Jonah 1:4
But the LORD sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. But the LORD sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken.
The Lord sent out a great wind that raised a violent storm at sea to interrupt Jonah's flight from Him and from the responsibility entrusted to him, directing it against the ship he had taken while fleeing his charge. The storm was so severe that the ship was in danger of breaking apart. It brought the sailors to fear for their lives, so that each cried to his own god and they threw cargo overboard to lighten the ship. Meanwhile Jonah slept below deck until the shipmaster roused him and urged him to call on his God in hope they might be spared.
The storm began the sequence that led to Jonah being cast into the sea, and it ceased once he was thrown overboard. His subsequent peril in the deep and his deliverance show that salvation belongs to the Lord. In providence God used this severe affliction as one of the trials through which He led Jonah, to teach him the lesson of obedience so he could fulfill God's purpose for the inhabitants of Nineveh. The experience recorded in the first and second chapters of Jonah is worthy of most careful study.
As part of the history of Nineveh, the verse teaches duty toward people who are ignorant and morally defiled and need help, a lesson that applies to service among the people of the Southern States.