God Speaks

When Moses entered the Tent of Meeting to speak with the LORD,he heard the voice speaking to him from between the two cherubim above the atonement cover on the ark of the Testimony. And he spoke with him.
(Numbers / Bemidbar 7:89)

Moses heard the voice of God. He was not just receiving impressions, or interpreting signs and discerning spiritual truths through contemplation of the universe. He actually heard God’s voice. Over and over again we read that the Lord spoke to Moses.

Moses was not the only one who heard from and spoke to God. We read of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Samuel, David, Isaiah, and so on. All through the Scripture God’s reality was experienced in this very tangible way.

This communication of God to human beings is central to the Torah’s understanding of who God is. One of Scriptures’ criticisms of idols is the fact that they cannot see, hear or speak. In contrast God, who is real and alive, communicates.

Of course God communicates in all sorts of ways and not just by literally speaking as he did to Moses. He also "speaks" through dreams, visions, the Scriptures, prophets, etc. But these means of communication lose their significance if they are not just a part of a real and direct communication of the Lord of the Heavens to the dwellers of Earth. For if God doesn’t really speak, then we are just relying on the experiences of others.

Sadly we have elevated the biblical accounts to some special (and just about mythical) place far away from ourselves. Then we have replaced the glorious experience of knowing and hearing God with ceremonies and man made morality.

The whole purpose of the Torah is to let us know that God is real. He who is real is speaking today.

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