Breath of silence

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When the angel of the Lord told Elijah to go to Mount Horeb, Elijah knew he would encounter God. After all, Horeb was where God spoke to Moses with fire and to Israel with a storm. But for Elijah, God didn’t show up as expected. 

On the mountain, Elijah endured a fierce wind and an earthquake and a fire, “but the Lord was not in the wind…not in the earthquake…not in the fire.” Not, not and not. The storyteller makes it clear to us, the readers, that God will not be found this time in the grand spectacles of power. Instead, silence: “After the fire a sound of sheer silence,” or as another translator puts it, “the sound of faint silence.”