Jonah 1:7

Finding their prayers as unavailing as their efforts, the sailors conclude that the storm is sent upon them by the gods as a judgment for some crime committed by one of their number; and they proceed to cast lots to discover who the culprit is. Instances of a similar belief on the part of the heathen have been adduced from classical authors (see Rosenmüller and Maurer in loc.). A story is told by Cicero (de Nat. Deor.III. 37) of Diagoras, how that when he was on a voyage, and the sailors, terrified by a storm which had befallen them, charged him with being the cause of it, he pointed to other vessels in the same plight with themselves, and asked them whether they thought that they too carried Diagoras. Horace, in a well-known passage, affirms that he would not suffer a man, who had provoked the anger of the gods, to put to sea in the same boat with him, because the innocent in such cases were not unfrequently involved in a common punishment with the guilty (Hor. Od.lib. III. c. 2. 26 30). The truth, which underlay this wide spread conviction, is taught us in its pure form in such histories as those of Achan (Joshua 7.) and Jonathan (1 Samuel 14:36-46).

for whose cause Lit., on account of (that) which (refers) to whom, i. e. on whose account. The same expression occurs in Jonah 1:12 (" for my sake"), and, though in the Hebrew in an uncontracted form, in Jonah 1:8

the lot fell upon Jonah An illustration of Proverbs 16:33; comp. Joshua 7:18; 1 Samuel 14:42. It is worthy of note that the use of the lot, though frequently mentioned and sanctioned in the O. T., and employed even after the Ascension in the choice of an Apostle to fill the place of Judas, never occurs in the Bible after the day of Pentecost. It would seem to have been superseded and rendered needless by the gift which conferred "a right judgment in all things."