The lot had pointed to Jonah, but the sailors wanted to hear the truth from him before they did anything. They begin, "Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us." Keil & Delitzsch explain that they wanted him to confess with his own mouth. Each question had a purpose. They asked his occupation because it "might be a disreputable one," a shameful trade that had stirred the wrath of the gods. They asked his home and people so they could judge his case safely. Gill adds that knowing his country would tell them which God he worshiped. He also notes that they treated Jonah with "great respect, tenderness, and lenity" (gentleness) instead of falling on him in anger.

Jonah answered by telling them who he was and then who his God is: "I am an Hebrew; and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land" (Jonah 1:9). Keil & Delitzsch observe that he begins with their last question, about his people. He then names the God he fears, which Gill reads as the answer about what Jonah was: a worshiper of the LORD. Jonah also told them why the storm had come, for "the men knew that he fled from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them" (Jonah 1:10).

Casting lots was a common way to seek a hidden answer, something like drawing straws. The result might look like chance, but Gill, on Jonah 1:7, credits it to "the overruling providence and disposing hand of God." In other words, God Himself decided how the lot fell, and Gill points to Proverbs 16:33. The crew were heathen (people who did not know the true God), Keil & Delitzsch say, probably mostly Phoenicians, a seafaring people, from different places, each with his own god (Jonah 1:5). That is why asking a man's country and people was also a way of asking whose god he served, as Gill notes.

The sailors ask who Jonah is, and his answer ends up pointing them to who God is. They ask four questions about him, and he turns to the God he fears: the One "which hath made the sea and the dry land" (Jonah 1:9). His confession is true, but it exposes him. He had tried to go "from the presence of the LORD" (Jonah 1:3), yet the God he names made the very sea he was sailing on. Keil & Delitzsch explain that fleeing "from the presence of the LORD" meant leaving the land where the LORD dwelt in the temple and withdrawing from His service, not escaping His sight. Jonah was not hiding from God's eyes. He was walking away from God's work.

God is at work through the questions of outsiders. The lot, which Gill ties to Proverbs 16:33, and the sailors' honest questions bring the hidden fugitive into the open. Matthew Henry says, "Jonah gave an account of his religion, for that was his business." Even a runaway prophet ends up telling heathen sailors about the LORD.