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[German Version] See also Heavenly voice, Memra, Revelation. I. Religious Studies Humans experience messages from the deity or divine beings (Inspiration/Theopneusty, Revelation) in the form of speech. Formally we must distinguish (a) the word of the deity himself, as recorded in sacred scripture after a phase of oral transmission (Torah, Qurʾān, Vedas, Avesta); (b) words communicated by individuals specially chosen and called by God (the word that calls); (c) words spoken by elect individuals having a spe…

[German Version] The book of Lamentations is a collection of five elegies on the destruction of Jerusalem: four alphabetic acrostics (Lam 1–4) and one poem with the same number of verses as the Hebrew alphabet (Lam 5). In the Hebrew Bible the book is called אֵיכָה/ʾ êkāh, “How…,” for the first word in chs. 1, 2, and 4. In the Talmud ( b. B. Bat. 15a) it is called קִינוֹת/ qînôt, “Lamentations,” and ascribed to the prophet Jeremiah to vouch for its canonicity. This tradition may be based on 2 Chron 35:25, which says that Jeremiah sang a lament for Josiah, which is r…

[German Version] Gideon, the most important of the major deliverer figures in the biblical book of Judges (Judg 6–8; Deuteronomistic History). The core of the tradition is the anecdote about how Gideon succeeded in cunningly driving out a military encampment of the Midianites that had intruded into the Plain of Jezreel: he surrounded the camp with his men, all blew their horns ¶ and smashed jugs simultaneously. The Midianites believed that they were facing a superior enemy and fled. Gideon pursued them beyond the Jordan and captured their leaders Zebah and …