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The Still Small Voice · Behind the Bible Verse: The Stories and History Behind Scripture

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  A prophet who has just called down fire from heaven runs for his life into the
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  desert. On a mountain, after wind, earthquake and fire, what he hears is
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  described in words translators have argued about for centuries.
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  Behind the Bible Verse. This is made with the assistance of AI.
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  Our reading is from the first book of Kings, chapter nineteen, verses eight to
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  eighteen, in the World English Bible, British Edition.
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  Just before it, Queen Jezebel has sent Elijah a message: she swears by her gods
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  to take his life within a day. He runs south to Beersheba, leaves his servant
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  there, and goes on alone into the wilderness. He sits down under a tree and
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  asks to die. Twice an angel wakes him with bread and water and tells him to get up
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  and eat.
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  He arose, and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and
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  forty nights to Horeb, God’s Mountain. He came to a cave there, and camped there;
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  and behold, the LORD’s word came to him, and he said to him, “What are you doing
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  here, Elijah?”
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  He said, “I have been very jealous for the LORD, the God of Armies; for the children
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  of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your
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  prophets with the sword. I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it
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  away.”
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  He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD.”
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  Behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and
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  broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind.
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  After the wind there was an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake.
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  After the earthquake a fire passed; but the LORD was not in the fire.
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  After the fire, there was a still small voice. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped
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  his face in his mantle, went out, and stood in the entrance of the cave.
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  Behold, a voice came to him, and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
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  He said, “I have been very jealous for the LORD, the God of Armies; for the children
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  of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your
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  prophets with the sword. I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it
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  away.”
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  The LORD said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus.
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  When you arrive, anoint Hazael to be king over Syria.
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  Anoint Jehu the son of Nimshi to be king over Israel; and anoint Elisha the son of
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  Shaphat of Abel Meholah to be prophet in your place.
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  He who escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu will kill; and he who escapes from
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  the sword of Jehu, Elisha will kill. Yet I reserved seven thousand in Israel, all the
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  knees of which have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”
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  Wind, earthquake, fire. And then something that the King James Version called "a
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  still small voice." Let's go back and see why Elijah ended up in that cave at all,
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  and then look at that phrase, and at the three names he was given to anoint.
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  Elijah's name means "my God is the LORD." He belongs to the northern kingdom of
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  Israel in the ninth century BC, in the reign of King Ahab.
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  Ahab, the book of Kings tells us, married Jezebel, "the daughter of Ethbaal king of
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  the Sidonians, and went and served Baal and worshipped him."
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  Baal was a Canaanite god, and the chapter before ours is a showdown on Mount Carmel
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  between Elijah and "four hundred and fifty of the prophets of Baal."
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  Elijah's sacrifice is consumed by fire from the LORD, the people fall on their
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  faces and cry out, "The LORD, he is God!", and Elijah has the prophets of Baal taken
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  down to the brook Kishon and killed.
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  That is the news Ahab carries home to Jezebel at the start of chapter nineteen.
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  Her answer is a death threat, and Elijah, straight after his victory on Carmel,
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  runs. He goes south to Beersheba in Judah, and then further, a day into the desert
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  alone, and he asks God to take his life. The text gives his words: "It is enough.
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  Now, O LORD, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers."
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  Then he walks "forty days and forty nights to Horeb, God's Mountain."
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  Horeb is the name some books of the Bible give to the mountain where God met Moses,
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  the place other passages call Mount Sinai. Most scholars think Sinai and Horeb were
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  two names for the same place, though a minority argue they may have been
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  different. Where that mountain actually was is another question, with several
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  candidates. Christian tradition points to Jebel Musa, the Mountain of Moses, in the
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  south of the Sinai Peninsula, with Saint Catherine's Monastery, from the sixth
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  century, at its foot.
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  What the text makes clear is that Elijah is going back to the beginning.
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  Moses was on the mountain "forty days and forty nights," the book of Exodus says,
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  and he "neither ate bread, nor drank water." Elijah's forty days on the
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  strength of the food he was given echo that.
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  He comes to a cave and spends the night there. The LORD's question is short: "What
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  are you doing here, Elijah?" And Elijah's answer is a long complaint.
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  He has been "very jealous for the LORD," the people have broken the covenant, torn
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  down the altars and killed the prophets, and "I, even I only, am left; and they
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  seek my life."
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  Then he's told to go out and stand on the mountain, because the LORD is passing by.
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  That phrase matters. In Exodus, Moses asks to see God's glory, and God tells him, "I
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  will put you in a cleft of the rock, and will cover you with my hand until I have
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  passed by." Moses is allowed to see only God's back.
