The Bible regularly privileges hearing over seeing.
From time to time the priority of audition over vision is hammered home from complementary angles. On the one hand, Israel is commanded to listen. On the other, she is forbidden to craft a visual representation of her speaking Lord.
Then Moses and the levitical priests spoke to all Israel, saying: ‘Keep silence and hear, O Israel! This very day you have become the people of the LORD your God. Therefore obey the LORD your God, observing his commandments and his statutes that I am commanding you today.’ The same day Moses charged the people as follows: ‘When you have crossed over the Jordan, these shall stand on Mount Gerizim for the blessing of the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin. And these shall stand on Mount Ebal for the curse: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali. Then the Levites shall declare in a loud voice to all the Israelites:
“Cursed be anyone who makes an idol or casts an image, anything abhorrent to the LORD, the work of an artisan, and sets it up in secret.” All the people shall respond, saying, “Amen!”’
Context makes clear that the forbidden idol here is not merely a hidden—that is to say, extra-official—image, but any image shaped to present YHWH to human eyes.
The logic of this persistent privileging of the ear over the eye as the organ of choice for a new nation is not too difficult to discern. Israel’s ongoing proximity to her redeeming Lord demands a mental, an intellectual grappling with his person and his presence. Clearly, both ear and eye are organs of sense, so the affirmation of the value of hearing YHWH and the prohibition of seeing him does not reduce to a mere preference for the abstract over the sensual. The distinction is not so much one of kind as of degree. (more…)
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