Jonah 1:7
And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah.
The sailors agreed together to cast lots so that they might know for whose cause the evil of the storm was upon them. The casting of lots was a last resort, undertaken because they took the storm as a sign of divine anger. When the lots were cast, the lot fell upon Jonah and identified him. He was responsible because he had turned aside from his duty and was fleeing from the Lord.
After the lot, the sailors questioned him about his work, his origin, his country, and his people. He answered that he worshiped the Lord, the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land, and he admitted that he was fleeing from the Lord. The sailors recognized that his flight had brought them into danger, and Jonah said the storm was on his account and told them to throw him into the sea so that it would become calm. The verse belongs to the record of Jonah's experience in the first and second chapters of Jonah, in which God by severe affliction taught Jonah the lesson of obedience that enabled him to fulfill God's purpose for the inhabitants of Nineveh, a record worthy of most careful study. The ordeal is connected with Jonah's prayer from the fish's belly and his recognition that salvation belongs to the Lord, and after he turned to God in penitence and trusted in God's saving grace, he was delivered from the deep and brought to dry land.