A Sound Survey of Genesis

Sound happens all the time. We learn to ignore ‘regular’ sounds like traffic or the fridge. Then a sudden new sound puts us on alert. What’s going on here? Melchizedek is a bit like that. People are fighting and looting. Kings have manoeuvred themselves again each other… usual stuff. From no where Melchizedek appears. In … Continue reading Gen 14

…the word of the Lord came to… The sound of God takes on a deeper, more resonant tone. The phrase denotes a certain weight to the speech. It is strange to say a sound arrived… Our attention is first brought to the fact that God is sounding. Like the sound of calling to attention. The … Continue reading Genesis 15

There are several sounds that refer to me. ‘Dad’… ‘Sunil’… ‘monay’ are sounds that are intricately linked to who I am. Till now I haven’t mentioned the sounds that refer to God in the Old testament. ‘Elohim’ and ‘Yahweh’ are two of them. The different sounds refer to the diverse levels of relationship that sounders … Continue reading Genesis 16

God now sounds himself as El-Shaddai. He re-sounds Abram and Sarai as Abraham and Sarah. Zizek asks whether the renaming is a form of symbolic castration (The Fragile Absolute, xvii). I think the rest of the chapter which is about circumcision, gives us the resonance of the name change. Healthy human sounding requires the ability … Continue reading Genesis 17

More laughter… this time from Sarah-ah-ah-ah-ah. In conversation we often exchange sounds that aren’t actually part of the information exchange. I hear it happening twice in this chapter. No I didn’t… Yes you did… This sound exchange exposes the mixed emotions that its sounders have. More so, it reveals the possibilities of this relationship. Sarah … Continue reading Genesis 18

In the previous chapter we hear the banter of God with Abraham and Sarah where sounds are exchanged in the environment of relationships that are being built. Here, conversations are broken down. The exchange of sounds is not building up relationships. Most of the sounds are insistent, disengaged, violent; wishing to overpower. Lot insists the … Continue reading Genesis 19