What Did Prophet Elijah Hear On Mount Horeb?

I have course to think about the incident of Prophet Elijah hearing a voice while hiding in a cave on Mount Horeb where God directed him to go. I keep coming away with the question: What did the prophet really hear.

When God tells Elijah to ascend a mountain and await a divine appearance, the prophet witnessed a wind, experienced an earthquake, and felt a fire, “but the Lord was not in” any of these natural phenomena. Then, according to the most well-known English translation, Elijah hears a “still small voice”. Other translations have “a gentle whisper” (NIV), “a low whisper” (ESV), or even “a sound of a gentle blowing” (NASB). So, the question is. What was it that Elijah heard?

A Still Small Voice?

The Hebrew phrase translated most commonly as “a still small voice". The Hebrew קול (qol) can mean either “voice” or “sound,” and because the three previous forces of nature (wind, earthquake, and fire) would have emitted “sounds” (rather than “voices”), it is better to understand קול as “sound” here. The word translated “still” is דממה (demamah), which can also mean “silent.”

Finally, דקה (daqqah; “small”) means something so tiny that it is diaphanous – nearly intangible. Speaking of the golden calf, Moses states, “I took the sinful thing… [and] I ground it until it was as fine (דק; daq) as dust”. Just as dust falls through one’s fingers, the “sound” that Elijah heard was slight to the point of near transparency. That is, the silence was so silent that it approached audial nothingness. To capture what the Hebrew is getting at, we might translate קול דממה דקה as “a sound of deafening silence.”

Hearing God

The fact that Elijah is met with silence shows that the measure of God’s presence is not always an audible “voice”. Though believers can get discouraged as they strain to hear a divine voice, the biblical text assures the reader that, even in moments of complete silence, God is there.