Rather than becoming God's instrument of salvation Jonah became an object for destruction because he rebelled against God.
1:11 The sailors might have known what to do with Jonah had he been a criminal guilty of some crime against persons or if he had accidentally transgressed a law of his God. However, he was guilty of being a servant of his God and directly disobeying the Lord's order to him. They had no idea what would placate the creator of the sea in such a case, so they asked Jonah since he knew his God.
1:12 Jonah's answer reveals the doublemindedness of the prophet. He could have told them to sail back to Joppa if he really intended to obey the Lord and go to Nineveh. His repentance surely would have resulted in God withholding judgment from the sailors just as the Ninevites' repentance resulted in His withholding judgment from them. Still Jonah was not ready to obey God yet. Nonetheless his compassion for the sailors led him to give them a plan designed to release them from God's punishment. It would also result in his death, which he regarded as preferable to obeying God. His heart was still as hard as ever toward the plight of the Ninevites even though he acknowledged that he knew God was disciplining him.
"He pronounces this sentence, not by virtue of any prophetic inspiration, but as a believing Israelite who is well acquainted with the severity of the justice of the holy God, both from the law and from the history of his nation."32
Why did Jonah not end his own life by jumping overboard? I suspect that he did not have the courage to do so. Obviously it took considerable courage to advise the sailors to throw him into the sea where he must have expected to drown, but suicide takes even more courage.
"The piety of the seamen has evidently banished his nonchalant indifference and touched his conscience. By now he has realized how terrible is the sin that has provoked this terrible storm. The only way to appease the tempest of Yahweh's wrath is to abandon himself to it as just deserts for his sin. His willingness to die is an indication that he realizes his guilt before God."33
1:13 The sailors initially rejected Jonah's advice and compassionately chose to drop him off at the nearest landfall. They strained every muscle for Jonah's sake, literally digging their oars into the water. They demonstrated more concern for one man than Jonah had for the thousands of men, women, and children in Nineveh. When reaching land became impossible due to the raging sea, they prayed to Yahweh, something that we have no record that the prophet had done.
1:14 The sailors also voiced their belief in God's sovereignty, which Jonah had denied by his behavior. They requested physical deliverance and forgiveness from guilt since they anticipated that Jonah would die because of their act. They believed that God's sovereignty was so strongly obvious that He might forgive them. Jonah's innocent death seemed inevitable to them try has they did to avoid it. Still they could not be sure that they were doing God's will and feared that He might punish them for taking the life of His servant. From their viewpoint Jonah was innocent (Heb. naqi) of death because he had not committed any of the crimes for which people suffered death at the hands of their fellowmen. Notwithstanding nothing less than death was what he deserved for sinning against God (Ezek. 18:4, 20).
1:15-16 The immediate cessation of the storm proved to the sailors that Yahweh really did control the sea. Therefore they feared (respected) Him, offered a sacrifice to Him (probably when they reached shore), and made vows (perhaps to venerate Him, cf. Ps. 116:17-18).
"The book of Jonah contains within its few pages one of the greatest concentrations of the supernatural in the Bible. Yet it is significant that the majority of them are based upon natural phenomena."34
These mariners were almost certainly polytheists, so we should not conclude that they abandoned their worship of other gods and "got saved"necessarily. However their spiritual salvation is a possibility. The fact that they made vows to God may point to their conversion.
Note that these pagan sailors feared God more than the prophet did (v. 9). By their actions they gave Him the respect He deserves, but Jonah did not.
This story is full of irony. When someone knows God but chooses to disobey Him, that person begins to demonstrate even less compassion for others, less faith in God's sovereignty, and less fear of Him than pagans normally do.
"Above all, the story thus far extols the fact that sin does not pay and that, try as the sinner will to escape, he is God's marked man. The wages of sin are death."35
