IN THE DESERT

Never Pharaoh's Night,
Whereof the Hebrew wizards croon,
Did so the Theban flamens try
As me this veritable Noon.

Like blank ocean in blue calm
undulates the ethereal frame;
In one flowing oriflamme
God flings his fiery standard out.

Battling with the Emirs fierce
Napoleon a great victory won,
Through and through his sword did pierce;
But, bayonetted by this sun
His gunners drop beneath the gun. 

Holy, holy, holy Light!
Immaterial incandescence,
Of God the effluence of the essense,
Shekinah intolerably bright!



Herman Melville


"Shekhinah is derived from the Hebrew verb שכן.[need quotation to verify] The Semitic root means "to settle, inhabit, or dwell". This abstract noun is not present in the Bible, and is first encountered in rabbinic literature.[2]:148–149, [3] The root word is often used to refer to birds' nesting and nests. ("Every fowl dwells near its kind and man near his equal.")[5] and can also mean "neighbor" ("If two Tobiahs appeared, one of whom was a neighbour and the other a scholar, the scholar is to be given precedence."
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"Sakīnah means "tranquility", "peace". "calm", from the Arabic root sakana: "to be quiet", "to abate", "to dwell". In Islam, Sakīnah "designates a special peace, the "Peace of God". Although related to Hebrew Shekhinah, the spiritual state is not an "indwelling of the Divine Presence"[29][need quotation to verify] The ordinary Arabic use of the word's root is "the sense of abiding or dwelling in a place".

 A story in Tafsir and Isra'iliyyat literature relates how Ibrahim and Isma'il, when looking for the spot to build the Kaaba found Sakīnah. Newby writes that 

it was like a breeze "with a face that could talk", 

saying "build over me."