The expression used for captain, literally “chief of the sailors,” does not occur anywhere else, but the word for “sailors” occurs also in Ezek 27.8, 27-29, where New English Bible has “helmsmen.”

The use of the verb “came upon” (New English Bible) suggests an element of chance in the encounter between the captain and Jonah. The verb for found is not the same as in verse 3 but may equally well imply that the discovery was not the result of a search for the one member of the ship’s company who was absent from the “prayer meeting,” but simply that the captain went down to fetch something he needed.

The Hebrew idiom that introduces the question here is also found in Psa 50.16, “What right have you to recite my laws?” (New English Bible). New Jerusalem Bible renders What are you doing asleep? somewhat differently, “How can you be sleeping so sound!” In any case, the participle is not to be understood as a vocative, “you sleeper” as in King James Version, Revised Standard Version. The others on board ship were all busy praying, and that was what Jonah should have been doing.

In some languages What are you doing asleep? can be understood as a relatively senseless question, for obviously Jonah was asleep. The implication is “What business have you to be falling asleep like this when there is something more urgent that you should be doing?” This meaning is sometimes communicated by a question such as “Why are you sleeping?” but this question may not carry the connotation of rebuke implied in the Hebrew text.

Here once again there is the problem of the word for “God” (compare verse 5). The implication underlying your god is that each nationality has its own particular deity. By praying to as many as possible, it might be (Maybe) that one of them (compare Revised Standard Version “the god”) would take effective action and save the ship. The verb feel sorry for us or “spare us a thought” (New English Bible) occurs only here in the Hebrew Old Testament, but it is also found in the Aramaic of Dan 6.4. Prayer would draw God’s attention to the situation, provided, of course, that the God who was responsible for the storm were addressed by name. But the last thing Jonah wanted at this point was that God’s attention should be drawn to him (compare Amos 6.10). As so often in the Old Testament, the narrator does not indicate whether the captain’s orders were carried out. The reader is left to infer that commands are obeyed, without being specifically told what happens (as in 3.9, 10 and 1 Kgs 22.27). But we may assume, in view of the following verses, that Jonah at least joined the others on deck. But there is no indication that he obeyed the order to pray; after all, Jonah’s sole purpose for being where he was, far out at sea, was to avoid God and have nothing to do with him.

In a number of languages one cannot speak of “your god,” since one cannot possess God. In such instances it may be necessary to employ some such expression as “the god whom you worship.” As in verse 5, it may also be important to introduce direct discourse at this point, for example, “Get up and pray to your god, ‘Help us!’ ”

The possibility expressed by the adverb Maybe is rendered in a number of languages by a particular mode of the verb; for example, “He may possibly feel sorry for us.” Expressions of sorrow or pity are frequently rendered by idioms; for example, “His heart may go out to us” or “We may cause pain in his heart.”

Spare our lives must frequently be expressed in terms of “not causing our deaths”; for example, “he may then not cause us to die.”

Quoted with permission from Clark, David J. et al. A Handbook on the Book of Jonah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1978, 1982, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .