One day Jesus said to His disciples, “Let us cross to the other side of the lake.” So He got into a boat with them and set out. As they sailed, He fell asleep, and a windstorm came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great danger. The disciples went and woke Him, saying, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” Then Jesus got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters, and they subsided, and all was calm. “Where is your faith?” He asked. Frightened and amazed, they asked one another, “Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey Him!”
Then the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship was in danger of breaking apart. The sailors were afraid, and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the ship's cargo into the sea to lighten the load. But Jonah had gone down to the lowest part of the vessel, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. The captain approached him and said, "How can you sleep? Get up and call upon your God. Perhaps this God will consider us, so that we may not perish."
Others went out to sea in ships, conducting trade on the mighty waters. They saw the works of the LORD, and His wonders in the deep. For He spoke and raised a tempest that lifted the waves of the sea. They mounted up to the heavens, then sunk to the depths; their courage melted in their anguish. They reeled and staggered like drunkards, and all their skill was useless. Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble, and He brought them out of their distress. He calmed the storm to a whisper, and the waves of the sea were hushed. They rejoiced in the silence, and He guided them to the harbor they desired.
Walk the Square · a single-voice walk of this pair around the Clowney square13:34
Significance
Jesus calming the storm in Luke 8:22-25 echoes Jonah's storm narrative (Jonah 1:4-6), but as one greater than Jonah. Where Jonah slept during the storm and was awoken by fearful sailors, Jesus sleeps and is awoken by fearful disciples. Where Jonah's presence caused the storm (judgment) and the sea was stilled only when he was thrown into it, Jesus' presence calms it (salvation) at a word. The disciples' question "Who is this?" parallels the sailors' fear and wonder. The relation is analogy sharpened into contrast rather than typology: Jonah 1 makes no pattern-claim, and the New Testament's actual Jonah type is the sign of Jonah — three days in the fish, death and resurrection (Matthew 12:40, carried by the Related Trajectory Table below) — not the storm scene. Here the load-bearing point is divine identity: the disciples' terror gives way to a greater terror when the sea obeys Him, because only YHWH stills the storm and hushes its waves (Psalm 107:23-30). Jonah could only be cast overboard to save the ship; Jesus commands the wind and water and they obey, revealing that the One asleep in the boat is the Lord of the sea Israel had sung to — and He is asleep because He is on His way to being cast, like Jonah, into the depths to still a greater storm for those in the boat with Him.
