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Prophecy is history / 14 – On each new path in life, there is a stage of the "broom bush", of hopelessness, and it can be overcome
by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire 08/09/2019
« The danger of every human society is unanimity. In ancient Israel, the Sanhedrin realized this and did not allow death sentences, which had been passed by all members, to be carried out. To the Sanhedrin it seemed impossible that an unanimous vote could be human, in other words, thoughtful and rational »

Paolo De Benedetti, The Death of Moses
On Mount Horeb, Elijah tells us that we can recognize God during spiritual depression and rise again, if He is able to lower his voice and knows how to make himself a light breeze.
Crises, fatigue, and depression are not all the same. The Bible tells us there is also such a thing as spiritual depression, a common occurrence in the lives of prophets. They generally manifest in adult life, to those who have received a calling and a mission. We must distinguish spiritual depression from psychological depression, which is not easy because the signs are very similar. Elijah's story presents us with an ABC to recognize these depressions and, perhaps, to try to overcome them.
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«Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword» (1 Kings 19,1). Despite the great theophany of Mount Carmel, King Ahab remains ambivalent and does not seem to have entirely converted to YHWH. True conversions of the heart rarely stem from spectacular events and violence. The queen, the exterminator of the prophets of YHWH, continues her war: «So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them”» (1 Kings 19,2).
Elijah’s horizon darkens: «Elijah was afraid and ran for his life» (1 Kings 19,3). This time Elia leaves not because of the voice of God but because of the voice of Jezebel. Even the prophets sometimes take off and leave simply because they are afraid. Elijah was not afraid to face four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal alone, but now he is terrified by this threat and flees. The text allows us to look into the soul of Elijah: «He went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors”. Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep» (1 Kings 19,3-5).
The threat of Jezebel unleashes an authentic spiritual depression in Elijah. Elijah is suddenly eager to die. Yet he has just come back from a stunning public victory, defeating and killing all the prophets of Baal by himself. Now, however, those successes are gone. Only the fear and the desire to retire to the desert and die there, remain.
In this great escape in search of death we can catch glimpses of Moses, Jeremiah, Job, Jonah and his Kikayon tree, Francis, and of many other prophets of yesterday and today, who at the peak of their spiritual journey, went through the "stage of the broom bush". How could the immense verses of the song of Giacomo Leopardi not spring into mind?: «Perfumed broom bush, merry in the deserts». Elijah asks to die, and instead God sends him another messenger: «All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat!” He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water» (1 Kings 19: 5-6). The angel touched him.
When it comes to certain kinds of tests, a voice is not enough: the angel must touch us, touch the flesh and wake us up in shock. In deep dreams like these, mere hearing is insufficient. The angel must also reach the body, he must reach all of humanity.
God still sends him bread and water. His primary need is satisfied. However, after eating, Elijah «lay down again» (1 Kings 19,6). In this kind of depression, it is not enough to simply eat and drink to get back on the road. At this stage, we could also die perfectly satiated and quenched. In order to leave the shadow of death of the broom and rise again, we need something different: «The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God» (1 Kings 19: 7-8). The angel returns, touches him a second time, but now he does not simply say "eat"; he tells him to eat in view of the walk to come, and mentions a name to him that is a message: Mount Horeb.
To get out of these spiritual depressions we need to find a new path, a new meaning, a new direction. The angel makes him understand that this food was not to survive, but to enable him to walk on. The prophet comes back to life, finding his path again, when he sees a mountain to be reached at the end of the road on the horizon. Prophets do not heal with bread and water. We can fill them with food, but they will remain sick until a new path opens up before them.
Once he arrives at Mount Horeb, the mountain of Moses and the Covenant, we are able to understand the prophetic exhaustion of Elijah better: «There he went into a cave and spent the night. And the word of the Lord came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too"» (1 Kings 19,9-10). God and Elijah dialogue, talk. The dialogues between God and the people we find in the Bible always surprise me. The word, which has become flesh, has generated poetry, art, freedom and democracy in Europe and in the world, which is the praise of non-unanimity, because that incarnate word was already a dialogue, because that logos was always dia-logos.
YHWH, in the dialogue, says: what are you doing here, Elijah? A strange question, given that it was an angel of his who asked Elia to go to Mount Horeb. Elijah arrives, and God asks him: what are you doing here? These strange questions are frequent in the life of a prophet. He receives a new command, he obeys, he leaves, he arrives, and once he has arrived to destination, he hears from the one who called him: what are you doing here? Unexpected and always terrible questions, which often amplify the spiritual test.
Elijah's answer clearly tells us that his depression depended on the solitude he found himself in ("I was left alone"). Solitude, however, can only be one of the reasons for the profound crises of the prophets, but it is never the first reason - the prophets know how to co-exist with many moments of solitude, they are their spiritual environment, as co-essential as the community one. There are other more radical reasons. Elijah suffers to see faith in his God denied by and erased in the people. He uses the same verb that the Bible generally uses for God - «I am zealous with zealous» for YHWH. Elijah is depressed because the God who called him is being profaned, but also because his prophets have been killed - there is great solidarity among prophets: when a prophet is killed, all prophets die within him.
These reasons are added to the first cause of suffering, perhaps the most excruciating and unspeakable one, which Elijah had pronounced in his first response speaking with God: «I am not the best of my fathers». Here we enter into the heart of Elijah’s crisis - and that of his prophet brothers. A mysterious phrase, not easy to exegesis. The "fathers" that Elijah speaks of are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Saul, David and Solomon. Fathers who are all marked by limits, by sin, and always by failure. The history of his fathers had been a spectacle of failures, of the littleness that stood out strong when compared to the greatness of the promise. Under that broom bush, Elijah felt himself close to the «social chain» of his fathers' anthropological wound, he felt exactly like them. A fundamental stage that all prophets experience in various ways, when one day they feel exactly like all the men and women came before them; like everyone else, like the worst. They left from home and immediately there were miracles, deceased that rose again, defeated enemies and great public successes. Then an event - a slander, a persecution, an illness ... - makes us understand that all those achievements and fruits were only vanitas, smoke and straw. Everything disappears, we find ourselves in the desert under a broom bush, and we really feel just like our parents and the relatives we left for a task and a vocation that we felt was infinitely different and better. Sometimes feeling this likeness is a great blessing; other times it depresses us because it speaks only of failure.
This stage can constitute the end of a calling; but, if overcome, it can signify death in preparation of actual resurrection. Like what happened to Elijah. In fact, one of the most beautiful, famous and mysterious theophanies of the Bible was performed on Mount Horeb, with his soul crushed by the "dark night". Let us enjoy it without any additional words of introduction: «The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by”. Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave» (1 Kings 19,11-13). There is a strong contrast between this scene and the one on Mount Carmel, where God had manifested himself, with all his power, in the fire. Now Elijah is depressed and discouraged, and God no longer speaks to him with the power of nature. Here we have the end of the primitive religious phase that saw the presence of God in exceptional natural events, and the discovery that God is spirit and breath.
There is something more. That splendid expression - qol demana daqqa - which the exegetes and poets have described in many ways, (a soft and subdued sound, the voice of silence, the hiss of a light breeze, the sweet whisper of a voice ...), tells us that God must learn to whisper if he wants to talk to us when pain has impaired the hearing of our souls. Inside spiritual caves, words often only serve to bother us - how many times do we not see the discomfort caused by words, including the word of God, in those who experience this kind of test. In order to rise again from certain deaths, the word must stop speaking and return to being merely a voice, a whisper, returning to that original phase, when sound had not yet articulated into actual words. Like that time when, in another cave, it became only the crying of a child. Like the time when, on another mountain, it became merely a scream. As in the end, when all the words we have said will only become a whisper, all enclosed in one last sigh.
In spiritual depression we are able to recognize God if he is able to lower his voice, if he learns to whisper to us. If we know how to do these things, God must know how to do it as well.
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Prophecy is history / 14 – On each new path in life, there is a stage of the "broom bush", of hopelessness, and it can be overcome
by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire 08/09/2019
« The danger of every human society is unanimity. In ancient Israel, the Sanhedrin realized this and did not allow death sentences, which had been passed by all members, to be carried out. To the Sanhedrin it seemed impossible that an unanimous vote could be human, in other words, thoughtful and rational »

Paolo De Benedetti, The Death of Moses
On Mount Horeb, Elijah tells us that we can recognize God during spiritual depression and rise again, if He is able to lower his voice and knows how to make himself a light breeze.
Crises, fatigue, and depression are not all the same. The Bible tells us there is also such a thing as spiritual depression, a common occurrence in the lives of prophets. They generally manifest in adult life, to those who have received a calling and a mission. We must distinguish spiritual depression from psychological depression, which is not easy because the signs are very similar. Elijah's story presents us with an ABC to recognize these depressions and, perhaps, to try to overcome them.
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Prophecy is history/ 12 - Too many "deceased" do not rise because we delude ourselves that words are enough
by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire  25/08/2019
« We seek another God, who is not proud of this unhappy world. We need to change God to keep him, and for him to keep us. »

Paolo de Benedetti Which God?
The miracle of Elijah who brings a boy back to life reminds us of the great meaning of the word that becomes flesh in the Bible, in life and in prayer.
