Hierophantic Hearing at Horeb

           At the time that Elijah was emerging as a vatic voice for the Israelites in the early period of Kings, a seer of another sort, the great Greek poet Homer was crafting his epic works, the Iliad and the Odyssey.  In Book 24 of the former, there is a famous and compelling scene where Achilles returns the body of Hector whom he has killed to Hector’s father, Priam, and the two embrace in silence.  Intense grief is attendant on the loss of a warrior hero, and enmity is suspended.  Homer creates a momentous moment of mutual forgiveness that startles our expectations.  There is an analogue here to 1 Kings, 19.  In the encounter that Elijah has on Horeb with Yawheh’s presence, a dramatic scene develops along established lines of theophany but the culminating manifestation of divine presence contradicts anticipations of might and majesty.  What Elijah hears—and doesn’t hear---instructs him on his role as prophet.  David Wolpe comments on the significance of what Elijah learns:

                    Elijah was witness to a titanic show of natural force in

                    order to prepare him to listen for the silence.  He was
                    anticipating a word, and needed to hear its absence. 
                    God’s self-disclosure to Elijah is not with a word, but
                    with the voice of silence.  Elijah is renowned for his
                    zeal; he understands the God of awesome declarations,
                    of dazzling wonders.  In the previous chapter, Elijah, in
                    opposition to the priests of the idol Baal, has invoked
                    God’s fire upon an altar.  Now when God needs to speak
                    to him, Elijah expects thunder.  He learns silence. [1]

          Because Elijah’s experience with God’s voice arrests and compels the biblical reader’s attention, it has been the subject of much exegesis. The specific passage most examined in 1 Kings 19 is 11-12. 

A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains and crushing rocks before the LORD—but the LORD was not in the wind.  After the wind there was an earthquake—but the LORD was not in the earthquake.  After the earthquake there was fire—but the LORD was not in the fire.  After the fire there was a tiny whispering sound.  When he heard this Elijah hid his face in his cloak and went and stood at the entrance of the cave. [2]

          The prime exegetical issue here is— what is it that is heard?  It clearly is not actual total silence as Wolpe suggests above.  The range of translations employed in different Bibles shows that the hearing at Horeb is hard to pin down.  For example, here are a couple of relatively recent lists of variants; first, Norman Podoretz in his  book, The Prophets: “The literal meaning of kol d’mamah dakkah is ‘a voice [or sound] of thin silence.’  I for one like KJV’s “a still small voice” better than NRSV’s ‘a sound of sheer silence’ or NJPS’s ‘a soft murmuring sound,’ let alone JB’s ‘the sound of a gentle breeze.’ [3] Secondly, Craig Morrison, OCarm, in his essay “Elijah’s Ineffable Experience”:

                    The phrase itself offer few clues for penetrating its meaning,

                    and a study of the individual words only brings into relief the
                    paradox they contain, “a sound of thin silence.”  It is without
                    parallel in the Bible. Its inscrutability has generated a multi-
                    plicity of English translations.  I know of at least twenty
                    different ones, including : “a thin petrifying sound, “a roaring
                    and thunderous voice,” “a sound of a gentle breeze,” and “a
                    sound of sheer silence” (my favorite for its alliteration). [4]

          The “multiplicity of English translations” has been objected to in principle by Gerhard von Rad in his foundational Old Testament Theology where he displays  reservations about multiple interpretations of theophany and symbolic explanations.  On the other hand, the Collegeville Bible commentary asserts plainly, “The episode is artistically constructed.” [5]

          In my view artistic construction is a key to understanding Elijah’s experience. The repetition of the “but/not” phrases, e.g., but the LORD was not in the wind…the earthquake…the fire… serve not only to eliminate locating the divine in the natural but also to abet a larger discernment.  In Elijah’s period of crisis—and in our own—spiritual succor should be sought by attending to God’s presence within rather than without.  Psalm 46, “Be still and confess that I am God,” picks up part of the dimension of trust that is thrust to the fore here.  In many ways Elijah is the ideal exemplum to show the need for spiritual transformation.  Unpredictable, imprudent, seemingly whipsawed by  emotions that impelled him to mock the prophets of Baal during the contest at Mt. Carmel, Elijah flees from the fear of Jezebel’s threat, and despairs to the point that he asks the Lord to allow him to die.  He needs the guidance of an angel to restore his energy to move from the broom tree and partake of food.  Nevertheless, all of this depleting frenzy is part of Elijah’s journey to the very same mountain of the Lord where Moses received the covenant with God. He follows the path that Moses trod, purifies himself with forty days and nights of fast as did the partriarch and also hides his face in the presence of God's glory.  With such a personal manifestation of God's presence, Elijah should be filled with hope and on the threshold of exaltation.  But he is filled with more agitation than joy.

          We should not be surprised at this.  Elijah is filled with "fear and trembling" as Moses was, as all of us would be.  We get a strong sense of this roiled seeking self in Martin Buber's poem, "Elijah."

                              You wanted to descend like a storm wind

                              And to be mighty in deed like the tempest,
                              You wanted to blow being to being
                              And bless human souls while scourging them,
                              To admonish weary hearts in the hot whirlpool
                              And to stir the rigid to agitated light,
                              You sought me on your stormy paths
                              And did not find me.


                                                  …………………

                              Then my messenger came to you

                              And placed your ear next to the still life of my earth,
                              Then you felt how seed after seed began to stir,
                              And all the movements of growing things encircled you,
                               Blood hammered against blood, and the silence overcame/
                                                                                                                           you

                    The eternally complete, soft and motherly

                                --Then you had to incline upon yourself,
                                Then you found me. [6]

In this poem Buber (who had a longstanding interest in Elijah and wrote a mystery play centering on him) profoundly limns the visage of the stalker after truth, the sinner seeking salvation, who appear to me as one and the same.   T.S. Eliot in "Burnt Norton," images that “still point of the turning world . . . Neither movement from nor towards,” perhaps a place where we and Elijah will attain “release from the inner/And the outer compulsion,” if we learn to  listen and hear the Word of Yahweh in what Yeats termed “the deep heart’s core.”

              

---

[1] Wolpe, David.  Speech and Silence: The Jewish Quest for God, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1992, p. 193

[2] The Catholic Study Bible, New American Bible, divers editors, Oxford University Press, New York, 1990

[3] Podhoretz, Norman.  The Prophets, The Free Press, New York, 2002, p.97 (*note)

[4] Morrison, Craig, OCarm, “Elijah’s Ineffable Experience,” The Bible Today, 41, 6 (2003): 354-58

[5] Bergant, Dianne, C.S.A., General Editor, The Collegeville Bible Commentary, The Liturgical Press,   

  Minnesota, 1992, p.309

[6]  Quoted in Martin Buber and the Theater, edited and translated by Maurice Friedman, Funk and Wagnalls, New York, 1969, p.96.