Study Notes: 1 Kings 19:12-13

“And after the fire the sound of a low whisper. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him and said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’” (1 Kings 19:12-13)

What follows are my notes on this passage from a reading plan I’m in. Occasionally the Lord lines up a passage I need to take to heart with a day off to dig in, and today has been one such passage and day. And digging in involves writing; I am blessed that my reading partners encourage rather than discourage this tendency. I am experimenting with preserving my longer, better notes here so I can link back to them later. Sometime I’ll have to dig through a group chat from last year and see if I can find a similar essay on Hosea 2:16-17.

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1 Kgs 19:12, I guess we’re not sure how to translate this. KJV has the “still, small voice.” The ESV calls it “the sound of a low whisper”; the LSB “a sound of a thin, gentle whisper.” The ESV has a footnote “or ‘a sound, a thin silence,’” and the LSB also footnotes the silence. Whatever it is, I think it must be different than “the word of the LORD” that asked the first time in v. 9.

The word “sound” is qôl and is the same word used for “voice” in v. 13. I’m no Hebrew scholar, but because after the v. 12 qôl it says “behold, there came” the v. 13 qôl, I think they were subtly different but alike. This leads me to prefer the “silence” reading from the v. 12 ESV footnote. “The sound of thin silence.”

So putting it all together: the word of the Lord comes to Elijah, I imagine a familiar occurrence for him at this point (cf 1 Sam 3:7). He asks what Elijah is doing, and Elijah pours out his despair. The Lord tells him to stand before him, then sends an earth-shattering wind, an earthquake, and a (probably great) fire. The Lord is not in any of them.

Then there is a reedy, desolate silence—and the Lord is in the silence. Elijah veils his face from the presence of the Lord and goes out to stand before him. The silence speaks(!) and asks him what he is doing; and now instead of despair he pours out his lament. The same words, but I believe the first time very self-centeredly and the second time very God-centeredly. “Lord God, the entire world hates you, and they hate me because of you, and I do not see but I am utterly alone and my life meaningless.”

Elijah’s is the same as Paul’s cry, “Wretched [exhausted, miserable from fighting] man that I am! Who will deliver me from…this death?” (Rom 7:24, note more literal LSB rendering). And I believe that Elijah ends on an implicit question where Paul ends on an explicit one. Both of them looking not inward in despair but upward in waiting/hope.

The tension between waiting and hope is one I often ponder. I understand it is often the same word in Hebrew, and different translations render it differently. For instance, where the ESV ends Psalm 131 with, “O Israel, hope in the LORD, / From this time forth and forevermore,” the LSB renders it, “O Israel, wait for Yahweh / From now until forever” (Ps 131:3). It’s the same reason Isaiah can say, “Whoever believes will not be in haste” (Isa 28:16, see also LSB footnote “in a hurry”) but Paul and Peter can both quote it as “whoever believes will not be put to shame” (Rom 9:33; 10:11; 1 Pet 2:6). To wait is to have hope, “and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5).

And this all circles back to the idea that the Lord was in the silence. In the silence he trains us to seek him, to wait for him, to trust that he is still acting (cf 1 Kgs 19:18) even when we cannot discern his ways, indeed, when we are perplexed and confounded by them. To hope.

“For God alone my soul waits in silence…
My hope is from him.”
(Ps 62:1, 5)