Prophets are formed in the borderline between life and death. That is where they learn their "job". They are perpetually poised, tightrope walkers between the already was and has not yet been, exposed on the fundamental and decisive boundary of the human condition. The Bible knows that those who see God die. The prophet "sees" God, has seen him or at least heard him on the day of his calling. The prophetic vocation is Tabor, Golgotha ​​and the empty tomb all at the same time: we see God, we die, we rise again. The second episode of Elijah's mission is the resurrection of a boy. Still suspended between life and death: «Later it happened that the son of the landlady fell ill. His illness worsened so much that he died» (1 Kings 17,17). Last time, we had left Elijah with the miracle of the multiplication of bread and oil, which saved the widow and her son from starvation. Now that widow’s child (or maybe another widow’s: we do not know if the two stories were originally separated or not) becomes ill and dies. A scene that we will find time and time again in the New Testament as well, and which would have been very different without Elijah.
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The mother is the first person to speak: «Then she said to Elijah: "What is there between you and me, man of God? Did you come to me to renew the memory of my guilt and to kill my son?"» (1 Kings 17,18). It was very common in ancient times that the presence of a religious man - a priest or prophet - during dramatic events and misfortunes was interpreted as a sign of condemnation and guilt. Especially when the religious person was a male and the person at the center of the misfortune was a poor man or a woman, the signs of the sacred often became dark and threatening. Even today, the presence of religion during moments of great sorrow is not immediately a sacrament that reduces pain and brings consolation. As is the case with the woman in this story, the first reaction can often be anger, fear and the activation of feelings of guilt that are always the first to appear with our misfortunes. How many times have we not witnessed the dramatic reactions of relatives towards the priest who arrives in a house silenced by the demons of mourning? That priest can become the image of a cruel God who has ripped a son or a brother away. An invisible but very real curtain of embarrassment can arise around that religious man; sometimes screams, curses, cursing and imprecations. It is part of the learning and maturation process of priests and nuns to know how to receive those curses and be able to read them as a high form of prayer.
In that archaic world, the presence of Elijah causes the mother to read the misfortune as an irruption of God in her life, as result of her guilt. We do not know what her fault was, perhaps simply the human condition that people in ancient times read as inherently marked by a radical culpability. Despite all the biblical revelations and then Christianity telling us that God is agape, we too still continue to see our misfortunes as guilt - "if I gone with him", "if I had told him no", "this is my punishment for living a bad life"... Guilt is the first coin with which we pay our funeral bills. It comes alone and is inscribed in our cultural chromosomes. Economic-retributive religion is in fact much older and therefore rooted in the individual and collective heart of the religion of love and grace. That is why we need the prophets. The prophets stand next to us. They stay silent, they do not give us sermons or comforting speeches, they give us a God free from faults and merits, all grace and mercy. They do it with their words, but above all with their body: with a long and tenacious embrace, sharing a meal of tears and salt, standing close to us, silent, in those holy Saturdays that never end. It took me a lifetime - a priest friend told me - to understand that people who experience great pain do not seek words, they look for a body that knows how to live the Stabat.
«Elijah said to her, "Give me your son"» (1 Kings 17,19). Faced with the greatest pain known on earth, and which she can only barely sustain, Elijah takes the son's body in his arms. He does not preach: he acts and embraces. This is the only "word" that we would like to hear from the man of God who enters the son's room. «He took him from her arms, carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed» (1 Kings 17,19). That mom kept her son, the dead "boy" (yeled), close to her chest. A wonderful scene of an infinite humanity. If men and laws did not prevent them, mothers would continue to hold their dead children tightly to their chest forever, waiting for a God or a prophet to come along and raise them. If anyone has ever been able to write immense words about God's love for us, it is because he has seen and learned from the agape in mothers who continued holding their babies close to them, who never stopped doing it - women love the icon of Mary with the child because that little Jesus is also the image of their children, of those alive and even more so of those who died.
Only at this point does Elijah begin to pray: «Then he cried out to the Lord, “Lord my God, have you brought tragedy even on this widow I am staying with, by causing her son to die? "» (1 Kings 17,20). This is the different prayer of prophets, where the following words stand out: "Do you want to hurt this widow too?" This prayer begins with a protest, with a reproach to God who has also (hence not only) harmed his host. The biblical God does good, but also evil. Elijah puts himself on the side of the widow and the boy, and asks God to change, asking him to "convert". He does not console the woman by inviting her to accept "the will of God" or her destiny. We do these things because we do not know how to do anything else, but the prophet does not: he sympathizes with the mother and protests to God, asking him to change. He considers God responsible for the death of her son, because otherwise it would simply be a fetish. And, like Job, Elijah does not resort to economic and meritocratic theology to save God's justice. He does not think that men alone are responsible for their misfortunes - all deaths of youngsters are unjust deaths because they are the death of innocents. Elijah asks God to "wake up", to remember his name, which is different from that of idols, because he does not want the death of our children. The prophets, absurdly, prefer to be excommunicated by God than to sacrifice a boy. Abraham obeys God and leads his son to Mount Moriah. The prophet instead protests, argues with God, and does not bring his son to the altar - if we wanted a prophet in that terrible scene, we could find him in the ram.
In times of great crisis and unsustainable sorrow and pain, the prophet places himself next to us and asks God to prove himself to be at least as good as a mother. While he teaches us the words of God, he looks at the best very best side of man and points it out, teaches it, to God. If the Bible in the end has been able to give us the image of a God who is moved by the returned son, who leans over the victim on the road to Jericho, it is because the prophets dared to ask God to come down from the heavens and become at least as good as the mothers. False prophets condemn men in order to defend God. True prophets know instead that the only way to truly save and protect God is to truly protect and save people - especially children. The prophets are God's friends. They have a unique intimacy with the absolute. This is their mystery. This episode tells us that the first task of the prophets is to use that divine intimacy to save our children.
«Then he stretched himself out on the boy three times and cried out to the Lord, “Lord my God, let this boy’s life return to him!”» (1 Kings 17,21). Elijah's use of his body to try to "resurrect" the boy is very suggestive. He lays himself three times over the boy to the full extension of his body, as if to give him life by contact, by osmosis. The prophets heal and resurrect with all their body. Their words are different and performative because, above all, they are embodied words, words made of flesh. Too many "dead" do not rise again because we are not able to use the whole body, deceiving ourselves that words are enough (the great illusion of those who write and perhaps comment on the prophets is to think that men can be saved only by writing words). The beginning of the story of Elijah tells us that miracles can only happen after putting our whole body on the body of who was, or seemed, dead. Too many deceased remain dead or truly die because we are afraid to "lay down on them", that is to touch them, to embrace them - in that culture, the dead could not be touched, they were impure: but not to the prophets. Saint Francis gave us splendid words, but the word that raised Assisi and the world was his kiss to the tormented body of the leper.
The words of prayer must come together with the word of the body. In certain representations of the via Crucis, we can see "angels rising and falling on the son of man", but until we see the body of a man we are not able to recognize God: «The woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth» (1 Kings 17,24). God in order to save us did not become an angel, he became man: flesh and body. Here lies the great value of the body in biblical humanism. When prayer becomes a body, we can even overcome the angels. Elijah is the prophet of powerful prayer because he prays with his whole body. It is touching to see him while he prays on that boy's body. Because in him and with him we see other prophets who today continue to raise children, women and men - in wars, in camps, in the open seas - using their bodies as their first prayer: sharing the same misery, the same diseases, the same resurrections, death itself. Young boys and girls continue to die. Their mothers and fathers continue to despair and sometimes they curse God and his prophets. Elijah's gesture continues to remind us that if we one day want to save a child from the death of the body or the soul, we can only do so by reaching out, stretching ourselves out with our whole body. Three times, not one less.
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Prophecy is history/ 12 - Too many "deceased" do not rise because we delude ourselves that words are enough
by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire  25/08/2019
« We seek another God, who is not proud of this unhappy world. We need to change God to keep him, and for him to keep us. »

Paolo de Benedetti Which God?
The miracle of Elijah who brings a boy back to life reminds us of the great meaning of the word that becomes flesh in the Bible, in life and in prayer.
Prophets are formed in the borderline between life and death. That is where they learn their "job". They are perpetually poised, tightrope walkers between the already was and has not yet been, exposed on the fundamental and decisive boundary of the human condition. The Bible knows that those who see God die. The prophet "sees" God, has seen him or at least heard him on the day of his calling. The prophetic vocation is Tabor, Golgotha ​​and the empty tomb all at the same time: we see God, we die, we rise again. The second episode of Elijah's mission is the resurrection of a boy. Still suspended between life and death: «Later it happened that the son of the landlady fell ill. His illness worsened so much that he died» (1 Kings 17,17). Last time, we had left Elijah with the miracle of the multiplication of bread and oil, which saved the widow and her son from starvation. Now that widow’s child (or maybe another widow’s: we do not know if the two stories were originally separated or not) becomes ill and dies. A scene that we will find time and time again in the New Testament as well, and which would have been very different without Elijah.
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Prophecy is history / 10 - Balance is not always virtue and blessings are also found in the details
by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire 04/08/2019
« The voice of the Lord causes labor pains to hinds and hastens the delivery of goats. In his temple everyone says: "Glory!" »

Psalm 29
The difficult and unbalanced questions that biblical writers asked history continue to generate a reading capable of resurrecting that same history. As in the details that redeems the sad story of a dying child.
