It is an entirely unnatural darkness—both dangerous and divine—that contains the presence of the God before whom there are no others. It is so different from what other Hebrew words mean when they say ‘dark’ that it has its own word in the Bible: araphel, reserved for God’s exclusive use. This thick darkness reveals the divine presence even while obscuring it, the same way the brightness of God’s glory does. …While this darkness is dangerous, it is as sure a sign of God’s presence as brightness is, which makes the fear of it different from the fear of snakes and robbers. When biblical writers speak of ‘the fear of the Lord,’ this is what they mean: fear of God’s pure being, so far beyond human imagining that to look into it would be like trying to look at the sun.
Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark
