Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jim West <jwest AT highland.net>]

At 11:27 AM 6/9/00 -0400, you wrote:
>"Hail and Fire"
>
>The issue is not whether a god can be embodied as fire but
>whether the combination of "hail and fire" may be found in the
>cognate literature as something that a god throws at his/her
>enemies.  Lightening is more logical.

I think we might actually be splitting hairs here.  I would presume that to
the ancients it was quite proper to call the flash of light in the sky seen
during a storm- and which sometimes hit trees and made them burn, would have
had no qualms about calling such a phenomenon "fire"- for such, in truth, it
was to them.

These theophanic scenes... they evoke everyday imagery to cause the
hearers/readers to visualize such events and remember that God is nothing to
be trifled with-- they are not scientific descriptions of meteorological 
events.

best,

Jim

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

" The righteous man looks after his own soul, and the bodies of others, 
whereas the hypocrite looks after his own body, and the souls of others"
Rabbi Lionel Blue

Jim West, ThD
jwest AT highland.net
http://web.infoave.net/~jwest