Seasoned with Salt
Day 226 – 14 August
The Written Rest
“a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,” (Ecclesiastes 3:7, NIV)
Silence, Scored in Ink
Open any orchestral score and you will find silence written down. Composers notate the absence of sound with the same ink and the same precision as its presence: crotchet rests, minim rests, whole silent bars counted as strictly as any melody, and, at the great moments, the marking G.P., the general pause, where every player in a hundred-piece orchestra stops together and the hall hangs on nothing at all. Musicians will tell you those silences are the hardest bars to perform. Any amateur can play notes; it takes an artist to play a rest, holding still with intent while the tension gathers, because in music silence is never the interruption of the piece. It is the piece. The conductor’s baton governs the stillness as surely as the storm, and audiences lean furthest forward when nothing is sounding. Solomon scored speech the same way. In his poem of the times he set the rest and the note side by side, and he wrote the rest first.
A Fragment Restored
The line we quote lives inside a larger composition, fourteen matched pairs, twenty-eight appointed moments, each introduced by עֵת (et, time, the fitting season), which in Hebrew means less the tick of a clock than the ripeness of an hour. And the fragment about speech has a neighbour that unlocks it, for the full verse runs: a time לִקְרוֹעַ (liqroa, to tear) and a time לִתְפּוֹר (litpor, to sew), a time לַחֲשׁוֹת (lachashot, to be silent, from חָשָׁה, chashah, to hush, hold one’s peace) and a time לְדַבֵּר (ledabber, to speak). The old commentators saw at once that the two halves belong to one world: the world of mourning. Grief in Israel tore its garments, David tearing his clothes at Saul’s death, Hezekiah tearing his at blasphemy, and when the mourning ended, the torn robe was sewn up again. Set beside that custom, the second pair falls into place, because grief also hushed its friends. When Job’s three companions arrived and saw him in his ruin, they tore their robes, and then they sat on the ground with him seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his pain was very great. Tearing and hushing belong to sorrow’s hour; sewing and speaking belong to its healing. Those seven silent days were the finest ministry Job’s friends ever performed, and every reader of the book knows the tragedy of chapter four: their trouble began the moment they opened their mouths.
The Two Failures
The verse can be broken in both directions, and Scripture photographs each failure. The first is speech in silence’s hour. Job’s comforters, once talking, wounded a bleeding man with theology; and on the mountain of transfiguration, with Moses and Elijah departing and glory filling the air, Peter began proposing a building project, and Luke adds the immortal diagnosis, that he had no idea what he was saying; he spoke because the silence frightened him, and heaven’s answer was a cloud and a Voice with one instruction: hear Him. Much of our worst talking is Peter’s kind, sound produced to fill a holy or a painful stillness we lacked the nerve to inhabit. The second failure is silence in speech’s hour, and its photograph hangs in the book of Esther. With genocide signed and sealed, Mordecai sent word to the queen: if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish, and who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this? Silence, in that hour, would have been a vote. Solomon’s own son collected the standing orders: open your mouth for those who have no voice, for the rights of all who are appointed to perish. There is a hush that is reverence and a hush that is cowardice, and they can wear the same face.
The Lord of Both Times
One life read the clock perfectly, and it was read aloud in a courtroom. Before the parade of false witnesses, Jesus ἐσιώπα (esiōpa, kept silent, from σιωπάω, siōpaō, to be silent), fulfilling to the letter the prophecy that as a sheep before her shearers is נֶאֱלָמָה (ne’elamah, mute, from אָלַם, alam, to be silent), so He opened His mouth in no self-defence; before Herod, who peppered Him with questions hoping for a conjuring trick, He answered nothing at all, granting sensation-hungry royalty no syllable. Insult, slander, and mockery found Him a general pause, held with perfect intent. Then the high priest put Him on oath before the living God, are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed, and the hour turned, and He spoke: I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power. He answered again for Pilate: for this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Trace the pattern and it never once wavers: silent wherever speech would only have defended Himself, speaking wherever silence would have denied the truth, though the speaking signed His death warrant. And His courtroom stillness was power in harness, never helplessness, for legions waited on a word He declined to send; nor was the silent hour an absent one, since the eternal Word fills heaven and earth without interruption, and He was upholding the universe in the very minutes His human lips stayed shut. He is Lord of both times, and He has never confused the two.
Reading the Clock
So carry the Preacher’s clock into an ordinary Friday. Before a sentence leaves you, let three questions gate it: is this word mine to say, is this its hour, and, where there is grief in the room, has the silence finished its work? With the mourning, practise the first week of Job’s friends, presence without commentary, arriving, sitting, staying, and letting the sufferer speak first, because your being there is already a paragraph and your explanations can wait a season. With the endangered, practise Esther, and refuse the coward’s hush: when a reputation is being carved at the table or an injustice is unfolding in your hearing, remember that at such a time silence casts a vote, and spend the words whatever they cost. This is the week’s own craft deepening, for speech seasoned with salt includes the seasoned rest, and every good cook knows the hour when the dish needs nothing added at all.
Declaration
Half of my wisdom today will be a shut mouth, and the other half an opened one, each in its right hour. Where grief sits in the room, my presence will do the talking until the mourner speaks first. Where a person is being carved in my hearing, my silence would be a vote, so I will spend words there, whatever they cost me. Before each sentence I will ask whether the word is mine to say and whether this is its hour. There is a time for stillness and a time for courage, and may I never confuse the two.
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