Which hath made the sea; that sea which now threatens you for my sake, and threatens me for my sin; my God hath raised the sea in his quarrel to contend thus furiously, and he can, and none but he can, command it to be still. And the dry land; a description of the earth: you would get thither, but all your gods cannot bring you thither, or give you to set one foot upon it, if my God say no. This is the sum of what Jonah declares, by which he intimateth his innocency from any flagitious crime, as they might imagine him guilty, and yet confesseth the greatness of his sin, which he had before told them, though they understood it not, or thought light of it, he fled from the presence of the Lord.