Balance is often a virtue, but, like all virtues, if it is absolutized even balance becomes a vice. During ethical and spiritual crises, only unbalanced choices can save us. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was not balanced when in February 1938 he chose to join Admiral Canaris' anti-Nazi conspiracy group. His more balanced theologian colleagues found a thousand reasons for prudence to passively assist to the horror, and so ended up becoming accomplices. That unbalanced behavior generated, in prison, perhaps the most prophetic theology of the twentieth century. And it was another imprudent and unbalanced behavior that generated Golgotha and the empty tomb.
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The Bible was not written by a group of impartial and balanced intellectuals. The community of scribes who told the story of Israel was part of the story it told, and it was biased. They wrote to resurrect the past in a wounded and exiled present. Hence, it was partial, partisan and exaggerated, up to the point of intervening upon the sources with acts that we in the modern world would consider incorrect. The merit of those scribes who composed the great history of Israel, from Genesis to the Book of Kings, was to propose a strong and therefore partial reading of their misfortune. When we have to understand and tell ourselves why our love story is over, we can read the documents from the lawyers and the sentence from the judge, but to really understand it we need a spiritual exercise of memory, which knows how to identify a few moments, words and gestures, because in important stories not all words and days are the same. If we really want to understand what happened to our discouraged and withered community, we can and must read the minutes of the councils, the statistics and the official records. However, in order to really understand it, we should also learn to read other reports as well and interpret the weak signals that have escaped us, re-read wrong words spoken at odd moments, forgiveness that was never asked for and sins of pride and power. And once an interpretation has been identified, try to act on that to change and rise again, while being aware that that interpretation is partial, exaggerated and unbalanced.
The ideal communities formed around a promise, during and after exile, must learn to ask radical questions to their history and if they don't, exile becomes infinite. These questions are essential, even when the answers are inadequate and insufficient (as are sometimes those of the editors of historical books). How did we end up here? How did we get reduced to this condition? Where did we go wrong? When and why did the covenant break? If the Bible stayed living through time until reaching us, if from a mere "remnant" Jesus of Nazareth was born several centuries later, this happened because a true part of the soul of that people knew how to make, and ask God, difficult and unbalanced questions. We save ourselves above all, and perhaps exclusively, if while in a crisis we learn to ask radical questions, because they are the ones that will accompany us and nourish us when time passes, pain increases and the answers do not arrive.
The major theme that occupies chapters 12-16 of the first Book of Kings are the reasons for the schism of the northern kingdom and the vicissitudes of the first kings of the two kingdoms. Some useful historical data. The archeological discoveries made in the lands of the Bible and in the neighboring areas, show a different history, at times very different, from that told by these chapters. They tell us that after the liberation of Egypt by Moses and after the military occupation of the promised land of Joshua, the twelve tribes of Jacob-Israel experienced a progressive development, until the establishment of the monarchy of Saul, David and finally Solomon, when the kingdom reached its maximum well-being and geographical extension from North to South. This "golden age" ends with the schism of Jeroboam, which triggers a decadence that will reach its climax with the Babylonian occupation and exile. The rupture of national unity was the consequence of the punishment of YHWH for the idolatry and corruption of the northern kingdom (Israel). Extra-biblical data (on which the text by Mario Liverani Beyond the Bible is an excellent reading) and the inscriptions found in some stems tell us a different story. First, it is now almost certain that some of the tribes were indigenous to the Palestinian region centuries before the time of Joshua and the monarchy. The growth of the kingdom of Israel was a unification / conquest of clans that were annexed to a relatively small Israelite nucleus (note that the territory of the twelve tribes as a whole was about the size of the Marche). This perhaps corresponded only to the tribes of Ephraim and Benjamin, in other words the North, while the South (Judah) would have had a more origin. A key figure in the process of enlarging the kingdom would have been that of Omri (IX century), the founder of Samaria, to whom the Bible devotes only a few lines (1 Kings 16, 22-28). Omri was so important that for a long time after the destruction of his dynasty people continued to talk about the "House of Omri" to indicate the people of Israel.
Recent data thus undermines the biblical story of a single kingdom subsequently divided into two, claiming that the united kingdom of David-Solomon was a mythical but not historical golden age - and that perhaps some of the acts attributed by the Bible to David were actually carried out by Omri. Furthermore, the whole narrative of the Book of Kings is told from the perspective of the Southern kingdom, from which a very negative reading of the kings of the North emerges, accusing them of idolatry. In reality, it is very probable that the kings of the North were no more prone to idolatry than those of the South. But, as often happens, the Bible also preserves some traces of other "Nordic" traditions (we saw it in the case of the story of Saul), from which other reasons for the schism emerge (conflict, which incidentally is rather natural in countries that develop vertically).
It is within this partial explanation based on the unfaithfulness of the Northern Kingdom that the great and beautiful account of the visit of the king's wife to the prophet Achia should also be read: «At that time Abia, son of Jeroboam, fell ill. Jeroboam said to his wife: "Get up, change clothes so as not to know that you are Jeroboam's wife and go to Shiloh. There is the prophet Achia ... Take with you ten loaves of bread, buns and a honey pot. He will reveal to you what will happen to the boy". Jeroboam's wife did so. She got up, went to Shiloh, and entered the house of Achia, who could not see, because his eyes were darkened with old age» (1 Kings 14, 1-4). Jeroboam knows the prophet, and knows that he has learned of his idolatry, and therefore has his wife disguised, but the blind prophet recognizes her from her walk: «So when Ahijah heard the sound of her footsteps at the door, he said, "Come in, wife of Jeroboam. Why this pretense? I have been sent to you with bad news"» (1 Kings 14, 6). The news is a tremendous oracle of curse: «I will send misfortune on the house of Jeroboam ... Dogs will devour how many of the house of Jeroboam will die in the city; the birds of the air will devour them in the country» (1 Kings 14,10-11). And then he adds the most terrible phrase of all: «Get up, go to your house; when your feet reach the city, the child will die» (1 Kings 14,12). The woman left, and «just as she crossed the threshold of the house, the child died» (1 Kings 14,17). Abia the child died. From time to time the Bible uses the death of children to deliver a strong message to parents and to us. It is its way of communicating. But we cannot just pass by without lingering if only for a moment under the crosses of these innocents, both in the Bible and in life.
A woman disguised by order of her husband, to cover up his shame. Here it is not the king who disguises himself, as was the case with Saul who went to the necromancer of Endor (1 Sam 28), in another wonderful episode. The king stays at home, asks his wife to disguise herself and sends her instead. The text does not say anything about any faults with this wife of Jeroboam, but she is the one who carries out the hardest part in this tragedy. She dresses up to hide her husband's shame - how many times do we not see this in our families, or in our businesses, a wife who "disguises herself" for a shame not of her own and goes to talk to lawyers, bankers and judges, in the hope of receiving some good news.
This woman, this queen, does not say a word in this story written by males for males, where the death of a son is communicated with a considerable lack of compassion - how, and with what words, would a prophetess have given this same announcement? Let us ask the Bible these questions, it will grow with us. A masked mother sent to a prophet, used as a messenger, who is not given the right to speak or to express her emotions. The text is not interested in how that woman reacted to her son's death sentence. It does not tell us if she implored the prophet to ask his God to change his mind – most probably she did, because women have been doing so every day for millennia. The prophet, instead, merely says: "tell Jeroboam", as if that sacrificed life was a matter only between men, without recognizing her being a mother to the "bad news" he was giving her. Yes, the Bible also contains this ruthlessness. We must not forget it.
However, in this terrible story the Bible enables us to "see" one detail of this woman: her feet. Not only the devil is hidden in the details. As in the origin of this quotation, where God and not the great divider is found in the details, sometimes blessings are found in the details of the Bible as well, and at times even contribute to redeem a curse. The prophet heard the "sound of her feet"; when "your feet will reach the city, the child ..." while "crossing" the threshold of the house, the child ... The decisive moments of this story are marked and timed by the movement of the woman's feet.
The Bible and the Gospels are populated by women who walk and move, and almost always "in a hurry". Mary "went quickly" to Elizabeth; Mary of Bethany goes "in a hurry" to meet Jesus to tell him about the death of Lazarus; and "hurriedly abandoned the tomb with fear and great joy, the women ran to give the announcement to his disciples". They walk and run; they love with their hands and feet, which they know because they care for them: "Mary was the one who sprinkled the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair". This kind of agape is called Maria.
Faith and piety continue their journey in this world because men and women continue to run along the road. And in this common race, women's feet run both differently and more.
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Prophecy is history / 10 - Balance is not always virtue and blessings are also found in the details
by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire 04/08/2019
« The voice of the Lord causes labor pains to hinds and hastens the delivery of goats. In his temple everyone says: "Glory!" »

Psalm 29
The difficult and unbalanced questions that biblical writers asked history continue to generate a reading capable of resurrecting that same history. As in the details that redeems the sad story of a dying child.
