Silence in the Bible is pregnant. Often when we encounter silence in the Bible, it’s an indicator that something momentous is about to happen. Something new is about to be created. The prophet Elijah is faced with silence, or in some biblical renderings a quiet whisper, right before the presence of God finds him hiding for his life in a cave (1 Kings 19:12). Jewish tradition says that silence accompanied the Spirit’s hovering over dark void before God created the world (4 Esra 6:39). Imagine that: a dense, pregnant silence through which the world is about to be birthed.
I’d like to think silence is pregnant in my own life, at least when I can steal minutes of it on early mornings before kids, dog and daytime responsibilities ensue. I’m part of a “new monastic” community that has committed to a fairly intensive “rule of life” together involving periods of silent prayer each day. Since joining, I’ve noticed a difference internally—I’m less reactive, more present and attuned to the depths of things. What’s being birthed out of such silence? I have no idea, but I’m convinced, as God declared with satisfaction after creating the universe, it’s very good.
One of my favorite mystics, John of the Cross, knew silence intimately. He’s famous for writing about something he called “the dark night of the soul,” when it feels as if God is being silent toward us or has even turned away from us. The encouragement of prayer and the experiential sense of intimacy with God are gone. But this stage of faith and doubt for John is ultimately hopeful. Out of that seeming silent emptiness, a deeper capacity for knowing God is being born. As he writes, in Mirabai Starr’s beautiful translation:
The soul must surrender into peace and quietude, even if she is convinced she is doing nothing and wasting time. . . . But simple patience and perseverance in a state of formless prayerfulness, while doing nothing, accomplishes great things.
When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. –Revelation 8:1
This line in the book of Revelation has stuck with me. So far in the book, the Lamb of God—symbolic for the Cosmic Christ—has opened six prior seals (see this previous post, and this one). A seal in monarchical cultures is the literal wax stamp of approval from the king; the Slaughtered Lamb/King can delegate an angelic messenger to carry divine mail because the scroll bears the king’s seal. In John’s wild visions, each seal’s opening unfurls an intense scene, often of destruction such as the memorable Four Horsemen bringing tidings of war, plague, hunger, and death.
The seventh seal’s vision takes readers in a different direction, though: to a heavenly altar of worship where angels stand before God, where incense is burning, and where prayers cried from the oppressed on earth resound before God (see Revelation 8:2-5)
But first, there is silence.
Something is about to happen.
Something is about to be born.
The revered film director Ingmar Bergman made a movie responding to this verse. He begins his 1957 classic The Seventh Seal with it. In the film’s archetypal opening scene, a medieval knight returning from the Crusades plays chess with death. I find it fascinating, by the way, that Bergman first encountered this image in a Swedish church (below). The scene frames what is to come—the knight makes a deal with a character representing death that as long as he can hold out against him in the game, he will live. And if the knight wins, he is freed from death. The film, then, is made up of the knight’s turmoil and resistance to death. In another scene held in a church confessional booth, the knight pours out his heart to a man he believes to be a priest—but who is actually death following him. Here’s how it goes:
Knight: Why can’t I kill God within me? Why does he live on in this painful and humiliating way even though I curse Him and want to tear Him out of my heart? Why, in spite of everything, is He a baffling reality that I can’t shake off? Do you hear me?
Death: Yes, I hear you.
Knight: I want knowledge, not faith, not suppositions, but knowledge. I want God to stretch out His hand to me, reveal Himself, and speak to me.
Death: But he remains silent.
Knight: I call out to him in the dark but no one seems to be there.
Death: Perhaps no one is there. (see this book, page 26).
The silence the knight experiences is filled with dread and abandonment. Such silence, for the knight, is bereft of anything hopeful. It’s a despairing and existential silence filled only with the knight’s terrifying feeling that God has left him completely alone.
But for some readers of Revelation—and, to be frank, many American Christians—the silence of existential aloneness is not nearly the worst that God (or God’s absence) can muster. To many, the apocalyptic silence of Revelation brings divine devastation and judgment. If you’re not on the saved side of Jesus, you’re on what Brian Johnson from AC/DC memorably called a “Highway to Hell.” It’s incredible to me how many Christians believe in eternal punishment for people who believe differently, who struggle with belief, or who do not believe. For such readers, Revelation’s judgment is divine righteous vengeance, pure and simple, a torrent of torments unleashed from heaven that people justly deserve. To be sure, divine judgment is certainly front and center throughout the book of Revelation—but I’m convinced we have both a vengeful God and doomsday punishment wrong (read my articles here and here).
If the reader continues reading Revelation, she’ll notice that this seventh seal vision in chapter 8 then spills over into another series of seven visions. Instead of seven seals, we’ll find seven angels blowing seven trumpets (always seven). And with each trumpet blast, more devastation seems to be revealed on earth. Whether it’s hail, fire, blood or beasts, it’s just one catastrophe after another.
But I’m taking a cue from the insightful commentator/theologian Brian Blount, who suggests that we read Revelation instead as an unfolding series of related visions that are not happening in chronological time. That’s an obvious point, but it is worth making. Revelation is not meant to be read as if it is a forward-moving narrative. It is, instead, to be read as a spiral of visionary encounters with God. Blount suggests that the visions themselves are each different interpretations of the same eschatological happenings. We are reading a book in which time is doing funky things.
The reader has journeyed beyond the veil and is seeing what happens in heavenly realms while simultaneous historical events on earth take place. In other words, the visions of judgment in Revelation are not literally happening. They are an interpretation of what’s happening in John and his hearers’ lives. For them, such events involved Roman imperial persecution and the ever-present dread of Roman power. We have our own apocalyptic events such as the climate crisis, systemic racism, and the war in Ukraine.
Stay with me, because this is an exciting point to consider about the meaning of silence. Blount suggests that time does not move chronologically during Revelation’s visions, so unlike, say, The Da Vinci Code, chapters do not move ahead in a linear way. Even though it reads this way, by nature of its genre, each successive series of visions in Revelation is not happening right after the previous. Instead, Blount thinks, the real event after the silence of heaven in 8:1 is what happens after the visions at the end of the book, namely, the arrival of the new heaven and new earth (21:1). So according to Blount, in our version of real time, we should read this verse as if it says:
When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the city was no more. –Revelation 8:1 and 21:1
That’s right. The seven seals (and seven letters, seven trumpets, seven bowls of wrath throughout the book) each lead directly to a renewed and resurrected world. Creation is born out of silence in the beginning; and silence is pregnant with new creation at the end. Or, as John of the Cross said, “God’s first language is silence.”
Your time spent in silence is so fruitful ! This is a fascinating piece, Mark. I am so grateful for the insights you share. I especially value your reminders that the Roman Empire loomed with its oppressive hand , casting a pall on life in those times. Revelations has always been an enigma
for me.
I remember watching Bergman's Seventh Seal when I was in
college. The theme was totally lost on me. Recently, I watched a film called "Bergman Island". It was filmed on Bergman Island, which apparently has become a popular tourist destination.
I recommend the film.
Thanks for this illuminating work !
I did not realize that silence was important in Revelation. It gives me hope when I read that silence is pregnant with new creation at the end. Thank-you.