The Sound Of Silence

“And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper.” – 1 Kings 19:12

On Mount Carmel, God comes in fire. Can you imagine, a fire powerful enough to consume in a moment not only an entire full-grown cow, but all the wood, stones and water around it, even down to the dust? But on Mount Horeb, God is not in the fire. In fact, fire does come, as does the wind and the earthquake, but God is not in them, as if to make a point: He does not always come the same way twice. He does not always come in obvious, dramatic, or inescapable ways. 

After the fire, there is the sound of a “low whisper”: in Greek, this is daq, which means “beaten down until it is small, thin and fine,” and demamah, which means “calm, silence, stillness.” Literally, this says, “And after the fire, the sound of thin silence.”

Mysterious, isn’t it? How can silence have a sound? How can silence be thin and small? The key, I think, is in the contrast: the wind beat down the mountains, literally broke rocks to pieces, and the earthquake and fire have the same kind of destructive power: the silence is the opposite of that. It is itself beaten down, perhaps like how Elijah feels in his soul, wanting to die, to be broken down into dust. God whispers to Elijah exactly where he is.

And silence does have a sound, perhaps. When I’m silent, I do begin to hear certain sounds—the chirping of birds, rustling of leaves, tick of a clock—that were there all the time, but are now revealed. We are so used to living life at certain frequencies that we must learn to turn them off sometimes to listen, to hear like Elijah the voice that asks, “what are you doing here?” How curious, that God asks this twice, when of course he knows the answer: but he asks, and listens, as Elijah airs his grievances and discouragement. I hear God asking me the same thing: “What are you doing here, Esther?” And I hear in the silence an invitation to be honest with my answer in his presence.