Balance is often a virtue, but, like all virtues, if it is absolutized even balance becomes a vice. During ethical and spiritual crises, only unbalanced choices can save us. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was not balanced when in February 1938 he chose to join Admiral Canaris' anti-Nazi conspiracy group. His more balanced theologian colleagues found a thousand reasons for prudence to passively assist to the horror, and so ended up becoming accomplices. That unbalanced behavior generated, in prison, perhaps the most prophetic theology of the twentieth century. And it was another imprudent and unbalanced behavior that generated Golgotha and the empty tomb.
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Prophecy is history / 8 - The corruption of scholars is different, as great as the good that is being destroyed
By  Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire il 21/07/2019
« In the life of any emperor, there is a moment, following the pride for the boundless breadth of the territories we have conquered, the melancholy and relief of knowing that soon we will give up knowing them and understanding them; it’s a sense of emptiness that takes over us one evening with the smell of elephants after the rain and sandal ash cooling down in the braziers;... it is the desperate moment in which we discover that this empire that first seemed to be the sum of all wonders to us, is really a debacle without a real ending or form, and that its corruption is too gangrenous for our scepter to be able to provide any shelter. »

Italo Calvino, The invisible cities, Introduction
The story of Solomon's decline contains one of the most precious anthropological teachings in the Bible, and continues to inspire us in its drama: our most beautiful talent can be transformed into the cause of our ruin.
The corruption of the righteous is different from that of the wicked. There is the corruption of those who, for many reasons (and not all of them guilty) have always lived surrounded by evil. He grew up with a heart cultivated by bad thoughts and actions that overwhelmed the good and true feelings that dwell in all human hearts. These people are rare, but they have always existed and still exist. Their corruption is very dangerous, and produces a lot of evil and pain. But there is also the corruption of the just, even of the wise, which tends to be as great and serious as the justice and wisdom that preceded them. The Bible also tells us about this second type of corruption. The story of Salomon's moral decline is among the most famous ones. In the story, this comes right after the description of Solomon’s greatest success, but reading the text and the whole Bible carefully, we realize that the moral corruption of the wisest king had already begun with the growth of his political success and his riches: «The weight of the gold that Solomon received yearly was 666 talents, not including the revenues from merchants and traders… The king had a fleet of trading ships at sea along with the ships of Hiram… King Solomon was greater in riches and wisdom than all the other kings of the earth» (1 Kings 10,14-23). Once again, the text here is all about wealth and wisdom, as if they were two sides of the same coin, as if the welfare (shalom) of Solomon was the effect of his wisdom. In fact, there is an essence in the Bible that interprets riches as a blessing from God, hence creating a close correlation between economic-political success and justice (see the book of Job). But in the same Bible, prophetic tradition and a theological school of thought, which was also present in the school of scribes that wrote much of the Books of Kings during the Babylonian exile, see the accumulation of wealth and the growth of political power in a much more problematic way.
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If we read between the lines in the narration of the magnificence and greatness of Solomon a strong contrast immediately appears between the description of that kingdom and what the Law of Moses recommended to the kings of Israel in the Deuteronomy: «The king must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold» (Dt 17,17).
The scribes who recounted the riches of Solomon were the same ones who were writing the book of Deuteronomy which, drawing on the Mosaic law, the highest authority, criticized those same riches. They knew the texts of Isaiah (chapter 23) and of Ezekiel (chapters 26-27) who had condemned the great businesses of Tyre (of which Hiram was king), a commercial city that became rich and powerful thanks to its commercial exchanges and financial activity. We must not forget that these biblical texts were written in Babylon, which also was a commercial and financial superpower, with large companies and banks. Those prophets and those scribes saw the results from the many riches directly with their own eyes: usury, debts, and people enslaved due to insolvency. It is not by chance that it was precisely during the exile that the Jewish people began to elaborate that unique piece of legislation on the prohibition of lending at interest and on the Sabbath as a utopia of a time freed from the law of wealth and power. The prohibition regarding interest and the Sabbath was born during the exile as a way of saying no to an economy that kills and excludes and yes to an economy of life and communion. Hence, the prophets and a school of scribes learned the vanitas of riches and their ability to mislead and corrupt everyone in Babylon. Even those who, like Solomon, had received the riches of God as a reward for asking only for wisdom (chapter 3). And so while those scribes describe Solomon's disproportionate wealth, they also show us the invisible termites that are already corroding the foundations of that kingdom and the very same temple that that great wealth had built.
Therefore, we must not let ourselves be distracted or confused by a superficial or too modern a reading of what we read at the beginning of chapter 11 regarding the reasons for the decline of Solomon: «King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter: Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites… Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray» (1 Kings 11,1-3). That huge number of women had arrived in the harem and in Solomon's court following political alliances, which were essential in the cultures of those days to create solid and lasting empires - until recently, women were also the first instruments used in politics: and it is always advisable to dwell on these details in the text, in order not to miss even a drop of that pain, and allow our attention to be called upon by it. When they arrived in Solomon’s court, those women brought their culture and therefore their religion as well. It was part of the political alliances with their fathers and relatives to allow the women (at least the ones belonging to the most powerful families) to be able to continue the cults and worship of their homeland in Jerusalem. Hence, the multiplication of altars in ode to foreign gods and goddesses, among these Astarte, the most important goddess of the Phoenician pantheon, and Moloch, god of the Ammonites, to whom perhaps even children were sacrificed.
We do not know if Solomon really was a "philogynaios" (in the Greek version of the Bible), that is, a womanizer or a "lover of women" in the sense in which his father was (think of the effect that Bathsheba bathing had on David), and if lust was one of the reasons for his decline. What is interesting to the authors of this narrative is the religious dimension of that decline, and therefore in the biblical world something much more serious than mere lust and political alliances.
It is not a coincidence, in fact, that the text here repeats a keyword in the history and mission of Solomon twice: the heart (leb). At the beginning of his reign, in that wonderful vocational dream, the young Solomon had only asked YHWH for "a heart that knows how to listen", the most beautiful request that a sovereign ever addressed to a God. That listening heart had made him wise, known everywhere for his wisdom, and therefore also rich and powerful. But it was that same heart, the center of his vocation, the very precious talent he had received from life and from God, which little by little had changed slowly becoming sick and corrupt.
Here we have a great message from biblical anthropology. When a covenant that was the center of our vocation is shattered due to a political alliance or the allure of a beautiful woman, we find ourselves on the plane of consequences and effects not causes. The concrete act of betrayal with which a marriage pact is broken is the effect of something that already began in the heart a while ago, when in order to grow in wealth and / or in power, we began to build other altars inside our soul and allow other gods to enter the intimacy of an exclusive alliance. If I had not already brought an altar into the house, I would not have had a place to consume my betrayal.
But there is more, what corrupts us as adults and in old age is often the same great gift we received as young people. The great moral and spiritual illnesses are always auto-immune diseases. The viruses and bacteria that come from outside and touch the soul bring suffering, trials and difficulties, which hurt and cause damage, but are not able to transform a heart of flesh into a heart of stone. They act on the surface, but do not enter the marrow. The alchemies of the heart are produced not by what "enters" man, but by what was already there and which, day after day, has undergone a slow transformation and then a perversion. It is our most beautiful talent that becomes the first agent of our corruption. It is our greatest blessing that also becomes our curse. The same thing that happens with neuroses, when what is ill is not the shadow, but the light that, once ill, turns dark and darkens us leading into a dense night, as dark and dense as the light before it was bright.
With spiritual vocation, for example, it is precisely that special heart that as a young person was able to welcome into its infinitely small space a presence of infinite greatness, that spiritual excellence that managed to understand that ineffable subtle voice of silence, that one day - day after day and almost never without having decided it intentionally - uses that same capacity for infinity and that spiritual excellence to begin to listen to other voices and other silences, to build other altars perhaps in order to love and respect new relationships encountered along the way.
The great heresies and schisms in communities come from people with great vocations; the greatest negators of God are those who knew him and saw him closely, because only those who feel great love can really hate. The traitor does not come from outside, he is one of the twelve, and we do not know if Judas was one of the most brilliant and gifted of the group (perhaps he was: if only because he was the treasurer).
YHWH had spoken to Solomon "twice" (1 Kings 11.9), but even this extraordinary act was not enough to stop treason. It was not enough, also because Solomon did not notice the exact moment when his corruption began, nor when he exceeded the critical threshold and the corruption process became irreversible. This is often the way these things happen. The real drama of any authentic vocation that breaks down is the inability to recognize the moment in which the degeneration of the heart is triggered. Perhaps, if instead of seven hundred wives Solomon had had only one true one, she would have been able to see that invisible beginning in the eyes or the soul of the king, and perhaps she would have been able to save him.
Not even we can recognize the dawn of decline, we often confuse it with midday. The voice had spoken to us twice, maybe ten times or a hundred and we really believed it. But, one day, something happened, and the heart started to listen to the wrong people and things, without really wanting it or knowing it. Maybe things could only end this way. What if God really is greater than our heart?
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Prophecy is history / 8 - The corruption of scholars is different, as great as the good that is being destroyed
By  Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire il 21/07/2019
« In the life of any emperor, there is a moment, following the pride for the boundless breadth of the territories we have conquered, the melancholy and relief of knowing that soon we will give up knowing them and understanding them; it’s a sense of emptiness that takes over us one evening with the smell of elephants after the rain and sandal ash cooling down in the braziers;... it is the desperate moment in which we discover that this empire that first seemed to be the sum of all wonders to us, is really a debacle without a real ending or form, and that its corruption is too gangrenous for our scepter to be able to provide any shelter. »

Italo Calvino, The invisible cities, Introduction
The story of Solomon's decline contains one of the most precious anthropological teachings in the Bible, and continues to inspire us in its drama: our most beautiful talent can be transformed into the cause of our ruin.
