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Journey of a Passage

1 Kings 19:12

"A still small voice"

All witnesses agree on the Hebrew words qol demamah daqqah. What they mean (a voice, a sound, a silence, a whisper, a breeze) has been rendered very differently. This is a question of translation, not of manuscripts.

Same letters, different readings: the consonants agree, but ancient readers vocalized or interpreted them differently

The family tree

Each row is a language or text tradition. Witnesses in the same row may share ancestry, revise one another, or have an uncertain relationship; the line under each box says which. A solid arrow appears only where direct copying or a documented revised edition is established. Order by date never implies copying. Scroll sideways on a phone.

✓ contains it · ✕ does not · ❝ quotes part of it · ⓘ reports on manuscripts · ▢ pages lost · – no copy survives

  • Same line, through lost copies
  • Translation
  • Modern edition based on it
Hebrew
  1. Original KingsUnknown (debated)
  2. Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex)AD 1008Descends, through lost copies, from Original Kings
Greek
  1. Septuagint, 3 Kingdoms (library text: Giguet's French)Translated c. 2nd century BCTranslated from a Hebrew text of the period
Latin
  1. Jerome's Vulgatec. AD 400Translated from Hebrew texts of Jerome's day
English
  1. King James Bible1611Translated from printed Masoretic Hebrew
  2. Modern translations20th–21st centuryModern edition based on the Masoretic Text

Every witness, in order

  1. Unknown (debated)

    Original Kings

    – No copy survives

    No original survives.

  2. Translated c. 2nd century BC

    Septuagint, 3 Kingdoms (library text: Giguet's French)

    ✓ Contains this passageTranslated from a Hebrew text of the period

    How the site knows this: Known here only through a translation.

    vint le murmure d'un souffle léger

    came the murmur of a light breath (breeze)

    One Greek text (Vaticanus type) via Giguet's French; not checked against a critical Greek edition.

  3. c. AD 400

    Jerome's Vulgate

    ✓ Contains this passageTranslated from Hebrew texts of Jerome's day

    How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Clementine Vulgate (1592 edition).

    sibilus auræ tenuis

    the whistling of a gentle breeze

  4. AD 1008

    Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex)

    ✓ Contains this passageDescends, through lost copies, from Original Kings

    How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Westminster Leningrad Codex, a digital transcription of the Leningrad Codex.

    קוֹל דְּמָמָה דַקָּה

    a voice (sound) of thin silence (stillness)

    Demamah elsewhere means calm or silence (Psalm 107:29; Job 4:16).

  5. 1611

    King James Bible

    ✓ Contains this passageTranslated from printed Masoretic Hebrew

    How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: King James Version (1769 text).

    a still small voice

    From the Geneva Bible's wording.

  6. 20th–21st century

    Modern translations

    ✓ Contains this passageModern edition based on the Masoretic Text

    How the site knows this: Checked in a published edition.

    "a sound of sheer silence" (NRSV); "a gentle whisper" (NIV); "a gentle blowing" (NASB)

What changed, and why

The paradox of a "sound of silence" may be the point: God's presence came not in the spectacular forces that marked Sinai but in something hardly perceptible. Each translation captures part of it.

What the evidence shows

  • Independently documentedAll checked witnesses reflect the same Hebrew.
  • Conflicts with current evidence"Still small voice" is the only correct translation.

Sources

  • E. Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. (2012)

Related lessons

  • Elijah at Horeb →Jezebel swears to kill Elijah. He flees to Beersheba, sits under a broom tree and asks to die. An angel feeds him twice, and he walks forty days to Horeb. In a cave God asks, "What doest thou here, Elijah?" Wind, earthquake and fire pass, but God is not in them; then comes a "still small voice." God sends him to anoint Hazael, Jehu and Elisha, and says seven thousand in Israel have not bowed to Baal. Elijah throws his mantle over Elisha.