There is a man sitting on an ash heap outside the city, and he scrapes himself with a shard of pottery.
He has buried ten children, all on the same day. His herds have been plundered, his servants lie dead in the field, his skin is one sore from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, and his wife has advised him the only thing she still knew: curse God, and die. Three friends have come and have sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights in silence — until someone began, and the talking would not stop again. For thirty-five chapters the argument surges back and forth across the ash heap, guilt and retribution, thesis and rebuttal, and straight through it all Job asks for something other than comfort. He asks for a trial. Let the Almighty answer me; let my Accuser set his indictment down in writing — I would carry it on my shoulder, I would bind it on like a crown. Then everyone has spoken themselves out, even the youngest, who kept going longest. It grows quiet on the ash heap, as quiet as it only becomes where everything has been said and nothing has helped.
Then a wind comes up.
The dust begins to run, the potsherd falls. And out of the storm — סְעָרָה, the word that will presently carry the chariot that takes Elijah up to heaven, and the cloud that slams Ezekiel to the ground — YHWH answers the man who asked for a lawsuit. Of the trial not a word is spoken. He begins at the building site of the world: where were you, when I founded the earth? Who fixed its measurements — you must know? Who stretched the measuring line over it, on what were its bases sunk, who laid its cornerstone?
For four chapters the storm holds. Rain on a land where no man lives. Storehouses full of snow and hail, kept for the day of battle. The wild donkey that laughs at the roar of the city, the horse that says ha! at the trumpet, the monster in the reeds that no man can put on a line. And the man who wanted to bind the indictment on like a crown lays his hand on his mouth: "behold, I have been found too light — what should I answer You?" When the storm has spent itself, he keeps out of his whole case a single sentence: "by the hearing of the ear I had heard You — but now my eye has seen You."
None of his questions has been dealt with. He has been spoken to, and it was enough.
II. The Mountain That Smoked
Centuries later a people stands around the foot of a mountain, and the mountain is on fire.
It is the third day. For two days they have washed their clothes; a boundary has been drawn around the mountain — whoever touches it dies, man or beast. On the morning of the third day: thunderclaps and lightnings, a heavy cloud upon the mountain, and the sound of a trumpet, exceedingly strong — and all the people in the camp tremble. Moses leads them out of the camp to meet God, and they take their stand at the foot of the mountain. All of Sinai smokes, for YHWH descends upon it in fire; the smoke rises like the smoke of a furnace, the whole mountain trembles violently, and the sound of the trumpet swells, stronger and stronger.
And above all of it: words. Ten, out of the midst of the fire, for the ears of a whole people at once.
They cannot bear it. They shrink back, stand at a distance and say to Moses: you speak with us, and we will hear — but do not let God speak with us, lest we die. Forty years later Moses recalls that morning as if the wonder were still fresh: has there ever been a people that heard the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard — and lived? So the people stands there, at the foot of the mountain: alive, and trembling because it lives.
On that same mountain, centuries later, one man reports. He has fled into the wilderness from a queen who wants his head, has asked for death under a broom bush, and on the strength of two meals has walked forty days, all the way to Horeb, the mountain of God. Go out, it sounds in the cave, and stand on the mountain before the face of YHWH — behold, YHWH passes by. A great, strong wind splits mountains and breaks rocks before his face: "in the wind YHWH was not." After the wind an earthquake: "in the earthquake YHWH was not." After the earthquake fire: "in the fire YHWH was not." And after the fire: a voice of thin silence.
Elijah wraps his face in his mantle and goes to stand in the entrance of the cave.
For the storm his face did not need to be covered. For the silence it did.
And the speaking travels on, to where no mountain stands anymore. By a canal in Babylon, among the exiles, a priest who was never allowed to serve sees a storm wind coming from the north — that word again — a great cloud, fire enfolding itself; four creatures within it, wheels full of eyes that go without turning, above their heads a vault like awesome crystal, and above the vault something like a throne of sapphire. "Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of YHWH. And I saw it, and fell on my face — and I heard the voice of One who spoke."
So it goes, century after century: where this voice sounds, no man remains standing.
III. In a Son
One letter gathers all those centuries into its opening sentence, without taking back a single flame:
"After God, in many portions and in many ways, had spoken of old to the fathers in the prophets, He has in these last days spoken to us in a Son."
In many portions: the storm over the ash heap, the smoking mountain, the thin silence, the sapphire throne above the canal. In many ways: thundering, whispering, in visions that slam a man to the ground.
And beneath all that speaking something remained closed. Scripture has its own word for it: the mystery, kept silent for ages and generations — every storm and every silence a door ajar, onto a hall that had not yet opened.
That same letter sets, at its close, the two mountains over against each other: "for you have not come to a tangible mountain, to burning fire, gloom, darkness and storm, to the blast of a trumpet and a sound of words such that the hearers begged that the word be addressed to them no longer [...] but you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to tens of thousands of angels, a festal gathering [...] and to Jesus, the Mediator of a new covenant."
And the last sentence of that chapter: "for our God is a consuming fire."
Here the story tilts. The last speaking came not out of a storm and not from a mountain — it came out of a human throat.
A voice that had to speak from a boat because the crowd on the shore pressed Him against the water. A voice that slept on a cushion, in the stern of that same boat, while the waves filled the ship — and that, shaken awake, said two words to the water: be still, be silent. A voice that wept at a grave and called the dead man out by his name. A voice that at the ninth hour, in the darkness that lay over the land, shouted a line of a psalm. No mountains melted from it; a curtain was torn, from top to bottom, and the earth trembled after all.
HeartThe Last Word
Everything God ever said, He has now said in one Name. The storm over the ash heap was His voice, and the trumpet above Sinai, and the thin silence before which a prophet hid his face — and when it came down to the one thing that stayed silent all those centuries, He chose no storm. He gave a Son. Radiance of His glory, imprint of His being, who bears all things by the word of His power — and who was wrapped in cloths and laid in a feeding trough, because there was no room. Whoever hears Him hears the voice out of the midst of the fire, and stays alive; more than that: he is called to come nearer than Moses ever was allowed. Job asked for an answer and was given God to see. To us more is given: God who has come to sit beside the ash heap. "In these last days He has spoken to us in a Son." After this Word there is nothing more to say; there is only left to answer.
What that voice did with the songs of Israel is the subject of this book. Four of them carry it. Three crown a king — a son who is declared heir, a king who marries, a king who sits down at the right hand of God. The fourth crowns no one of name: it is about a mortal, and it opens at the place where Job received his answer — at the founding of the earth.
Source-text footnotes. All translations are the author's own concordant working translations; in the typeset edition the notes stand at the foot of the page.
I. The Voice out of the Storm
There is a man sitting on an ash heap outside the city, and he scrapes himself with a shard of pottery.
He has buried ten children, all on the same day. His herds have been plundered, his servants lie dead in the field, his skin is one sore from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, and his wife has advised him the only thing she still knew: curse God, and die. Three friends have come and have sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights in silence — until someone began, and the talking would not stop again. For thirty-five chapters the argument surges back and forth across the ash heap, guilt and retribution, thesis and rebuttal, and straight through it all Job asks for something other than comfort. He asks for a trial. Let the Almighty answer me; let my Accuser set his indictment down in writing — I would carry it on my shoulder, I would bind it on like a crown. Then everyone has spoken themselves out, even the youngest, who kept going longest. It grows quiet on the ash heap, as quiet as it only becomes where everything has been said and nothing has helped.
Then a wind comes up.
The dust begins to run, the potsherd falls. And out of the storm — סְעָרָה, the word that will presently carry the chariot that takes Elijah up to heaven, and the cloud that slams Ezekiel to the ground — YHWH answers the man who asked for a lawsuit. Of the trial not a word is spoken. He begins at the building site of the world: where were you, when I founded the earth? Who fixed its measurements — you must know? Who stretched the measuring line over it, on what were its bases sunk, who laid its cornerstone?
For four chapters the storm holds. Rain on a land where no man lives. Storehouses full of snow and hail, kept for the day of battle. The wild donkey that laughs at the roar of the city, the horse that says ha! at the trumpet, the monster in the reeds that no man can put on a line. And the man who wanted to bind the indictment on like a crown lays his hand on his mouth: "behold, I have been found too light — what should I answer You?" When the storm has spent itself, he keeps out of his whole case a single sentence: "by the hearing of the ear I had heard You — but now my eye has seen You."
None of his questions has been dealt with. He has been spoken to, and it was enough.
II. The Mountain That Smoked
Centuries later a people stands around the foot of a mountain, and the mountain is on fire.
