The sailors, having failed to rouse any help from Jonah’s god by asking Jonah to pray (v. 6), turn to divination. The verse is built on a single root used three times: נפל, “fall.” Twice in the hiphil — the sailors make lots fall — and once in the qal — the lot falls on Jonah. The Hebrew thus narrates human procedure and divine verdict with one verb, and the grammar carries the theology: what the men do, and what God decides, are not two events here but one.

Three details matter for rendering. (1) אִישׁ אֶל־רֵעֵהוּ, “each man to his companion,” repeats the distributive idiom of v. 5 (“each to his own god”) and keeps the crew a collective of individuals. (2) בְּשֶׁלְּמִי is a rare, piled-up construction — preposition + relative שֶׁ + preposition + interrogative — meaning roughly “on account of whom”; it recurs in Jonah’s own mouth in v. 12 (בְשֶׁלִּי, “on my account”), so the sailors’ question and Jonah’s confession must be rendered with matching English. (3) הָרָעָה is the leitwort רעה, the same noun used of Nineveh’s “evil” in 1:2 and of the “evil” God relents from in ch. 3–4. Here it is the storm; the word is kept as “evil” in the literal line so the irony survives.

The verse ends abruptly on the name: ʿal-yônâ. The narrator does not comment. The lot has spoken.

Proposed — pending reviewHans Walter Wolff, Obadiah and Jonah: A Commentary, trans. Margaret Kohl, Continental Commentaries, Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986.

The root נפל appears three times:

• וְנַפִּ֣ילָה — hiphil cohortative 1cp, “let us cause [lots] to fall,” i.e. cast them.
• וַיַּפִּ֨לוּ֙ — hiphil wayyiqtol 3mp, “and they cast.”
• וַיִּפֹּ֥ל — qal wayyiqtol 3ms, “and it fell.”

HALOT and BDB both treat הִפִּיל גּוֹרָל as the standard idiom for casting lots (so Ezek 24:6; Ps 22:19 uses a different verb, יַפִּילוּ גוֹרָל in Joel 3:3 and Obad 1:11 for dividing spoil). The stem alternation is not stylistic variation: the hiphil is causative and belongs to the crew, the qal is intransitive and belongs to the lot. English cannot keep one verb for both without strain (“they made lots fall… and the lot fell”), so the literal line uses “cast” for the hiphil and “fell” for the qal, and this note records the loss.

Note also that the same root supplies the hiphil in 1:4 (הֵטִיל, from טול, a different root meaning “hurl”) — the verbs are distinct; the storm is hurled, the lots are made to fall. Do not conflate them.

Built onhalot · bdb · dch

גּוֹרָל denotes the physical object used in a binary or selective decision (pebble, potsherd, marked stick), and by extension the decision itself, and by further extension an allotted portion (“lot” as inheritance, Josh 14–19). Here the concrete sense is primary.

The practice is not presented as pagan superstition that the narrator corrects. Israel used lots for the same purpose — to identify a guilty party (Josh 7:14–18, Achan; 1 Sam 14:40–42, Jonathan) and to make allocations (Lev 16:8; Num 26:55). Proverbs 16:33 states the theology bluntly: the lot is cast, and the decision is from YHWH. The sailors’ procedure is therefore recognizable to an Israelite reader as a legitimate means of inquiry, and the narrative treats its result as true.

Note the shift from plural גּוֹרָלוֹת (what is cast — multiple lots, one per man) to articular singular הַגּוֹרָל (the one that came out). The article is anaphoric-definite: the decisive lot.

Built onhalot · bdb

A stacked construction: בְּ (“on account of”) + relative שֶׁ + לְ + interrogative מִי. Literally something like “in that which belongs to whom,” i.e. “on whose account / because of whom.” OSHB parses exactly these four morphemes, and that analysis is sound.

