BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW 59
WorDs Unseenas a “natural” shape to the body. The body pos-
sesses wrinkles and curves that make it a canvas
for inscription.^15 Placing words upon the body is
not an unnatural act but rather a way to augment
or elaborate upon the body’s decorations. The body’s
physical form invited writing, whether in the form
of inscribed jewelry or amulets.
Placing these amulets upon the body extended
beyond mere conceptions of bodily adornment to
include notions of implanting the deity’s words in
proximity to the interior of the body. The frontal
portion of the upper body does not provide a flat
surface. It includes slight pectoral rises below the
neckline and a shallow valley near the top of the
intersection of the pectorals. This means that we
should not speak of the words being placed upon
the body, but instead as words placed in as close as
possible to the internal organs. That is, the deity’s
words entered into the anatomy of the body: “Keep
these words that I am commanding you today in/on
your heart” (Deuteronomy 6:6); “You shall put these
words of mine in/on your heart and soul” (Deuter-
onomy 11:18); “Your law is within my heart” (Psalm
40:8); “Bind them upon your heart always; tie them
around your neck” (Proverbs 6:21).
Studies also point to the ways in which miniatures
and miniature writing represent ritual and techno-
logical expertise. Poet Susan Stewart observes, “Min-
ute writing is emblematic of craft and discipline:
while the materiality of the product is diminished,
the labour involved multiplies, and so does the sig-
nificance of the total object.”^16 This is true today.
Humans marvel at Lego constructions, gingerbread
houses, and domino chains. The labor and craft
required to build such intricately designed struc-
tures stretches the bounds of cognition and imagi-
nation. In this regard, it is easy to understand the
relationship between miniature writing and ritual
expertise. Tiny texts like the Ketef Hinnom amulets
compel a person to ask, “How is that humanly pos-
sible?” The answer, of course, is that the writing was
a wondrous act.
As a wondrous act, the tiny quality of the writ-
ing conveyed that its words were not invisible to
all eyes. The script on the amulets may have been
invisible to human eyes, but these texts had differ-
ent audiences in mind. According to several Biblical
texts, Yahweh was particularly adept at seeing micro-
scopically. His powers were manifest in the ability to
perceive human thought at the anatomical level. He
could count the grains of sand (Psalm 139:18). His
“wonders” were not limited to the fashioning of the
cosmos. Instead, his wonders were inscribed on the
interior of the human anatomy. Interestingly, Psalm
139 connects Yahweh’s act of knitting together the
“inward parts” of the human anatomy to his ability
to kill the wicked and bloodthirsty. Verse 16 declares
that Yahweh’s eyes possess the ability to behold the
unformed substance of a body. The previous verse
states, “My frame was not hidden from you, when
I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the
depths of the earth” (Psalm 139:15). According to this
passage, Yahweh’s powers were especially effective at
an anatomical level.
The words of this psalm are especially evocative
for an understanding of the ritual logic of the Ketef
Hinnom inscriptions. That they were invisible for
human eyes did not mean that Yahweh could not
read the amulets’ words. Indeed, their very invisibil-
ity might have indexed their function as words that
protected the body from invisible forces, demons,
disease, etc. Indeed, dangers that harmed the body
were rarely visible in the sense of their ability to
be diagnosed. Hence, we might surmise that such
writing intended to “speak” only to audiences that
operated beyond human sight, like “the terror of the
night and the pestilence that stalks in the darkness”
(Psalm 91:5–6), or goat-demons and Lilith (Isaiah
34:14). The miniature, unseen words of the Ketef
Hinnom amulets offered effective defense against
the unseen forces in the world that would do us
harm. These small words provided potent protection,
reminding the wearer that the words of Yahweh,
however small, were lamps for the feet and lights
for the path (Psalm 119:105). a(^1) Gabriel Barkay, “The Priestly Benediction on Silver Plaques
from Ketef Hinnom Jerusalem,” Tel Aviv 19 (1992), pp. 139–192.
(^2) Barkay, “The Priestly Benediction,” pp. 169–174; Ada
Yardeni, “Remarks on the Priestly Blessing on Two Amulets
from Jerusalem,” Vetus Testamentum 41.2 (1991), pp. 176–185.
(^3) Gabriel Barkay, Marilyn J. Lundberg, Andrew G. Vaughn,
Bruce Zuckerman, and Kenneth Zuckerman, “The Chal-
lenges of Ketef Hinnom: Using Advanced Technologies to
Reclaim the Earliest Biblical Texts and Their Context,” Near
Eastern Archaeology 66.4 (2003), pp. 162–171.
(^4) Gabriel Barkay, M.J. Lundberg, Andrew G. Vaughn, and
Bruce Zuckerman, “The Amulets from Ketef Hinnom: A New
Edition and Evaluation,” Bulletin of the American Schools of
Oriental Research 334 (2004), pp. 41–71.
(^5) An alternative reading is “those who love [hi]m.”
(^6) For discussion, see Jeremy D. Smoak, The Priestly Blessing
in Inscription and Scripture: The Early History of Numbers
6:24–26 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2015); Nadav Na’aman,
“A New Appraisal of the Silver Amulets from Ketef Hinnom,”
Israel Exploration Journal 61.2 (2011), pp. 184–195.
(^7) For discussion, see Theodore J. Lewis, “Job 19 in the Light
of the Ketef Hinnom Inscriptions and Amulets,” in Marilyn J.
Lundberg, Steven Fine, and Wayne T. Pitard, eds., Puzzling Out
the Past: Studies in Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures
in Honor of Bruce Zuckerman (London: Brill, 2012), pp. 99–114.
(^8) Barkay, “The Priestly Benediction,” p. 148.
(^9) Barkay, “The Priestly Benediction,” p. 148.
(^10) Barkay, “The Priestly Benediction,” p. 148.
(^11) Stephanie Langin-Hooper, “Fascination with the Tiny:
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