A Sound of Sheer Silence

 

I have always been attracted to the passage in First Kings where the prophet Elijah experiences God (19:11-13). Because he has offended Queen Jezebel she is after him. He escapes to Mount Horeb (Sinai), the same mountain where Moses experienced God in the burning bush. I am intrigued by the many different translations of what Elijah experienced:
"a tiny whispering sound" (Revised New American)
"a gentle whisper" (New International)
"the soft whisper of a voice" (Good News)
"a still small voice" (King James; Revised Standard)
"a light murmuring sound" (New Jerusalem)
"a soft murmuring sound" (Tanakh)
"a gentle breeze" (Contemporary English)
"the sound of a gentle breeze" (Jerusalem)
"a whistling of a gentle air" (Confraternity)
"a sound of sheer silence" (New Revised Standard)
I like the last one best with its "s" sounds and its "silence." I don't know what the original Hebrew is but it must include the words "sound" and "silence" because the New Jerome Biblical Commentary says that it is important to preserve the paradox in translation. They call this "an enigmatic theophany in which traditional manifestations of divine presence (wind, earthquake, fire) are reduced to mere precursors of a mysterious 'sound of fine silence.'"
I am reminded of Simon and Garfunkle's "Sound of Silence."
I find the passage an invitation to search for God, not in the spectacular and extraordinary, but in "the sound of sheer silence."