Thursday, July 28, 2016

Something More


Carey Walsh points out that the Hebrew word "hebel" which appears 38 times in the Book of Ecclesiastes has the sense "that everything is vaporous, fleeting, and ephemeral."  She suggests, however, that the superlative "vapor or vapors" used at the beginning and end of the book points to the Divine.  Instead of  the whirlwind God of Job, "Ecclesiastes sees only atmosphere, saturated obliquely by something more, something suggestively, possibly, holy....It is not futile to search for this something more.  It is, rather, the very basis of mysticism."

No comments: