2:8a

Those who cling to worthless idols: In 2:8–9 Jonah contrasted himself, a believer in the true God, with people who worshiped idols. Jonah may have been referring to a particular group of people—for example, the sailors—or he may have been thinking about anyone who worshiped idols rather than the true God.

2:8b

forsake His loving devotion: Literally “they forsake their grace.” This is a very difficult expression in Hebrew. Commentators and translations differ on how they interpret it, depending on how they translate ḥeseḏ, which means “grace, kindness, loyalty, unfailing love,” and what they understand by the expression “their grace.”

The two main possibilities are:

(1) “their grace” means “the LORD’s grace to them,” that is, the love and kindness which the LORD would have shown them if they had believed in him rather than worshiping idols.

(2) “their grace” means “the loyalty which they should show to the LORD.” Here is another way to translate this:

have abandoned their loyalty to you (Good News Translation)

There is good support for each of these possibilities. However, in the context, it seems as if Jonah was referring to the pagan sailors. From his point of view, as a Hebrew, people who were not Hebrews had never been “loyal” to the LORD, so how could they “have abandoned their loyalty to” him? The first interpretation makes more sense, therefore, and should be followed. Those who worship idols and follow them forsake the grace they might have obtained from the LORD.

© 2020 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.