Jonah being sent to preach in Ninive, flees away by sea: a tempest rises: of which he being found, by lot, to be the cause, is cast into the sea, which thereupon is calmed.

¹ And the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying:¹

1. 1:1Or, ‘And the word of the Lord happened to Jonah the son of Amittai....’(Conte)

² Rise and go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach in it. For its malice has ascended before my eyes.¹

1. 1:2Nineve: The capital city of the Assyrian empire.(Challoner)

³ And Jonah rose in order to flee from the face of the Lord to Tarshish. And he went down to Joppa and found a ship bound for Tarshish. And he paid its fare, and he went down into it, in order to go with them to Tarshish from the face of the Lord.¹²

1. 1:3Why is the word ‘and’ found so frequently in the Bible? One answer is that the Latin lanuage, in Biblical times, was written with no punctuation, no spaces between the words, and no difference between capital and small letters. So the word ‘and’ (in Latin ‘et’) as well as other words (e.g. ‘for,’ ‘which,’ etc.) had much the same function as punctuation. Repeated use of the word ‘and’ allowed the reader to more easily locate the individual words.(Conte)
2. 1:3Tharsis: Which some take to be Tharsus of Cilicia, others to be Tartessus of Spain, others to be Carthage.(Challoner)

⁴ But the Lord sent a great wind into the sea. And a great tempest took place in the sea, and the ship was in danger of being crushed.

⁵ And the mariners were afraid, and the men cried out to their god. And they threw the containers that were in the ship into the sea in order to lighten it of them. And Jonah went down into the interior of the ship, and he fell into a painful deep sleep.¹²

1. 1:5This last phrase is difficult to translate literally: ‘dormiebat’ means to sleep, but ‘sopore’ is an adverb meaning sleepy. The two words together emphasize that it was a deep sleep. But adding ‘gravi’ makes qualifies this deep sleep even further, in that it was painful or grave or heavy.(Conte)
2. 1:5A deep sleep: This is a lively image of the insensibility of sinners, fleeing from God, and threatened on every side with his judgments: and yet sleeping as if they were secure.(Challoner)

⁶ And the helmsman approached him, and he said to him, “Why are you weighed down with sleep? Rise, call upon your God, so perhaps God will be mindful of us and we might not perish.”

⁷ And a man said to his shipmate, “Come, and let us cast lots, so that we may know why this disaster is upon us.” And they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah.

⁸ And they said to him: “Explain to us what is the reason that this disaster is upon us. What is your work? Which is your country? And where are you going? Or which people are you from?”

⁹ And he said to them, “I am Hebrew, and I fear the Lord God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

¹⁰ And the men were greatly afraid, and they said to him, “Why have you done this?” (For the men knew that he was fleeing from the face of the Lord, because he had told them.)

¹¹ And they said to him, “What are we to do with you, so that the sea will cease for us?” For the sea flowed and swelled.

¹² And he said to them, “Take me, and cast me into the sea, and the sea will cease for you. For I know that it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.”

¹³ And the men were rowing, so as to return to dry land, but they did not succeed. For the sea flowed and swelled against them.¹²

1. 1:13The men of this ship are repeatedly referred to as ‘viri,’ not merely as ‘homines.’ The word ‘vir’ is rather like the English word ‘gentleman’ in that it implies something about the man other than that he is an adult male. The root of the word ‘viri’ is a word meaning virtue or strength. The men of this ship were not bad men, yet they threw Jonah overboard, in accordance with God’s will.(Conte)
2. 1:13Also, though the Douay-Rheims translates this as ‘rowed hard,’ the word ‘hard’ is not justified by the Latin text. However, the very fact that they were rowing shows the extraordinary effort that they went to, since this was certainly a sailing vessel, with oars only for exceptional circumstances.(Conte)

¹⁴ And they cried out to the Lord, and they said, “We beseech you, Lord, do not let us perish for this man’s life, and do not attribute to us innocent blood. For you, Lord, have done just as it pleased you.”

¹⁵ And they took Jonah and cast him into the sea. And the sea was stilled from its fury.

¹⁶ And the men feared the Lord greatly, and they sacrificed victims to the Lord, and they made vows.