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Jonah 1:4-6

What Meanest Thou, O Sleeper?

Lyrics · Jonah

What Meanest Thou, O Sleeper?

Jonah 1:4-6

Lyrics

About this song

About this song

This song belongs to the Jonah collection. One recording is available to play here, with the complete lyrics below.

Bible book
Jonah
Collection
Jonah
Musical styles
Uncategorized
[Downbeat Hook] What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, The ship is breaking beneath sleeping eyes. [Verse 1] The LORD hurled wind where the westward sail ran, The timbers complained and the rigging cried back. Mariners prayed to the names they had known, Then threw every profit and cargo below. [Chorus] What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, The ship is breaking beneath sleeping eyes. Call on thy God; perhaps he will regard us, The captain preached what the prophet had fled. [Verse 2] Above him the deck fought water and night, Below him disobedience slept without light. The word said arise; now a stranger says rise, Mercy can wake us through unfamiliar cries. [Bridge] No cargo can purchase a calm for the sea, The sleeper must answer who sent him to flee. [Final Chorus] What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, The ship is breaking beneath sleeping eyes. The captain preached what the prophet had fled. The sleeper must answer who sent him to flee.

About the passage

Jonah 1: A prophet goes down while strangers begin to pray

Jonah 1 begins with almost perfect grammatical obedience and immediate practical refusal: Jonah is told to arise, and he rises, but only to buy passage away from Nineveh. The Book of Jonah marks that choice with repeated descent, from Joppa to the ship's interior and then toward the sea. A storm exposes the absurdity of trying to flee by water from the God Jonah himself identifies as maker of "the sea and the dry land." Meanwhile, the sailors become the chapter's moral surprise. They pray before Jonah does, question him before condemning him, and row hard for shore after he offers himself as the solution. Only then do they cast him overboard, after appealing to the LORD about innocent blood. The calm turns their fear into sacrifice and vows. Jonah's downward movement finally meets an appointed fish, and apparent destruction becomes preservation.

Study Jonah 1 in depth