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Prophecy is history / 6 - The Bible tells us and tells us again that the one true God is the God of all. And so is Christ.
by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire 07/07/2019
«Job would not accept to passively sacrifice his own son, because he would no longer mistake devoutness with surrendering to orders and laws.»

Ernst Bloch, Atheism in Christianity
Solomon finishes the construction of his temple, and immediately tells us that the abode of God is not in the temple. It is this religious chastity that makes faith different from idolatry.
The temptation of all those who set out to build a temple is the desire to capture God in the dwelling they have built. Because the risk of every theory and practice of the sacred is the transformation of the divine into a consumer item. The Bible reminds us that the presence of God in temples and on earth is an absent presence, within which we may practise the humble exercise of faith. The biblical sacred is a partial sacred, the temple is an imperfect religious place. This necessary "religious chastity", which always leaves us needy and desirous of the "not-as-yet God" while experiencing a certain true and imperfect presence, has been jealously guarded and cultivated by the Bible; and once upon a time allowed the Jews to continue their experience in faith even with the destroyed temple. The poverty of having to dwell in a temple that was much less luminous than those of other people, lay the seed to the wealth of a religion which was freed from a sacred place and therefore also still possible to practice in exile. Only idols are small enough to be contained by their sanctuaries. The biblical God is the Most High because He is infinitely higher than any temple roof we could ever build.
    [fulltext] => 
The dedication of the temple takes place during a large assembly of all of Israel. The liturgy begins with the transportation of the Ark of the Covenant from the tent where David had placed it to the temple: «King Solomon and the entire assembly of Israel that had gathered about him were before the ark, sacrificing so many sheep and cattle that they could not be recorded or counted» (1 Kings 8,5). The Ark of the Covenant (which, as the text recalls, contained "only" the tables of the Law of Moses) is a sacrament of the nomadic time of the exodus and of the Sinai, it is the link between past, present and future. Another golden thread that unites the new temple with the ancient history of Israel is the presence of the cloud: «When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of the Lord. And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled his temple» (1 Kings 8,10-11). The cloud, in fact, had already filled the "conference tent" when Moses had completed its construction: «Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle»; even «Moses could not enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle» (Exodus 40,34-35).
The temple begins its public life under the sign of a radical ambivalence. It is the new conference tent, the new home of the Ark and of the tables of the Law, the house that holds the roots and the Covenant. At the same time, the dark cloud signals that the temple hosts a presence that, although true, is less true than the absence of God, who is lord of the temple because he is not obliged to dwell there. The cloud is a symbol of the presence of the "glory of YHWH” and of the darkness of our ability to see and understand it. And so Solomon, in what is perhaps the most beautiful verse and the real profound meaning of this whole great chapter, can (and must) exclaim: «But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!» (1 Kings 8,27). And so Solomon, on the very day of the dedication of the temple, his religious and political masterpiece, repeatedly says again and again that the true "abode" of God is not his wonderful temple. It is this capacity for continuous self-subversion that makes the Bible a truly living work and capable of always surprising us.
Another narrative-theological strategy to express the absence-presence of God is the distinction between YHWH and his name. A name in the Bible says many things, and all of which are important (the Bible is also a story of given and changed names, spoken and unspoken). YHWH, the name that God reveals to Moses on the Sinai, is a revelation because it reveals and immediately veils again (re-veiling). It is a name / non-name ("I am who I am"), which does not allow itself to be manipulated or pronounced except in the temple on special occasions. The name therefore performs the same function as the cloud: it reveals and unveils, it speaks and is silent, it illuminates and darkens. Every time a Jew entered the temple he had to relive something of Moses' encounter with the bush: a dialogue with someone who burns without being consumed, who speaks without being there: «May your eyes be open toward this temple night and day, this place of which you said, “My Name shall be there!”» (1 Kings 8,29). The name of God dwells in the temple to remind us that the God of that name is not there, because if he were he would not be God. And if the temple does not contain God, but only his name, it is possible to pray and meet YHWH everywhere.
Biblical faith has done everything to safeguard the co-essentiality of the presence and absence of God. All idolatrous deviations that have been known throughout its long history have been the result of the exit of the cloud from the temple and of the illusion that YHWH's name was YHWH himself. When the cloud of mystery clears and disappears we can finally see the gods in a clear light merely because they have become idols. The price of seeing without the cloud is being able to see something different - which we like very much, but which is not God. As long as we manage to remain destitute before a cloud that envelops the mystery and a name that reveals and unveils, we can remain retain some hope that a living presence could exist beyond that cloud and name; instead, when we no longer accept this religious poverty, and try to drive away the cloud in order to see better, wishing to see God face to face, there in that space, when pronouncing God’s name we think we know him perfectly, ends biblical faith and idolatry begins.
Faith lives in the space that is created between our sincere subjective experience of God and the reality of God in itself: when this space is reduced faith is reduced as well; when it is nullified, it is the faith that is nullified. The pronunciation of God’s name saves us as long as we keep alive the notion that between that name and God there is a cloud of mystery that does not reduce faith but makes it very human and true. The only experience of God that we can have under the sun of this earth is within a dense cloud, and the name to which God responds is a non-name that can call him and wake him as long as we know that we are calling him by a name that is imperfect and impartial and therefore true. And then, if as the Apocalypse says, «They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads» (Revelation 22,4), then the name of God will be revealed to us by another looking at us - and we will reveal it to them.
Within this horizon of light and shadow, of proximity and distance, we can enter the great prayer of Solomon in his temple. It is a solemn prayer, it embraces the whole history of salvation reaching all the way from Egypt to the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem and exile, and perhaps beyond. It is an individual and collective song; it is thanksgiving, memory and supplication, with some authentic pearls embedded. Its centre is still the experience of exile: «and if they have a change of heart in the land where they are held captive, and repent and plead with you in the land of their captors and say, “We have sinned, we have done wrong, we have acted wickedly”; and if they turn back to you with all their heart and soul in the land of their enemies who took them captive… then from heaven, your dwelling place, hear their prayer and their plea, and uphold their cause» (1 Kings 8,47-49).
This prayer said by Solomon is wonderful and written by scribes deported to Babylon who were learning an essential lesson: one can be saved while in exile by "returning to oneself" and "returning to you [God]". These are the first two movements during exile, which are much more radical and decisive than the more common "returning home". Because without the «I will set out and go back to my father» (Luke 15,18), no return is a return of salvation - in the Bible and in life it is not enough to go home to end an exile, as Third Isaiah also told us.
The experience of exile also inspires Solomon's other splendid prayer for the stranger or foreigner: «As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel but has come… to pray toward this temple, then hear from heaven, your dwelling place. Do whatever the foreigner asks of you» (1 Kings 8,41-43). If the abode of God is "heaven" (constant refrain) then every man under the sun can pray to him, because this God is no longer imprisoned by national borders and his kingdom is the whole earth. It is these passages, inspired by a universalistic and inclusive religiosity, written by a people who were rebuilding their mortally wounded national identity around their different God, which in turn make the Bible something different from just a book that narrates the historical and theological events of a single people. These phrases, these prayers, could and should not have existed in these historical books; and instead there they are, like "flowers of evil" generated along the rivers of Babylon. Only a people that had come to know the humiliation of feeling like foreigners in a great empire by great gods, could understand that if there is a true God and if the earth is not only populated by idols, then this God must be able to listen to the prayer of every person; because if my God does not listen to a foreigner or a stranger then he does not have ears capable of listening to me either, because then he is simply a banal idol who knows only how to act within the realms of his feigned sacred enclosure. The biblical faith of the exiles understood that their God was different because he was becoming the God of all.
Biblical humanism and Christianity have repeatedly told us and reiterated that if there is a true God, then he must be the God of all. We already knew it, but really learned it during all the wars, deportations, prison camps, through the "enemy" soldiers hidden inside our homes, when we knew how to read, in the midst of all the pain, the "name of God" on the forehead of those who knocked on our door, of those who came to our borders and to our ports. Our grandparents and our parents learned it, and on this lesson of flesh and blood they built and rebuilt Europe. We have forgotten it. But perhaps in the long exile of humanity that we currently find ourselves in we can re-learn that Name again.
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Prophecy is history / 6 - The Bible tells us and tells us again that the one true God is the God of all. And so is Christ.
by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire 07/07/2019
«Job would not accept to passively sacrifice his own son, because he would no longer mistake devoutness with surrendering to orders and laws.»

Ernst Bloch, Atheism in Christianity
Solomon finishes the construction of his temple, and immediately tells us that the abode of God is not in the temple. It is this religious chastity that makes faith different from idolatry.
