The mountain waited, still and silent behind a thick veil of cloud. Then lightning flashed from high above, thunder rolled, ever nearer, ever louder. The bellow of a ram’s horn emanated from nowhere, dominating everywhere. A pillar of fire, smoke pluming thick and high, descended behind the cloud, seizing the mountain and shaking it violently. And all the while the horn grew unyieldingly louder; its every articulation filled sky and ear, insisting that it be heard (Exod. 19.16–19).
Then God speaks his words, ‘I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.’ God speaks, and they hear. This is how God has been communicating with his people since he met with the man and the woman in the garden (Gen. 2.16–17; 3.8–19; 4.6–15; 6.13–22; 12.1–4; 18.1–33; 25.21–23; 26.2–5; 28.10–17; Exod. 3.4–5.3).
There is no question who is speaking: Yahweh the God who rescued them from years of slavery in Egypt, the God who attacked Egypt’s gods and leaders with plagues, the God who led them to and through a sea, the God who proceeded before them in a cloudy column that glowed with fire at night. Here now is the fire in the daytime, blazing atop a mountain, and speaking!
Everyone knows whose words these ‘Ten Words’ are (Exod. 20.2–17; 34.28). There is no epistemic uncertainty. The only question is, ‘How long can we endure the magnificence of God’s presence and the terror of his voice?’ (20.18–19). So the people send Moses as their mediator, to listen to God and report his words to them.
Yahweh accepts their alternative, for the people have already seen that it is he himself who was speaking with them from heaven. So, turning to Moses, he begins, ‘Speak thus to Israel’s children’ and continues with a long list of rulings on all matters of life (20.22–23.33).
When Moses reports all these words to the people, they reply, ‘All the words Yahweh spoke, we will do’ (24.3). So Moses writes all Yahweh’s words on a scroll—the scroll of the covenant—and reads them aloud for the people to hear them again as they commit themselves to the relationship Yahweh is offering them (24.4–8).
Writing God’s Words
Writing is a new development in Yahweh’s relationship with his people. Genesis mentions a ‘scroll of the descendants of the human person [adam]’ (5.1), but not until Exodus 17 does scripture refer to anyone writing. There, following Israel’s miraculous victory over the Amalekites, Yahweh says to Moses, ‘Write this as a reminder on a scroll and set it in Joshua’s ear’ (17.14). Words written are still to be heard.
But now Yahweh goes one step further: he will write his words himself. After hosting Israel’s elders to a meal (they saw God and ate and drank with him!), Yahweh invites Moses further up the mountain. Moses waits for six days at the edge of the cloud and then proceeds up the mountain, toward the raging fire of Yahweh’s presence that Israel can still see from the plain below (24.9–17).
There beyond the clouds Yahweh speaks with Moses. He shows him a pattern for the tent Israel will build him and describes the procedures for serving him (25.1–31.17). Then Yahweh engraves his law and commandment on two small slabs of stone; he writes his words down with his own finger (31.18).
Modes of Inspiration
We start with this example of God’s words written because it lies at one end of a continuum. Some modes of ‘inspiration’ involve humans less, others more. The writing of God’s words on these two stone tablets involved no human action. These were not just God’s words; they were written in his handwriting!
Autography
We could label this mode of inspiration ‘autography’: God writes his own words. Very few portions of the scriptures were written down this way. God does not mention writing his words again until he promises Israel a new covenant: ‘I will put my instruction within them, and I will write it on their heart; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people’ (Jer. 31.33). (On that, see the forthcoming post ‘Living God’s Written Words’.)
Dictation
The two earlier instances when Moses wrote down God’s spoken words are examples of another mode of inspiration: ‘dictation’. God told Moses what to write, and Moses wrote his words on a scroll. The Holy Spirit used this mode of inspiration to have many portions of scripture written: much of the Law of Moses, some of the Hebrew prophets, and much of Revelation (see, e.g. Exod. 34.27; Deut. 31.19–30; Isa. 30.8; Jer. 30.2; Hab. 2.2; Rev. 1.11; 21.5). God spoke. The prophet listened. The prophet wrote God’s words on a scroll.
We tend to think that dictation was the mode the Spirit normally chose to have God’s words written. That is the simplest way to understand Paul’s description of scripture in his second letter to Timothy: ‘all scripture is God-breathed’ (2 Tim. 3.16).
Speaking While Carried Along
However, when we study other portions of scripture—when we look at them as they are and not as we assume them to be—we see other modes of inspiration: prophetic reports, wise reflections, written prayers, historical records, and even inclusion of existing materials. Peter’s description of scripture gives us a broad paradigm for understanding these various modes: ‘no prophecy of scripture comes about from the prophet’s own imagination, for no prophecy was ever “carried” by human will. Rather, as humans were carried by the Holy Spirit, they spoke from God’ (2 Pet. 1.20–21).