Two features are worth noting. First, the short relative שֶׁ (rather than אֲשֶׁר) is rare in classical prose and frequent in later Hebrew and in Northern/Phoenician-influenced material; its presence here is part of the standing argument about Jonah’s date and dialect, though the particle alone settles nothing. Second, the same construction returns on Jonah’s lips in v. 12, בְשֶׁלִּי, “on my account” — the sailors ask on whose account, and Jonah answers on mine. The English must make that match audible; hence “on whose account” here and “on my account” there.

A few interpreters have proposed reading בשלמי differently (for example as containing שָׁלֵם or a form of the name Shelemiah), but the MT pointing and the parallel in v. 12 make the relative-clause analysis decisively preferable.

Built onwaltke-oconnor · jouon-muraoka · halot

Proposed — pending reviewJack M. Sasson, Jonah: A New Translation with Introduction, Commentary, and Interpretation, Anchor Bible 24B, New York: Doubleday, 1990.

רָעָה spans moral evil, wrongdoing, and the harm or disaster that results. In Jonah the noun is a deliberate hinge: Nineveh’s רָעָה rises before God (1:2); the sailors call the storm הָרָעָה הַזֹּאת (1:7, 1:8); God relents of the רָעָה he said he would do (3:10); and the deliverance of Nineveh is רָעָה in Jonah’s eyes (4:1).

The literal line therefore keeps evil throughout, even where English would prefer “calamity,” so the single Hebrew word is visible. The modern line uses “calamity” here, because the sailors are naming the storm, not accusing anyone of a specific moral act — though their question does presuppose that the disaster has a moral cause traceable to a person. That presupposition is the point: the storm is read as judgement before anyone knows whose.

The clause is verbless: הָרָעָה הַזֹּאת לָנוּ, “this evil [is] to us.” No verb of coming or falling is present in the Hebrew; “has come upon us” is supplied.

Built onhalot · bdb · dch

A plural verb with singular אִישׁ in distributive apposition: “they said, each man to his companion.” The construction is reciprocal in effect — “they said to one another” — and matches v. 5, וַיִּזְעֲקוּ אִישׁ אֶל־אֱלֹהָיו, “they cried out, each man to his own god.” The repetition characterizes the crew: polytheistic individualists in v. 5, now conferring as a body while still rendered man by man.

רֵעַ is the broad word for an associate — neighbour, fellow, companion — not specifically a friend in the affective sense, and not a kinship term. “Companion” in the literal line, “one another” in the modern line. Per §9 the social vocabulary is kept precise rather than collapsed; the footnote records that the Hebrew says man to his fellow, with grammatical masculine referring to an all-male ship’s crew (referentially masculine, so no neutralizing is in view).

Built onwaltke-oconnor · halot

The quoted speech is an imperative followed by two cohortatives: לְכוּ (imv 2mp) — וְנַפִּילָה (coh 1cp) — וְנֵדְעָה (coh 1cp).

The first cohortative after the imperative expresses the proposed joint action (“let us cast”); the second, after another volitive, carries purpose or result (“so that we may know”). Joüon–Muraoka and Waltke–O’Connor both describe this sequence; the rendering “so that we may know” is grammar, not interpretation.

לְכוּ is not a command to go anywhere — the men are on a ship in a storm. It is the hortatory interjection, “come!” The literal line keeps “Go —” with a dash to show the form; the modern line reads “Come.”

Built onjouon-muraoka · waltke-oconnor

The narrative shape — disaster, inference of hidden guilt, lots cast, individual identified — reproduces Joshua 7 (Achan) and 1 Samuel 14 (Jonathan) closely enough that an Israelite reader would recognize it. In both of those cases the person the lot identifies is in fact guilty, and the identification is treated as God’s own verdict.

The irony Jonah’s author exploits is that here the procedure is run by Gentile sailors, and it works. Their inquiry is effective; the Hebrew prophet, meanwhile, is asleep below deck and has to be told to pray. The verse contributes to the book’s steady pattern of Gentiles behaving better than the prophet — a pattern that culminates in Nineveh’s repentance in ch. 3 and Jonah’s anger in ch. 4.