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Prophecy is history /4 - The most precious symphonies in life are those that remain unfinished, our true masterpieces
by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire 23/06/2019
« I said, “I will be wise”; But it was far from me. As for that which is far off and exceedingly deep, Who can find it out? »

Ecclesiastes 7,23-24
Biblical wisdom is a texture that is intertwined with historical facts. And it reminds us that we are greater and more beautiful than the most beautiful and greatest things that we can do, because we have been created out of love and not for utility
Wisdom is a common silver thread running through the Bible. It was the flower of one of the longest, most colourful and multi-coloured springs in the history of humanity. What manifested itself in Greece as philosophy, more or less at the same time in the area between Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, became wisdom. Ancient myth and its symbols reached a new more mature age, above all finally capable of expressing concepts and realities that previously remained engulfed in the blinding light (and darkness) of the mystery of the whole. Mythos gave birth to Logos. It was the invention of the word, as a new epiphany of life and therefore of man, of the world and of God. Even if the words of philosophy do not coincide with those of wisdom, they are very similar. Job is not Plato's Timaeus, the Song of Songs is not the Symposium, yet they manage to speak and understand each other.
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Philosophy is born from the wonder of a world that could not be but actually is; wisdom however arises from the discovery that if well looked after reality includes rules, laws, words that reveal the meaning of life and teach us the profession of living. A reality, however, that is not simply the book of nature, because the experience of the Law and of the prophets, of revealed words and gifts, are essential to biblical wisdom, an essential map to be able to investigate, penetrate and understand the world, God, man. Man also marvels in wisdom, but the first and fundamental marvel of biblical humanism stems from the experience of a world inhabited by Yahweh, by his presence and by his word. The biblical man dreams of a different man because he dreams of a different God.
This is why the wisdom that we find in the Bible is not just ethics or theology. In a different way, and more so than with Greek philosophy and contemporary Asian ethics, it is history, because the concrete presence of Yahweh in the world renders human affairs true and not merely a pale shadow of the real world above the sun. The Covenant is a decisive event in biblical history, because it takes place over time and in its unfolding it gives substance and truth to time and history. Wisdom is then the warp that intertwines with the plot of historical facts to give life to the tapestry of the world; it is also the human word in dialogue with the word of God in an intimate conversation of love that has lasted millennia – and still continues.
This wisdom is the breath that inspired the writers of many biblical pages, the key to reading books that deal with very different subjects (history, prophecy, law ...). And so, in order to understand the meaning of the story of Solomon and the parable of his kingdom as well, it is important to read them in parallel with the first chapters of Genesis. Solomon is placed by his God-Yahweh in the centre of a new Eden, a garden of goods and shalom. Like Adam who cultivated and kept the land given to him by Elohim, Solomon administers a vast, peaceful and rich kingdom: «So King Solomon ruled over all Israel» (1 Kings 4,1), the greatest kingdom in all of Israel's history: «And Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates River to the land of the Philistines, as far as the border of Egypt» (1 Kings 4,21). At the height of his shalom, the Adam in Genesis begins his decline. He begins to believe in a different logos, that of the serpent, and therefore to deny the discourse of wisdom. A denial of wisdom that generated the fratricide of Cain, the gesture of Lamech and finally the flood. The first chapters of the Books of Kings also show us Solomon reaching the culmination of splendour and glory: «Judah and Israel… they ate, they drank and they were happy» (1 Kings 4,20). And for Solomon too, the pinnacle of success coincides with the beginning of his decline. He had received the gift of wisdom and had exercised it: «God granted Solomon great wisdom and intelligence and a mind as vast as the sand that is on the beach of the sea. The Wisdom of Solomon exceeded the wisdom of all the Orientals and all the wisdom of Egypt. He was wiser than all men ... his name was famous among all the neighbouring peoples ... From all nations they came to hear the Wisdom of Solomon» (1 Kings 4,29-34).
But, at a certain point, Solomon leaves the path of wisdom and takes that of the serpent. The Bible does not tell us when the decline of its wisest king began. Perhaps because many scholars get lost without realizing it. A sapiential reading of these chapters (in the light of the Law in its entirety and the prophets) however suggests that this downfall began while Solomon was building his masterpiece: the temple of Jerusalem. Even his sunset began at noon. For some mysterious law of human nature, one of the truest, our masterpieces also tend to contain the seed of our corruption. Because if the "talent" we received is great (as was Solomon’s), applying it often takes away our innocence. The beginning of our decline becomes the cost of having completed our most important work - «So Solomon built the temple and completed it» (1 Kings 6,14).
This is why one of the few ways to save something of the purity with which we arrive on earth as children is to not expect to conclude the works that we feel ethically compelled to complete. It is the Shabbat of the heart that can save the other six days and our last day. When we succeed in respecting this special and invisible Shabbat, and do it in mild obedience to an intimate law that has not been written by ourselves, but that we feel is ours and necessary, we do not completely appropriate the gifts we have received and hence do not become masters of our life (the first and foremost chastity, the most arduous and essential one, is towards ourselves which, if practiced, enables us not to devour ourselves).
The most beautiful symphony in life is the one that remains unfinished, our true masterpiece, because it did not turn out in the shape or form we thought and wanted. The most beautiful scientific achievements are those that we have not been able to solve and that we can therefore leave to the young; the most sublime poetry are the verses that arrive to us, like whispers from the soul, many times during many nights and that we have never been able to write down when waking up; it is that word which we have said and reiterated, said and repeated again within ourselves and then, when he or she finally arrived, ended up extinguished in our mouths because of too much pain, thus remaining only a cry or scream - as in Golgotha, when the Logos became mute, and said its masterpiece. All this can simply be called gratuitousness. In Jewish tradition a house must never be entirely completed: some corner of a room must be left unfinished, a few uncovered bricks; to remember the destruction of Jerusalem, but also to remember that life is always incompleteness. On the wedding day, the Jewish bridegroom breaks a glass pitcher with his foot, as if to say that the party must not be complete. Only an imperfect party and an unfinished house can become end-less.
Hence, by joining the school and learning of wisdom we can also understand, the ambivalence that is inherent to the entire biblical theology of the temple. The priestly tradition must and wants to build the temple; while wisdom tells us that its construction reminds Solomon and us that God is greater than his temple, and therefore no temple contains God but only his images, which the Law forbids because in fact we are the only legitimate image of Elohim, created in his "image and likeness": every other image of him is merely a doodle - the anti-idolatrous commandment is primarily anthropological. Paradoxically enough, the religious contamination and idolatry that Solomon will come to know are therefore already implicit in the construction of the temple, inscribed in his masterpiece. Without wisdom we would never understand it. When I begin to build a temple to my God, I am in fact saying, perhaps without being aware of it, that he is just like the gods of all other people, and therefore as trivial as all other idols. Thus, from the point of view of wisdom, starting the construction of the temple is the first step on the road to religious corruption. But the Jews understood this only during the Babylonian exile, when the destruction of that marvellous temple enabled them to understand what the temple really was and what Yahweh truly was. When they found themselves without a temple, without worship and with a defeated God-Yahweh, they also discovered wisdom and never abandoned it again.
And here we find a precious hidden message for every faith and religion. When movements and spiritual communities, founded by following "the one and only voice", begin to build temples and shrines to their founders (physical or ideal), their corruption has already begun. That different breath and that special Covenant become just like all others, that different "god" is now really like all other "idols" from which we wanted to distinguish ourselves when it all started. It is not the founders who make the temples (David), but their children (Solomon). In fact, it is precisely that construction of the temple, understood as the spectacular celebration of the greatness of one's own charism («I have indeed built a magnificent temple for you»: 1 Kings 8,13), that tells us that there is nothing different from other people in their spirit. The great construction decrees the beginning of the end while on the outward everything appears as the pinnacle of success.
The corruption of the individual and collective heart, which begins while we are finally doing what we thought was the most beautiful and greatest purpose we had in life, tells us something very beautiful indeed but also dramatic. That we are greater and more beautiful than the most beautiful and greatest things we can do, because we were created out of love and not for utility, not even to be useful to the Kingdom and its temples. And if there really is a paradise - and there must be, if only for the poor - we will not enter it because of the masterpieces we have built, but for that little piece of non-corrupt soul that we have managed to preserve while we built our most beautiful works; for that corner of the garden in our hearts that we have left free without putting it to earn its use, and not for all the fruit that we have gathered for ourselves and for others; for that one and only reason that we found to go on, not for the ninety-nine that told us to drop everything; for the talent we have safe-guarded, not for the five that we have invested in enriching a "demanding" boss. For that sin that has besmirched and humiliated us and that one day we finally mercifully will accept, not for the virtues that have earned us praises and merits. But this different logic of life can only be taught to us by wisdom.
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Prophecy is history /4 - The most precious symphonies in life are those that remain unfinished, our true masterpieces
by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire 23/06/2019
« I said, “I will be wise”; But it was far from me. As for that which is far off and exceedingly deep, Who can find it out? »

Ecclesiastes 7,23-24
Biblical wisdom is a texture that is intertwined with historical facts. And it reminds us that we are greater and more beautiful than the most beautiful and greatest things that we can do, because we have been created out of love and not for utility
Wisdom is a common silver thread running through the Bible. It was the flower of one of the longest, most colourful and multi-coloured springs in the history of humanity. What manifested itself in Greece as philosophy, more or less at the same time in the area between Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, became wisdom. Ancient myth and its symbols reached a new more mature age, above all finally capable of expressing concepts and realities that previously remained engulfed in the blinding light (and darkness) of the mystery of the whole. Mythos gave birth to Logos. It was the invention of the word, as a new epiphany of life and therefore of man, of the world and of God. Even if the words of philosophy do not coincide with those of wisdom, they are very similar. Job is not Plato's Timaeus, the Song of Songs is not the Symposium, yet they manage to speak and understand each other.
