"Have you entered the storehouses of snow?"

In the ancient Hebrew worldview, cosmic waters surrounded the whole earth, and the only thing they kept these waters from covering over the land was a great firmament hammered out by God to keep the waters at bay.

(If you'll indulge me a moment of etymology: the word "firmament" has become a common way to translate Gen 1:6, but what is a "firmament"? It comes from the word firmamentum that St. Jerome made up for the Hebrew word raqia in his Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible, and it simply means something that is firm. But the Hebrew word raqia literally means "that which is hammered out." Unfortunately, this detail and the wonderful image of God hammering out the heavens get lost in the undescriptive "firmament," but that's the way it goes in translation.

Well, I'm glad I got that off my chest...)

When the ancients looked up they saw sky, and on top of the sky was the "firmament" and beyond it were the cosmic waters. The rain came whenever God opened enormous sluices in the firmament and let the waters pour down on the earth.

I mention all this because this morning the storehouses of cosmic waters were on my mind; somewhere up there God also keeps storehouses of snow -- at least that's what he told Job in chapter 38, verse 22 -- and today he opened the snow sluices over the Holy Land.

Yes, snow has arrived in Jerusalem. I cannot say that I participated in snow angels or snowmen, but I did have my photograph taken along with the snow. Fortunately, this did not require me to leave the comforts of my room at the Albright, as you'll see in these photographs, in which it looks like at any moment I might break into "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina":

Thankfully, I refrained from any Evita numbers, and although I'm not a huge fan of winter weather, I must say that it was pretty cool to look out this morning and see the heavy flakes falling outside my window. Now if it'll just melt before I have to walk to HUC tomorrow!