Built onbdb · halot

Proposed — pending reviewPhyllis Trible, Rhetorical Criticism: Context, Method, and the Book of Jonah, Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994.

LXX reads: καὶ εἶπεν ἕκαστος πρὸς τὸν πλησίον αὐτοῦ· Δεῦτε βάλωμεν κλήρους καὶ ἐπιγνῶμεν τίνος ἕνεκεν ἡ κακία αὕτη ἐστὶν ἐν ἡμῖν. καὶ ἔβαλον κλήρους, καὶ ἔπεσεν ὁ κλῆρος ἐπὶ Ιωναν.

Three observations.

1. ἕκαστος πρὸς τὸν πλησίον αὐτοῦ renders אִישׁ אֶל־רֵעֵהוּ exactly, distributive singular and all; the Greek even keeps the singular verb εἶπεν with ἕκαστος. The translator understood the idiom.
2. τίνος ἕνεκεν, “on account of whom,” is a sensible unpacking of the difficult בְּשֶׁלְּמִי and confirms the relative-clause analysis of the Hebrew. It does not imply a different Hebrew text.
3. ἐν ἡμῖν, “among us,” for לָנוּ is a flattening of the Hebrew dative-of-disadvantage; and κακία for רָעָה leans toward the moral sense. Neither bears on the Hebrew text.

The translator uses βάλλω κλήρους for both the hiphil and (with πίπτω) the qal, so the Greek also loses the single-root play, though it at least keeps κλῆρος throughout. No variant of substance is in view; this is translation, not a different Vorlage.

Built ongoettingen-lxx-xii · muraoka-lxx

Draft — witness readings here are an AI’s recollection and have not been checked against the apparatus (BHQ, the Göttingen Septuagint, DJD). Verify before relying on them.

The consonantal text is undisputed, and I am aware of no significant variant reported for this verse in the standard apparatus; BHS and BHQ should be consulted directly before the page is promoted past draft. The Masoretic pointing of בְּשֶׁלְּמִי (with dagesh in the lamed, marking the assimilated relative) is the only place where vocalization carries weight, and the parallel at v. 12 (בְשֶׁלִּי) supports it.

The accentuation divides the verse at the ʾatnaḥ on לָ֑נוּ, i.e. at the end of the sailors’ speech — the Masoretes read the verse as speech, then action. That matches the syntax and is followed here.

Built onbhs · bhq

Draft — witness readings here are an AI’s recollection and have not been checked against the apparatus (BHQ, the Göttingen Septuagint, DJD). Verify before relying on them.

This is reception — how later readers used the verse — not evidence for what the Hebrew means.

Jewish tradition. The Targum renders the verse closely; Jewish exegetical tradition characteristically develops the lot-casting as repeated and conclusive — the lot falling on Jonah not once but again and again, so that chance could be excluded and divine designation established. Midrashic and later commentary read the sailors’ competence as rebuke to the prophet. I give this as the shape of the tradition rather than with a locator, since I cannot verify a specific passage here.

Early Church. Jerome, in his commentary on Jonah, treats the lot as providentially governed rather than as a pagan practice to be condemned, appealing to the principle that the outcome of the lot belongs to God; he also uses the sleeping prophet and the praying sailors as a moral contrast. The Vulgate reads mittamus sortes, “let us cast lots,” and cecidit sors super Ionam.

Later use. The verse has featured in Christian discussion of whether lot-casting is lawful inquiry (cited alongside Prov 16:33 and Acts 1:26) or illicit divination — a debate revived at the Reformation. That dispute is later theology; the Hebrew narrative simply reports that the lot fell on Jonah and that it was right.

Proposed — pending reviewJerome, Commentarii in Ionam prophetam (Commentary on Jonah), ed. Y.-M. Duval, Sources chrétiennes 323, Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1985.

Draft — the later uses cited here (New Testament, rabbinic, patristic) are an AI’s recollection and have not been checked against the sources. Verify before relying on them.