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Prophecy is history /2 – The small and harsh last wishes of a great king confirm that no one is like God
 by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire 09/06/2019
«David was an excellent man equipped with every virtue that a king should possess. He was prudent, tender, kind with those in need, fair and humane. And he never fell or erred, except with Uriah’s wife»

Giuseppe Flavio, Antichità Giudaiche (Judaic Antiquity): 390-39
We come straight into the heart of the story of Solomon, and continue with the intrigues and skulduggery which, in hindsight, reveal other essential messages of biblical humanism to us.
 The great biblical stories continue to speak to us because, despite being much greater and more beautiful than we are, they resemble us. It is while being in exile that human communities are given the opportunity to write some of their most beautiful stories. The great suffering during those years, the «beautiful but lost» land, the humiliations, the forced labour, the great prayers of the psalms sung along the rivers of Babylon, created a new and incredibly profound pietas in the people, which ended up becoming a new outlook on humanity as a whole. It is while being stranded in the desert that you learn to really value water; it is while coming in contact with the limits of men and wounded and humiliated women that you learn the infinite value of being human. Our suffering and that of others transforms ethics into mercy, the only thing that enables praising the wounds of man because it recognises a blessing in them. You would need an entire lifetime, if even that is enough, to learn how to recognise and meet God in the sins of the world.
When we last saw Adonijah, King David’s eldest son, heir and pretender to the throne, he was at a sacred banquet with the leaders of his “party” rivals to that of Solomon, King David’s other son.
The sacred meal was a well-known concept among all religions and ancient cults. In many civilisations, food was the first sacrifice offered to the divinities. And when the killing of animals was offered to the gods, that food was also often consumed together, becoming a sacrifice of communion for the members of the community. Dead animals, hence blood and violence that become the place and language for the dialogue between man and the gods and among men themselves. Food was in fact a fundamental resource of life and its very image, something more and different than just mere nutrition; hence it had to be excluded from the laws of individual strengths and skills and shared in common – everyone had to feed within the clan, the tribe and the family, the weak as well and above all: this is the first evolutionary norm protecting society from extinction. It is, therefore, no surprise that murders and other crimes in the Bible take place during sacred meals, because the very act of sacrifice inherently carried a dimension of violence and death within it (albeit, paradoxically, also connected to life). The same way, it doesn’t surprise us that meetings among politicians and businessmen today take place around a meal, when sharing food helps to create and boost relationships, which then in their turn then contribute to grease the mechanisms and dynamics of decision making; nor that many conflicts and separations start at the table or with prepared and refused meals, and that wounded and dying relationships can be reborn through a shared meal, where we rise once again as companions – cum panis.
Old David no longer found any excitement despite Abishag, his new incredibly beautiful concubine. Another woman, his wife Bathsheba, arrives to his bedside. The prophet Nathan, however, had visited her before, to tell her about the banquet-sacrifice offered by Adonijah, interpreted by the prophet as an attempt to proclaim himself as the new king: «Then Nathan asked Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother, “Have you not heard that Adonijah, the son of Haggith, has become king, and our lord David knows nothing about it? Now then, let me advise you (…) go in to King David and say to him, “My lord the king, did you not swear to me your servant: “Surely Solomon your son shall be king after me, and he will sit on my throne”? Why then has Adonijah become king?’»(1 Book of Kings 1, 11-14).
We first met Nathan in the second book of Samuel, after the crime committed by David against Uriah the Hittite, to take away Bathsheba from him. In one of the most emotionally charged and tremendous episodes in the Bible, the prophet then accused David while telling him the parable of the lamb, and subsequently made the King recognise his own sin («Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord»: 2 Samuel 12,13). Now Nathan seems a very different person. In the fratricide struggle for succession, he is clearly on Solomon’s side, and begins to scheme. Trusting the King’s precarious health condition, he probably invents the story of David swearing to Bathsheba («your son shall be king after me »), of which there is no trace in the book of Samuel. He behaves, hence, as a prophet of the court, a Richelieu, a polished plotter of court intrigues. And yet the previous story had revealed his nature as a non-false prophet. Even a real prophet can perform morally dubious and ambiguous acts. The Bible tells us that the prophets can be fragile people and even sinners, as well. It is not their weaknesses or their sins that tell us that they are false prophets. Prophecy is not a moral quality in people. There have been, and there still are, cases of false prophets who are morally irreproachable, false not because they lie or act in bad faith but because the speak in the name of a voice that, objectively, does not exist; the same way that there have been and there still are, in the Bible and in real life, true prophets who have committed crimes and sins, while being, however, inhabited by a voice that is true and real and which they have referred to their people with honesty. It would be far too easy if the moral conduct of a person was all that was needed to reveal the truth of their calling – the calling and the holiness of a person are two different things, even if, the two often interact (but not always and not in the same way in everyone). This distinction is the main reason why communities are almost never able to recognise real prophets and for better or for worse confuse them with false ones.
Bathsheba listens to Nathan’s advice and goes to her husband David to tell him the story of Adonijah. While the two of them are speaking, Nathan arrives (as promised) and reinforces and confirms Bathsheba’s version of things. And once more, David continues to listen, believe and obey a woman: «Then King David said, “Call in Bathsheba! (...) I will surely carry out this very day what I swore to you by the Lord, the God of Israel: Solomon your son shall be king after me, and he will sit on my throne in my place.”» (1 Book of Kings 1, 28-30). Maybe, Nathan knew what Bathsheba was to David, this breathtakingly beautiful woman who had enchanted him and turned his life upside down. And as a cunning strategist, he turns to the most powerful weapon available to manipulate David. Many years had passed since David first saw her from his terrace. She had aged, but certain charms, like the different light found in her eyes, never grow old. Some beauties, at least one, are not erased by time, their magic lasts a whole lifetime. If this wasn’t the case, we would not be able to recognise in our latest hello the gaze from our first encounter.
David orders Nathan and Zadoc the priest to anoint Solomon king (1 Book of Kings 1, 34-35). Nathan’s scheming has proven successful. In this decisive episode in the history of Israel we once again find another narrative that is a constant in biblical stories. In many instances of decisive choices, divine will does not follow the rules of the Law, the first shall be the last, and the last become the first. This reversal of the natural-divine order of things, almost always, happens when a prophet and/or a woman interferes. Prophecy is a principle that unhinges and tears down the laws of the established order and disrupts the natural course of the community. If it wasn’t for the prophets (and some women) the mighty and powerful would never be deposed from their thrones, the last would always remain the last, life would never surprise us and everything would be tremendously boring and foregone, the humble would never be exalted, nobody poor would ever hear him or herself be called "blessed".
Once Solomon has been consecrated, David dies leaving his will after him: «I am about to go the way of all the earth. So be strong, act like a man, and observe what the Lord your God requires: Walk in obedience to him, and keep his decrees and commands, his laws and regulations, as written in the Law of Moses» (1 Kings 2, 2-4). And hence David pronounces his last words. The composer and singer of psalms, the poet and the man in love with God, reaches the end of his life while giving instructions for settling still ongoing scores with some people, who those of you who have read the books of Samuel know very well: «Now you yourself know what Joab son of Zeruiah did to me (...). Deal with him according to your wisdom, but do not let his grey head go down to the grave in peace. But show kindness to the sons of Barzillai of Gilead (...). And remember, you have with you Shimei son of Gera, the Benjamite from Bahurim, who called down bitter curses on me (...). Bring his grey head down to the grave in blood » (1 Kings 2, 5-9). Could we have expected anything different of better from the Bible’s much-loved David’s will. Other patriarchs die leaving us with the heritage of words that are often much more divine and humane. David, however, remains shrouded in moral ambiguity till the end. This is yet another, efficient, kind of language in which the Bible tells us: no one is like God. And this is why no man, not even the greatest ones, should become idols. The Bible’s fight against idolatry also takes form in presenting us with non-idealised ethical frescoes of its greatest men and women – making them better people in the process: curing them of their moral plagues while displaying them to us.
Finally, the words regarding Shimei, the Benjamite from Saul’s defeated party, are striking. Years later, on the verge of death, David continues to feel the weight of those curses and words hurled at him. In biblical humanism words are a very serious matter. The word creates, fertilizes and rises again. The words of Yahweh and – in a different way but really – ours as well. The Lord’s blessing and that of a friend are the greatest gift that we can receive, when that kind word reaches us, loves us, changes us, it becomes the wind-ruah that resuscitates the dried structures of our heart. Words are not vanitas – breath and smoke – because they affect our bodies and souls; for they are flesh. But the Bible is much too true to not take the responsibility of the cost of this upon itself as well: if good words bless us and make us feel better, then bad ones curse and hurt us. They remain living things, acting like moral bacteria in our hearts. Shimei had spoken terrible words against David. They were still there, by his bedside, whispering their last syllables. They still hurt him maybe because they were true («you David deserve the war waged upon you by your son Absalom, for you have fought your “father” Saul as well»). Only words that are true, but spoken without love, are capable of cursing us. True words must be handled with infinite care. They are a testament, because they hold the power of life and death.
