It’s fear-inducing to know that the cosmic God who calms the storm also cares about the rebellion of a single man. It’s even greater than their fear of the storm (1:5). In Jonah 1:16, “the men feared the LORD exceedingly.” The Greek translation of this passage emphasizes the great fear the sailors experience when they see God’s power on display. The Lord, Creator of heaven and earth, stills it, and the sailors know they have just witnessed God’s hand and his complete authority over the forces of creation. They begrudgingly throw the prophet overboard, and the storm immediately dissipates. Remember when the sailors cast lots, asking, “Who has brought this storm on us?” The lot falls on Jonah. Surely, the sleeping Jesus is supposed to make you think about Jonah’s story (the first option), where a suspicious storm develops and is quieted by God and all the witnesses are left terrified.
![cast out into the waves of the sea cast out into the waves of the sea](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/14/00/a7/1400a71d648b90c4c342ab0c005820b3.jpg)
Of course, all three of these explanations are possible at the same time, because human language in the hands of a skilled author can convey multiple complex ideas at once. His sleep signals divine insight: Jesus knows he’s not going to die tonight. As only the second person of the Trinity can, Jesus sleeps like a baby amid the chaos, secure in the realization that he is one with the Creator, and his time has not come. Though Jesus is a human, he also has full confidence in his divine identity. Given the strains ordinary ministers experience in their daily work, the fully human Jesus must have suffered from exhaustion during his earthly ministry. Jesus is fully human: He works hard, does much public speaking, and deals with many different people, all of whom want something from him. One is the idea of the main character sleeping in the bottom of the boat during the storm, though the language used to describe Jonah is more vivid and possibly pejorative. The story of Jonah shares similar elements and language (in its Greek translation) to the one in Mark 4, which suggests Mark is evoking the story. Perhaps Mark tells us Jesus is sleeping in order to link the account to Jonah. Mark, as well as most of the other biblical authors, is spare with his details-including only those elements necessary to the author’s agenda-so we could assume it’s a salient element to the story.
![cast out into the waves of the sea cast out into the waves of the sea](https://juliadettmer.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/12.jpg)
And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling.