Jonah 1:5. Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god.
As these sailors were probably Phenicians from different places, they worshiped different gods. Every man may have had his own special deity to whom he prayed when in trouble. Roberts found illustrations of this text on more than one occasion when in a storm at sea in a vessel with a heathen crew: “No sooner does danger appear than one begins to beat his head and cry aloud, ‘Siva, Siva!’ another beats his breast and piteously shrieks forth, ‘Vishnoo!’ and a third strikes his thigh and shouts out with all his might, ‘Varuna!’” (Oriental Illustrations, p. 513).