Prophetic Reports
Prophets stood in God’s presence, looked, listened, and returned to God’s people to speak his words to them. Sometimes they wrote these words down (Dan. 7.1; Rev. 1.19); very often they did not; rarely did they deliver their prophecy in writing (Jer. 36.1–32).
Wise Reflections
Sages reflected on the law of Moses (Pss 8; 19). They pondered life in the world made and kept by the Creator they feared (Ps. 104; Prov. 1.1–7; Eccl. 1.12–14). They offered their thoughts to God in worship and set them in writing for our instruction through the ages (Ps. 19.14; 104.34). Some were collected quickly; others were included later (Prov. 25.1).
Written Prayers
Psalmists wrote down their prayers: some to be sung publicly (Pss 118; 120–135); others, the record of personal conversation with God (Pss 51; 63); a few, the log of the heart’s quiet conference with the soul (Pss 42–43). Some wrote alone, others in groups (1 Chron. 25.1–8; Ps. 131).
Historical Records
Historians recorded the events they were part of, interviewed eyewitnesses, or examined earlier records (Deut. 1.1–6; 31.24; 1 Kings 11.41; 2 Chron. 9.29; Luke 1.1–4; John 21.24–25). They reported the good and the bad, the false, the blasphemous, and the noble (Exod. 5.2; 1 Kings 22).
Existing Materials
Still other writers, carried along by the Holy Spirit, incorporated existing material—often written by foreigners—in their new composition. For example, the collection of Proverbs concludes with an oracle that King Lemuel’s mother taught him (Prov. 31.1). They are foreigners, yet she speaks wisdom and justice and, in keeping with the collection’s main theme, honours the woman who fears Yahweh (31.30).
Centuries later, as Paul speaks to Athenian philosophers who are ‘devoted to the deities’, he retrieves themes from Greek literature to support his point that the God who made the world relates to all human beings (Acts 17.22–31). Aratus (c. 310–245 BC) was writing about Zeus, the god the Greeks honour as ‘father’, but Paul returns his words to the Unknown God as true worship fit for the Lord of heaven and earth (Acts 17.28; see Aratus, Phaenomena 5).
Receiving God’s Written Words
Accepting Scripture as God’s Words
Many prophets recognize earlier writings as the Lord’s words. Later Hebrew prophets quote from or reflect on the law of Moses. Daniel refers to the written prophecy of Jeremiah as ‘Yahweh’s word’ (Dan. 9.2). In the synagogue in Antioch, Paul proclaims ‘the Lord’s word’, quoting from Israel’s history, from Psalms 2 and 16, from Habakkuk, and from Isaiah to establish the word about the Lord Jesus, Israel’s Saviour, whom God raised from the dead (Acts 13.14–49). In a later letter to Timothy, Paul quotes from Deuteronomy 25.4 and then from Luke 10.7, identifying both as ‘scripture’ (1 Tim. 5.18; see 2 Cor. 8.18–19). In turn, Peter refers to the letters of ‘our beloved brother Paul’ alongside ‘the rest of the scriptures’ (2 Pet. 3.15–16). The words we read or listen to in scripture are God’s words.
Recognizing Scripture as One Story
Written ultimately by one author and collected all together, the scriptures tell one story. Later scriptures are tied in with earlier scriptures in one grand tapestry. Standing in the temple, Jesus refers to the blood of Abel and the blood of Zechariah, identifying deaths of righteous men in the first and last scrolls of the Hebrew scriptures (Matt. 23.35; see Gen. 4.1–12; 2 Chron. 24.20–22). (In the sequence of the ‘Tanakh’—the acronym Jews use to refer to the Hebrew scriptures—2 Chronicles comes last; the sequences in later translations differ.)
After his resurrection, Jesus refers to the three sections of the Hebrew scriptures: the Law of Moses (Torah), the Prophets (Nevi’im), and the Psalms or writings (Ketuvim) (Luke 24.44–45). These together tell one story, fulfilled partly in Jesus’s suffering and death as God’s Anointed One, and to be fulfilled as the Holy Spirit empowers Jesus’s followers to proclaim repentance for the forgiveness of sins in his name to all nations (24.46–49).
As such, scripture’s story of the Creator, his world, his people among the nations, his Son, and his Spirit continues still, gathering us up as it goes along and tying each of us in our right place in the tapestry.
Trusting Scripture as God’s Words
Finally, since the scriptures are the words God breathed, we trust them. Practically, they are useful as we teach, rebuke, correct, and train each other in righteousness, equipping ourselves for every good activity (2 Tim. 3.16–17). Personally, they are perfect and refresh our souls, trustworthy and make us wise, right and give our heart joy, radiant and give our eyes light. By them, the Lord himself teaches us personally. So may our mouth’s words and our heart’s meditation be pleasing in your sight, O Yahweh, our Rock and our Redeemer (Ps. 19.7–14).
