For God does speak—now one way, now another—
though no one perceives it.
In a dream, in a vision of the night,
when deep sleep falls on people
as they slumber in their beds,
he may speak in their ears
and terrify them with warnings,
to turn them from wrongdoing
and keep them from pride,
to preserve them from the pit,
their lives from perishing by the sword.
Though this is Elihu speaking, and not Job, my take is that Elihu's description of God communicating in dreams is to be taken by the reader as truthful and accurate. Mostly because the whole of Scripture gives evidence of this. God communicates in dreams. Here's a survey:
Jacob's Ladder (Genesis 28:12)
"And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth..."Joseph's Dreams (Genesis 37:5; 37:9)
"Now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers they hated him even more."
"Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers..."Pharaoh's Dreams (Genesis 41:1; 41:5)
"Pharaoh dreamed that he was standing by the Nile..."
"And he fell asleep and dreamed a second time..."Gideon's Dream (Judges 7:13)
"Behold, I dreamed a dream, and behold, a cake of barley bread tumbled into the camp of Midian..."
Solomon's Dream (1 Kings 3:5)
"At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream by night..."
Nebuchadnezzar's Dreams (Daniel 2:1; 4:10)
"Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; his spirit was troubled..."
"The visions of my head as I lay in bed were these..."Daniel's Dream (Daniel 7:1)
"Daniel saw a dream and visions of his head as he lay in his bed..."Joseph's Dream (Matthew 1:20)
"Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying..."The Wise Men's Dream (Matthew 2:12)
"And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod..."Joseph's Flight to and return from Egypt Dreams (Matthew 2:13; 2:19-20; 2:22)
"Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, 'Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt...'"
"Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying..."
"Being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee."Pilate's Wife's Dream (Matthew 27:19)
"Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a dream."
There's also the fulfillment of Joel 2 at Pentecost: "Your old men will dream dreams."
I don't have much to say about all this other than to note the contrast with the Biblical world and our own. To be sure, many people continue to experience their dreams as communicating portents, warnings, and meanings. But my sense, in the church spaces I've inhabited, claiming that a dream is a communication from God is not common, and if shared, treated with suspicion. Perhaps even viewed as pathological.
Of course, should we make space for dreams as a legitimate form of divine communication, an apparatus for discernment needs to be put in place. For there is a distinction between dreams being welcomed versus made authoritative and binding upon a collective group. Scripture gives warnings about false and deceitful dreams:
Jeremiah 23:25-28: "I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, 'I have dreamed, I have dreamed!'...Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? declares the LORD."
Deuteronomy 13:1-3: "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, 'Let us go after other gods' ... you shall not listen."
Zechariah 10:2: "The dreamers tell false dreams and give empty consolation."
So, discernment is vital.
Anyway, it's all something to ponder. My interest in all this is my continued quest to "Keep Christianity Weird." My sense is that one of the places where we bump into the disenchantment of the modern mind is how we view God communicating through dreams. I'm more interested in our default skepticism on this front than about the dreams themselves.
