A Still Small Voice

And he [the Lord] said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind and earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:
And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.

-- I Kings 19: 11-12 (KJV)

The prophet Elijah, fleeing Israel to escape Jezebel's wrath, doesn't stop running until he reaches Beer-sheba in the Kingdom of Judah. Exhausted and dispirited, he then heads out into the wilderness to pray for death.

After several hours, Elijah falls into a deep sleep, which is Yahweh's cue. An angel appears, forcing the prophet to eat and drink, and then to set out on a forty-days' journey to Mount Horeb, also known as Mount Sinai. If you recall the episode of the burning bush, it's no surprise that a mysterious voice calls to Elijah, ordering him to "stand upon the mount before the Lord" (I Kings 19: 11).

What follows is a rather drawn-out introduction, in which God first teases the prophet with wind, an earthquake, and a fire before finally manifesting himself in a "still small voice" -- Renaissance English for "a soft, whispering murmur"; that is, a breeze. Since this voice argues Elijah out of his mood and sets him back on a holier track, some commentators have identified it with "the voice of conscience." Indeed, the message of these verses seems to be that God need not appear to men embodied in great natural forces -- though he certainly can do this -- but may also reveal himself directly, softly, and personally, like a voice in the mind.

The authors probably wish to make a special point of this here in light of recent events [see A Jezebel], since Baal, like the Yahweh of the Pentateuch, liked to announce himself with lots of sound and fury. The Lord may have found such methods necessary in primitive times, but in his fight against pagan heresies he now chooses the more discreet and verbal medium of quietly inspiring prophecy.

The first writer to use "still small voice" in the sense of "conscience" seems to have been poet William Cowper in The Task (1784). Thomas Grey had another idea in his "Ode for Music" (1769), where we find the line, "the still small voice of gratitude." Lord Byron took up Cowper's tune in The Island (1823), where there "still whispers the still small voice within." Further down the line, the phrase became useful as a handy piece of lofty rhetoric good for sprucing up indignant letters.

 
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Michael Macrone is Associate Site Producer of GraceCom and the author of nine books on language, literature, and ideas, including the best-selling Brush Up Your Shakespeare!