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  Some Jewish tradition took Elijah's cave to be the very place where God had
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  appeared to Moses. One old story says that in that cave, where God had once shown
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  Moses that he was gracious and merciful, Elijah should have defended his people
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  instead of accusing them.
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  And then come the wind that breaks rocks, the earthquake and the fire, and three
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  times we're told the LORD was not in them. It's a striking thing to say about a God
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  who, a chapter earlier, answered Elijah with fire.
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  After the fire comes the phrase in the Hebrew that translators have struggled
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  with. In Hebrew it's kol demama dakka. Kol can mean a voice or a
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  sound. Dakka has to do with something thin or fine or small.
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  And demama is usually linked with stillness or silence.
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  So translations pull in different directions. The King James Version, like
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  the World English Bible we just heard, says "a still small voice."
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  The translator Everett Fox notes that the King James translators inherited the
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  phrase from William Tyndale, who wrote "a small, still voice."
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  The New International Version says "a gentle whisper."
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  The English Standard Version says "the sound of a low whisper."
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  The Jewish Publication Society's translation says "a soft murmuring sound."
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  And the New Revised Standard Version goes furthest: "a sound of sheer silence."
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  Fox mentions a suggestion that the word may even be connected with mourning.
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  He kept "a still, small voice" anyway, because, he says, it keeps the mystery of
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  the Hebrew, where the experience includes "both awestruck silence and speech."
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  Scholars differ, and the phrase has room for all of them.
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  What Elijah does next is clear. He wraps his face in his mantle, the same cloak
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  that will matter at the end of the chapter, and goes to stand at the mouth of
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  the cave. Covering the face may be another echo of Moses, who was told he could not
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  see God's face. And then the question comes again: "What are you doing here,
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  Elijah?" And Elijah gives exactly the same answer, word for word.
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  Readers have taken that in different ways. The text doesn't comment.
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  God doesn't argue with him either. He gives him work.
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  Go back, the LORD says, to the wilderness of Damascus.
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  Anoint Hazael king over Syria, anoint Jehu king over Israel, and anoint Elisha to be
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  prophet in your place. And then a correction, without any rebuke attached:
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  Elijah is not the only one left. "I reserved seven thousand in Israel, all the
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  knees of which have not bowed to Baal."
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  Here's something the story leaves untidy. Of those three tasks, Elijah carries
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  out only one himself. Right after our reading, he finds Elisha ploughing with
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  twelve yoke of oxen and throws his mantle over him.
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  But Hazael is told he'll be king by Elisha, years later, in the second book of
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  Kings. And Jehu is anointed by "the young prophet" Elisha sends with a vial of
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  oil. The commission given at Horeb is carried out by the next generation.
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  Two of those names have turned up outside the Bible.
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  Jehu appears on the Black Obelisk of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser the Third, a
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  carved limestone pillar found at Nimrud and now in the British Museum.
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  One panel shows a ruler bowing to the ground before the Assyrian king, and the
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  inscription names him "Jehu, son of Omri." Some scholars think the name refers to a
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  different king. And in 1993, at Tel Dan in northern Israel, archaeologists
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  found pieces of an inscription in Aramaic that most scholars think was set up
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  by Hazael. In it, the king boasts of killing the king of Israel and a king of
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  "the house of David." If those are the two kings the book of Kings says Jehu killed,
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  the two men Elijah was told to anoint are, in a sense, claiming the same deed.
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  Scholars differ on how to read the broken text.
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  Elijah himself doesn't die in the usual way. In the second book of Kings, he's
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  taken up "by a whirlwind into heaven," and Elisha picks up the mantle that fell from
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  him. The prophet Malachi says, "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before
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  the great and terrible day of the LORD comes." That line shaped how both Jews and
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  Christians remembered him. In the Gospels, Elijah appears with Moses when Jesus is
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  transfigured on a mountain. In Jewish custom, a cup of wine is set out for
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  Elijah at the Passover meal and the door is opened for him.
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  One explanation reported for that custom is that the rabbis couldn't agree whether
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  a fifth cup was required, and left the question, like other questions they
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  couldn't settle, "until Elijah comes."
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  Paul, writing to the Romans, quotes this very scene.
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  He gives Elijah's complaint, "I am left alone, and they seek my life," and then
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  God's answer about the seven thousand. Paul uses it to say that God has not given
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  up on his people. The man who believed he was the last one standing was wrong about
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  that, and the story, gently, lets God tell him so.
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  So here's a question to sit with, and there's no right answer to it.
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  If you had been standing with Elijah at the mouth of that cave, which would you
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  have found harder to take: the silence, or being sent back the way you came?
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  Thanks for listening to Behind the Bible Verse. Scripture readings are from the
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  World English Bible, British Edition, which is in the public domain.
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  Every episode is checked against the text and the historical record.