It is the third day. For two days they have washed their clothes; a boundary has been drawn around the mountain — whoever touches it dies, man or beast. On the morning of the third day: thunderclaps and lightnings, a heavy cloud upon the mountain, and the sound of a trumpet, exceedingly strong — and all the people in the camp tremble. Moses leads them out of the camp to meet God, and they take their stand at the foot of the mountain. All of Sinai smokes, for YHWH descends upon it in fire; the smoke rises like the smoke of a furnace, the whole mountain trembles violently, and the sound of the trumpet swells, stronger and stronger.
And above all of it: words. Ten, out of the midst of the fire, for the ears of a whole people at once.
They cannot bear it. They shrink back, stand at a distance and say to Moses: you speak with us, and we will hear — but do not let God speak with us, lest we die. Forty years later Moses recalls that morning as if the wonder were still fresh: has there ever been a people that heard the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard — and lived? So the people stands there, at the foot of the mountain: alive, and trembling because it lives.
On that same mountain, centuries later, one man reports. He has fled into the wilderness from a queen who wants his head, has asked for death under a broom bush, and on the strength of two meals has walked forty days, all the way to Horeb, the mountain of God. Go out, it sounds in the cave, and stand on the mountain before the face of YHWH — behold, YHWH passes by. A great, strong wind splits mountains and breaks rocks before his face: "in the wind YHWH was not." After the wind an earthquake: "in the earthquake YHWH was not." After the earthquake fire: "in the fire YHWH was not." And after the fire: a voice of thin silence.
Elijah wraps his face in his mantle and goes to stand in the entrance of the cave.
For the storm his face did not need to be covered. For the silence it did.
And the speaking travels on, to where no mountain stands anymore. By a canal in Babylon, among the exiles, a priest who was never allowed to serve sees a storm wind coming from the north — that word again — a great cloud, fire enfolding itself; four creatures within it, wheels full of eyes that go without turning, above their heads a vault like awesome crystal, and above the vault something like a throne of sapphire. "Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of YHWH. And I saw it, and fell on my face — and I heard the voice of One who spoke."
So it goes, century after century: where this voice sounds, no man remains standing.
III. In a Son
One letter gathers all those centuries into its opening sentence, without taking back a single flame:
In many portions: the storm over the ash heap, the smoking mountain, the thin silence, the sapphire throne above the canal. In many ways: thundering, whispering, in visions that slam a man to the ground.
And beneath all that speaking something remained closed. Scripture has its own word for it: the mystery, kept silent for ages and generations — every storm and every silence a door ajar, onto a hall that had not yet opened.
That same letter sets, at its close, the two mountains over against each other: "for you have not come to a tangible mountain, to burning fire, gloom, darkness and storm, to the blast of a trumpet and a sound of words such that the hearers begged that the word be addressed to them no longer [...] but you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to tens of thousands of angels, a festal gathering [...] and to Jesus, the Mediator of a new covenant."
And the last sentence of that chapter: "for our God is a consuming fire."
Here the story tilts. The last speaking came not out of a storm and not from a mountain — it came out of a human throat.
A voice that had to speak from a boat because the crowd on the shore pressed Him against the water. A voice that slept on a cushion, in the stern of that same boat, while the waves filled the ship — and that, shaken awake, said two words to the water: be still, be silent. A voice that wept at a grave and called the dead man out by his name. A voice that at the ninth hour, in the darkness that lay over the land, shouted a line of a psalm. No mountains melted from it; a curtain was torn, from top to bottom, and the earth trembled after all.
HeartThe Last Word
Everything God ever said, He has now said in one Name. The storm over the ash heap was His voice, and the trumpet above Sinai, and the thin silence before which a prophet hid his face — and when it came down to the one thing that stayed silent all those centuries, He chose no storm. He gave a Son. Radiance of His glory, imprint of His being, who bears all things by the word of His power — and who was wrapped in cloths and laid in a feeding trough, because there was no room. Whoever hears Him hears the voice out of the midst of the fire, and stays alive; more than that: he is called to come nearer than Moses ever was allowed. Job asked for an answer and was given God to see. To us more is given: God who has come to sit beside the ash heap. "In these last days He has spoken to us in a Son." After this Word there is nothing more to say; there is only left to answer.
What that voice did with the songs of Israel is the subject of this book. Four of them carry it. Three crown a king — a son who is declared heir, a king who marries, a king who sits down at the right hand of God. The fourth crowns no one of name: it is about a mortal, and it opens at the place where Job received his answer — at the founding of the earth.
Source-text footnotes. All translations are the author's own concordant working translations; in the typeset edition the notes stand at the foot of the page.