Voice of God

In the Hebrew Bible, the characteristic attributes of the voice of God are the invisibility of the speaker and a certain remarkable quality in the sound, regardless of its strength or weakness.

[1] The phrase bat kol appears in many Talmudic stories to represent a heavenly or divine voice to human beings.

It proclaims God's will or judgment, his deeds and his commandments to individuals or to a number of persons, to rulers, communities, and even to whole nations.

For this reason, the bat kol addressed not only righteous individuals, but sinners, common people, or multitudes, both in the Holy Land and abroad.

[10] The bat kol revealed the divine will in perfectly intelligible words, usually in the form of a passage from the Bible.

Thus the bat kol spoke to Abraham,[11] Esau,[12] the Israelites at the Sea of Reeds,[13] Moses and Aaron,[14] Saul,[15] David,[16] Solomon,[17] King Manasseh,[18] Nebuchadnezzar,[19] the inhabitants of Sheol,[20] the Rechabites,[21] Haman,[22] and those feasting with Ahasuerus.

[24] Rabbinic sources state that "after the death of the last three prophets – Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi – the Holy Spirit departed from Israel; but the bat kol was still heard".

Often a voice from heaven was looked for to clear up matters of doubt and even to decide between conflicting interpretations of the law.

So strong had this tendency become that Rabbi Joshua (c. 100 CE) felt it to be necessary to oppose it and to insist upon the supremacy and the sufficiency of the written law.