Great insights here by George Athas on God, Jonah, and the Benefit of Hebrew. George looks carefully at the Hebrew verbs in Jonah and finds:
It seems that the narrator wants us to understand that Yahweh is in complete control of the situation. Although Jonah is on the run, trying to avoid his divine commission, Yahweh has already taken pre-emptive action, seemingly knowing that Jonah would be on his way to Tarshish rather than Nineveh. Yahweh is, therefore, not chasing after Jonah, as though Jonah might get away from him. And the storm at sea is not Yahweh’s Plan B. Rather, Yahweh had already placed the storm at sea, knowing full well that Jonah would be heading that way instead of heading to Nineveh. God had ‘snookered’ Jonah in advance.