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Prophecy is history /2 – The small and harsh last wishes of a great king confirm that no one is like God
 by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire 09/06/2019
«David was an excellent man equipped with every virtue that a king should possess. He was prudent, tender, kind with those in need, fair and humane. And he never fell or erred, except with Uriah’s wife»

Giuseppe Flavio, Antichità Giudaiche (Judaic Antiquity): 390-39
We come straight into the heart of the story of Solomon, and continue with the intrigues and skulduggery which, in hindsight, reveal other essential messages of biblical humanism to us.
 The great biblical stories continue to speak to us because, despite being much greater and more beautiful than we are, they resemble us. It is while being in exile that human communities are given the opportunity to write some of their most beautiful stories. The great suffering during those years, the «beautiful but lost» land, the humiliations, the forced labour, the great prayers of the psalms sung along the rivers of Babylon, created a new and incredibly profound pietas in the people, which ended up becoming a new outlook on humanity as a whole. It is while being stranded in the desert that you learn to really value water; it is while coming in contact with the limits of men and wounded and humiliated women that you learn the infinite value of being human. Our suffering and that of others transforms ethics into mercy, the only thing that enables praising the wounds of man because it recognises a blessing in them. You would need an entire lifetime, if even that is enough, to learn how to recognise and meet God in the sins of the world.
When we last saw Adonijah, King David’s eldest son, heir and pretender to the throne, he was at a sacred banquet with the leaders of his “party” rivals to that of Solomon, King David’s other son.
The sacred meal was a well-known concept among all religions and ancient cults. In many civilisations, food was the first sacrifice offered to the divinities. And when the killing of animals was offered to the gods, that food was also often consumed together, becoming a sacrifice of communion for the members of the community. Dead animals, hence blood and violence that become the place and language for the dialogue between man and the gods and among men themselves. Food was in fact a fundamental resource of life and its very image, something more and different than just mere nutrition; hence it had to be excluded from the laws of individual strengths and skills and shared in common – everyone had to feed within the clan, the tribe and the family, the weak as well and above all: this is the first evolutionary norm protecting society from extinction. It is, therefore, no surprise that murders and other crimes in the Bible take place during sacred meals, because the very act of sacrifice inherently carried a dimension of violence and death within it (albeit, paradoxically, also connected to life). The same way, it doesn’t surprise us that meetings among politicians and businessmen today take place around a meal, when sharing food helps to create and boost relationships, which then in their turn then contribute to grease the mechanisms and dynamics of decision making; nor that many conflicts and separations start at the table or with prepared and refused meals, and that wounded and dying relationships can be reborn through a shared meal, where we rise once again as companions – cum panis.
Old David no longer found any excitement despite Abishag, his new incredibly beautiful concubine. Another woman, his wife Bathsheba, arrives to his bedside. The prophet Nathan, however, had visited her before, to tell her about the banquet-sacrifice offered by Adonijah, interpreted by the prophet as an attempt to proclaim himself as the new king: «Then Nathan asked Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother, “Have you not heard that Adonijah, the son of Haggith, has become king, and our lord David knows nothing about it? Now then, let me advise you (…) go in to King David and say to him, “My lord the king, did you not swear to me your servant: “Surely Solomon your son shall be king after me, and he will sit on my throne”? Why then has Adonijah become king?’»(1 Book of Kings 1, 11-14).
We first met Nathan in the second book of Samuel, after the crime committed by David against Uriah the Hittite, to take away Bathsheba from him. In one of the most emotionally charged and tremendous episodes in the Bible, the prophet then accused David while telling him the parable of the lamb, and subsequently made the King recognise his own sin («Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord»: 2 Samuel 12,13). Now Nathan seems a very different person. In the fratricide struggle for succession, he is clearly on Solomon’s side, and begins to scheme. Trusting the King’s precarious health condition, he probably invents the story of David swearing to Bathsheba («your son shall be king after me »), of which there is no trace in the book of Samuel. He behaves, hence, as a prophet of the court, a Richelieu, a polished plotter of court intrigues. And yet the previous story had revealed his nature as a non-false prophet. Even a real prophet can perform morally dubious and ambiguous acts. The Bible tells us that the prophets can be fragile people and even sinners, as well. It is not their weaknesses or their sins that tell us that they are false prophets. Prophecy is not a moral quality in people. There have been, and there still are, cases of false prophets who are morally irreproachable, false not because they lie or act in bad faith but because the speak in the name of a voice that, objectively, does not exist; the same way that there have been and there still are, in the Bible and in real life, true prophets who have committed crimes and sins, while being, however, inhabited by a voice that is true and real and which they have referred to their people with honesty. It would be far too easy if the moral conduct of a person was all that was needed to reveal the truth of their calling – the calling and the holiness of a person are two different things, even if, the two often interact (but not always and not in the same way in everyone). This distinction is the main reason why communities are almost never able to recognise real prophets and for better or for worse confuse them with false ones.
Bathsheba listens to Nathan’s advice and goes to her husband David to tell him the story of Adonijah. While the two of them are speaking, Nathan arrives (as promised) and reinforces and confirms Bathsheba’s version of things. And once more, David continues to listen, believe and obey a woman: «Then King David said, “Call in Bathsheba! (...) I will surely carry out this very day what I swore to you by the Lord, the God of Israel: Solomon your son shall be king after me, and he will sit on my throne in my place.”» (1 Book of Kings 1, 28-30). Maybe, Nathan knew what Bathsheba was to David, this breathtakingly beautiful woman who had enchanted him and turned his life upside down. And as a cunning strategist, he turns to the most powerful weapon available to manipulate David. Many years had passed since David first saw her from his terrace. She had aged, but certain charms, like the different light found in her eyes, never grow old. Some beauties, at least one, are not erased by time, their magic lasts a whole lifetime. If this wasn’t the case, we would not be able to recognise in our latest hello the gaze from our first encounter.
David orders Nathan and Zadoc the priest to anoint Solomon king (1 Book of Kings 1, 34-35). Nathan’s scheming has proven successful. In this decisive episode in the history of Israel we once again find another narrative that is a constant in biblical stories. In many instances of decisive choices, divine will does not follow the rules of the Law, the first shall be the last, and the last become the first. This reversal of the natural-divine order of things, almost always, happens when a prophet and/or a woman interferes. Prophecy is a principle that unhinges and tears down the laws of the established order and disrupts the natural course of the community. If it wasn’t for the prophets (and some women) the mighty and powerful would never be deposed from their thrones, the last would always remain the last, life would never surprise us and everything would be tremendously boring and foregone, the humble would never be exalted, nobody poor would ever hear him or herself be called "blessed".
Once Solomon has been consecrated, David dies leaving his will after him: «I am about to go the way of all the earth. So be strong, act like a man, and observe what the Lord your God requires: Walk in obedience to him, and keep his decrees and commands, his laws and regulations, as written in the Law of Moses» (1 Kings 2, 2-4). And hence David pronounces his last words. The composer and singer of psalms, the poet and the man in love with God, reaches the end of his life while giving instructions for settling still ongoing scores with some people, who those of you who have read the books of Samuel know very well: «Now you yourself know what Joab son of Zeruiah did to me (...). Deal with him according to your wisdom, but do not let his grey head go down to the grave in peace. But show kindness to the sons of Barzillai of Gilead (...). And remember, you have with you Shimei son of Gera, the Benjamite from Bahurim, who called down bitter curses on me (...). Bring his grey head down to the grave in blood » (1 Kings 2, 5-9). Could we have expected anything different of better from the Bible’s much-loved David’s will. Other patriarchs die leaving us with the heritage of words that are often much more divine and humane. David, however, remains shrouded in moral ambiguity till the end. This is yet another, efficient, kind of language in which the Bible tells us: no one is like God. And this is why no man, not even the greatest ones, should become idols. The Bible’s fight against idolatry also takes form in presenting us with non-idealised ethical frescoes of its greatest men and women – making them better people in the process: curing them of their moral plagues while displaying them to us.
Finally, the words regarding Shimei, the Benjamite from Saul’s defeated party, are striking. Years later, on the verge of death, David continues to feel the weight of those curses and words hurled at him. In biblical humanism words are a very serious matter. The word creates, fertilizes and rises again. The words of Yahweh and – in a different way but really – ours as well. The Lord’s blessing and that of a friend are the greatest gift that we can receive, when that kind word reaches us, loves us, changes us, it becomes the wind-ruah that resuscitates the dried structures of our heart. Words are not vanitas – breath and smoke – because they affect our bodies and souls; for they are flesh. But the Bible is much too true to not take the responsibility of the cost of this upon itself as well: if good words bless us and make us feel better, then bad ones curse and hurt us. They remain living things, acting like moral bacteria in our hearts. Shimei had spoken terrible words against David. They were still there, by his bedside, whispering their last syllables. They still hurt him maybe because they were true («you David deserve the war waged upon you by your son Absalom, for you have fought your “father” Saul as well»). Only words that are true, but spoken without love, are capable of cursing us. True words must be handled with infinite care. They are a testament, because they hold the power of life and death.
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