58WorDs Unseen
January/February 2018seen as condensing or “speeding up” time. To put it
another way, miniature objects present the world to
human bodies as if time has already elapsed. This
results in a sense that the world is complete and
that time is finished and always present.
These observations offer important insight into
the function of the tiny writing on the Ketef Hin-
nom amulets. The inscriptions on these amulets
were written for human bodies. The portability
of their words when worn defined their meaning.
Their blessings walked with bodies and guided them
through their lifecycles—shielding them from harm.
When placed on the front of the body, amulets gave
tangible voice to certain aspects of their linguistic
content. For example, Amulet 1 describes Yahweh’s
blessing as more powerful than any snare and more
powerful than evil. Similarly, Amulet 2 invokes
Yahweh as the deity who expels evil. Thus, the
amulets not only protected the body, but they also
gave the body its orientation in relation to the deity
Yahweh. Yahweh stood with the wearer. Yahweh saw
what the body saw.
But we should neither forget the significance of
the materiality of the words. That is, we should
stress that the words were first and foremost sil-
ver scripts. The silver blessings of the Ketef Hin-
nom amulets indexed ritual knowledge and power,
economic status, and material durability. The amu-
lets represented a type of silver hard drive or ritual
storehouse of Yahweh’s words. The presence of silvermaterial on the body produced a tension between
the skin and the metal words. The body could feel
the contrast between the amulets and its surface.
Having ritual words written and stored inside silver
rolls and placed upon the body produced a cognitive
effect that the body was a “safe space” guarded by
the deity’s blessings. But the important point here
is that the body’s interaction with the metal words
served to generate this cognitive effect frequently.
The invisible words “spoke” to the ones who wore
them (Proverbs 6:21–22). Their portability and loca-
tion on human bodies meant that the words spoke
when the body was at home, when the body was
awake, when the body lay down, and when the body
rose up (Deuteronomy 6:6–9).
As miniature texts, the amulets also reveal an
important facet of personal religion in ancient Judah.
Their tiny words drew people into another world—
the world of the scribal artisan. A scribe would have
handled such written texts delicately, would have
bent over the text, looked at it closely, fixated upon
its words, and enclosed them with a narrow pos-
ture.^14 He would have cradled the texts in his hands
and perhaps placed them in a space away from pub-
lic view until they adorned their wearers’ bodies.
The shapes of necklaces and other types of jew-
elry are designed to conform to and move with
the body. Their ergonomic designs work to create
the impression that they are part of the body. This
observation reminds us that there is no such thingTHE SCOTTISH CHURCH. Ketef Hinnom (“the Shoulder of Hinnom”) is located next to St. Andrew’s Scots Memorial
Church and Guesthouse—across the Hinnom Valley from the Old City of Jerusalem. Built in 1927, St. Andrew’s is some-
times referred to simply as the “Scottish Church.” This photograph of the church was taken between 1934 and 1939.LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, LC-DIG-MATPC-03438