Robert’s Housegroup
Robert’s House Group agreed for its August meeting to look into ‘Weather in the Bible’ – an appropriate topic having a meteorologist as a member! Initial investigation showed the sheer enormity of the subject and so the Group decided to also devote September’s session to it.
We were fortunate to have found three review articles – two by H.W.Sansom in the magazine ‘Weather’, published monthly by the Royal Meteorological Society, and by S.Singleton aptly entitled ‘Weather Theology’ posted online. Each author treated each type of weather individually, referring as appropriate to occurrences in the Bible. The Group therefore decided to cover as many phenomena as possible in the time available plus one or two general topics which members raised in discussion.
Examples in the Bible of how God uses different phenomena are as follows:
Storms to punish people for their sins, e.g. The Great Flood (Genesis 6-9)
Hail as an illustration of God’s power and judgement. (Isaiah 30)
Snow as a symbol of purity. (Isaiah 1)
Wind for exerting His wrath against the wicked. (Exodus 15, Hosea 13)
Drought as a punishment against the evil doers. (Leviticus 26)
A well-known miracle is the stilling of the storm on the Sea of Galilee (Mark 4). Such rapid variation of wind can occur naturally in this area owing to the influence of surrounding high ground.
Regarding weather prediction, Jesus in Matthew 16 refers to red sky in the evening leading to fair weather and red sky in the morning as a forerunner to foul weather – currently one of our more reliable weather folklores.
The Group touched on the influence of prayer on the weather. In James 5, Elijah prayed that it would not rain – and it did not rain for 3½ years. Again he prayed and the heavens gave rain. There are many recent examples in which it is believed that God has indeed answered prayer. This interesting topic has been researched and discussed by many people.
We finished our study with a short prayer in which we thanked God for the beauty of the Earth for which weather plays a big part.
Even though we only just touched upon a very small part of Weather Theology, we all learned a great deal – far too much to be included in this article! Indeed, the sessions have whetted the appetite for when, in the future, we come across a reference to weather in the Bible, we will take particular note of its meaning and add it to our repertoire.
Michael Bader