Snow

Snow appears in the UPDV as a real winter phenomenon known to the writers of Scripture and as a stock image for what is dazzling, pure, or beyond human reach. Palestine sees it occasionally; the highlands of Lebanon and the country east of the Jordan see it often enough to factor into stories, weather poetry, and proverbs. From those local observations the biblical writers reach for snow when they want to picture cleansing, glory, or the unsearchable governance of God over the weather.

Snow As Weather Under God's Hand

Job's friend Elihu treats snow as a direct word from God: "For he says to the snow, Fall on the earth; Likewise to the shower of rain, And to the showers of his mighty rain" (Job 37:6). When Yahweh answers Job, he presses the same point as a question Job cannot answer: "Have you entered the treasuries of the snow, Or have you seen the treasures of the hail" (Job 38:22). The psalmists pick up the theme. Psalm 147:16 says, "He gives snow like wool; He scatters the frost like ashes," and Psalm 148:8 lists "Fire and hail, snow and vapor; Stormy wind, fulfilling his word" among the elements that obey their maker. Sirach develops the same picture at length, describing how, "Like birds he sprinkles his snow, And like settling locusts is the coming down of it" (Sir 43:17), and adding, "The beauty of its whiteness dazzles the eyes, And the heart is amazed at the raining down of it" (Sir 43:18).

Job himself, complaining of his own ravines and seasons in the land of Uz, knows snow as part of the dark, melting flux of the wadi: "Which are black by reason of the ice, [And] in which the snow hides itself" (Job 6:16). The book of Lamentations and the book of Proverbs both assume that snow is unwelcome out of season ("As snow in summer, and as rain in harvest, So honor is not seemly for a fool," Pr 26:1) but expected in winter, when the prudent housewife "is not afraid of the snow for her household; For all her household has double clothes" (Pr 31:21).

Snow In The Land

Snow is rare enough in Palestine to mark a moment. When the chronicler of David's mighty men remembers Benaiah son of Jehoiada, the detail that fixes the scene is the weather: he "slew a lion in the midst of a pit in time of snow" (2Sa 23:20). The same kind of weather marker appears in the Maccabean record, where snow stops a campaign in its tracks: "And Tryphon made ready all his horsemen to come that night: but there fell a very great snow, and he did not come because of the snow. And he departed and went into the country of Gilead" (1Ma 13:22). In Psalm 68:14, snow on a battlefield marks a divine reversal: "When the Almighty scattered kings there, [It was as when] it snows in Zalmon."

To the north, the snow of Lebanon is permanent enough to serve as a fixed point. Jeremiah uses it as the very type of what does not fail: "Will the snow of Lebanon fail from the rock of Shaddai? [Or] will the cold waters that flow down from far away be dried up?" (Jer 18:14). The implied answer is no, and that makes Israel's forsaking of Yahweh all the more strange.

Snow And Cleansing

Because snow is the whitest thing the writers can point to, it becomes the standard image for moral purification. David prays, "Purify me with hyssop, and I will be clean: Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow" (Ps 51:7). Yahweh through Isaiah extends the same picture to the whole nation: "Come now, and let us reason together, says Yahweh: though your⁺ sins be as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they will be as wool" (Isa 1:18). Job, sensing how short of God's holiness any merely outward washing falls, presses the figure to its limit: "If I wash myself with snow, And clean my hands with lye" (Job 9:30) — the cleanest available rinse, and still not enough on its own.

Snow And Glory

The same whiteness, used for purity in one context, becomes a sign of consecrated splendor in another. Lamentations remembers the nobles of Zion in their better days: "Her nobles were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk; They were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was as of sapphire" (La 4:7). The vision of Daniel pushes the image past any human nobility to the figure on the throne: "I looked until thrones were placed, and one who was ancient of days sat: his raiment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames, [and] its wheels burning fire" (Da 7:9). Snow there is no longer winter weather but a colour of glory — the visible signature of the holy.