Jonah 1:8

for whose cause The lot has detected Jonah, but they will not condemn him unheard. They will give him an opportunity of clearing himself, or like Achan (Joshua 7:19), of making confession with his own lips. The judicial fairness and calmness of these heathen men, their abstinence from anger and reproach for the wrong done them, their sense of the sanctity of human life, their fear of punishing the innocent, are very strikingly brought out in the whole of this exciting scene.

"Even in their supreme danger the mariners were anxious not only to avoid all violence, but all haste. While the fury of the waves and the tempest constantly increased, and every instant was precious to those who prized their lives, they patiently instituted an investigation with almost judicial calmness. Though fully trusting to the reality of the decision by lot, they were resolved neither to execute the judgment without the offender's confession, nor to execute it in an arbitrary manner." Kalisch, who quotes the words of Philo: "One might see in the scene a terrible tribunal: for the ship was the court of justice, the judges were the sailors, the executioners were the winds, the prisoner at the bar was the prophet, the house of correction and prison of safe keeping was the whale, and the accuser was the angry sea."

What is thine occupation, &c. This crowding together of questions in their excitement is very true to nature. It has been compared with the well-known passage in Virgil, Æn.VIII. 112 114.