What's the tone of God's voice? It matters!

In the torah, God often speaks to Moses. What does His voice sound like? I've already pointed out, in the last post, that God's words really don't tell us His MEANING, for the tone of His voice carry more content than the words He actually uttered. Let us suppose that God is passive-aggressive, or says things to test us mortals (I mean, God IS always testing our mettle, is He not?).

When reading the words of God in His exchanges with Moses, God could mean a variety of things depending on the tone of his voice. From anger to sarcasm to impishness...you just don't know. Only Moses knows the tone of God's voice when God spoke to his. But since we don't know it, we can't tell from the text whether Moses acted in good faith (sorry about the pun on "faith"), bad faith, out of a desire to please, or out of spite. Remember, Moses' relationship with God was very chummy and familiar; Moses did, after all, feel nothing about destroying the most sacred objects at the time, the stone tablets upon which God had carved the ten commandments. It makes you think twice about Moses' actual respect for God: how could Moses destroy the law, which he had just received from God? And why was God willing to make a second set, thus giving Moses a second chance? Think about it: God creates the ten commandments, etched in stone...and Moses, in a fit of rage, breaks them apart. Why is he taking his anger (at the people worshipping the Golden Calf) out on the stone tablets? Perhaps because the tablets were intended, by God and Moses, as a gift. But Moses, realizing that the People weren't worthy of the gift, destroyed it. Apparantly Moses wasn't into recycled gifts. No exchanging them at Bookman's for trade credit (that's a local joke. Bookman's is a "recycled entertainment" store in Arizona. But Bob Bookman is Jewish, so I'm sure he'd appreciate the joke) What's incredible, though, is that Moses gets himself a replacement copy! He goes back up Mount Sinai and God zaps off another set. I can only imagine what God might have said to Moses, on his return trip back up Mount Sinai: "Dude, you break this set, and your ass it toast!"
Without info about the tone of God's voice, or the sound of God's voice, it's up to us to imagine what God really meant when He spoke. Sarcastic? Coy? Humorous? Humorless? Angry? Professional? It's really hard to tell.

God may have created the World out of words when He spoke...but we have to decide what was God's mood at the time of creation, and at other key moments in the torah. There's a case to be made that the tone of God's voice more accurately reveals His intentions than do the literal meaning of His words.