The Source

Although this is a novel, as in many such writings, there are nuggets of truth and explanation. In the following passage, Michener does an excellent job of describing God, our God, in the early days of history when man struggled to understand. Much like many do today. Zadok is a man who knows his god and yet marvels at him. He is reverent but also fearful. Who can begin to grasp the omnipotence of God and not stand in awe? A God who can create and control the universe and yet be mindful of such a minute part of his creation. What a glorious God we serve...

From “The Source” by James A. Michener:

“ ...he was also a spiritual man whose tired eyes could see beyond the desert to those invisible summits of the imagination where cool air existed and where the one god, El-Shaddi lived. In later generations people who spoke other languages would translate this old Semitic name, which actually meant he of the mountain, as God Almighty, for through devious changes El-Shaddi was destined to mature into that god whom much of the world would worship. But in these fateful days, when the little group of Hebrews camped waiting for the signal to march westward, El-Shaddi was the god of no one but themselves; they were not even certain that he had continued as the god of those other Hebrews who had moved on to distant areas like Egypt. But of one thing Zadok was sure. El-Shaddi personally determined the destiny of this group, for of all the peoples available to him in the teeming area between the Euphrates and the Nile, he had chosen these Hebrews as his predilected people, and they lived within his embrace, enjoying security that others did not know.

He was a most difficult god to understand. He was incorporeal, yet he spoke. He was invisible, yet he could move as a pillar of fire. He was all-powerful, yet he tolerated the lesser gods of the Canaanites. He controlled the lives of men, yet he encouraged them to exercise their own judgment. He was benevolent, yet he could command the extinction of an entire town—as he had done with the town of Timri when Zadok had been a child of seven. He lived in all places, yet he was peculiarly the god of this one group of Hebrews. He was a jealous god, yet he allowed non-Hebrews to worship whatever lesser gods they pleased.

As Zadok chipped away at his flint, he knew that the mountain in which El-Shaddi was supposed to live did not exist in any ordinary sense of the word, for it would be offensive to imagine so powerful a god as limited to one specific place, with a tent, a couch and a concubine; no sensible man would commit himself to a god so restricted. El-Shaddi was a deity of such all pervasive power that he must not be tied down to one mountain, unless the mountain were like the god himself---distant and everywhere, above and below, not seen, not touched, never dying and never living, a one god towering over all others, who existed in a mountain of the imagination so vast that it encompassed the entire earth and the starry heavens beyond.”