The Earth Says Look

Earthquakes was not supposed to be the topic of this post, but the subject came up in an earlier post so I will attempt it. I was actually debating whether to post on Truth and Beauty, which came up during the diatribe about Ugly Math , but those will have to wait.

In A Tree, An Apple, A Wineskin there is a reference to the earth getting a jolt and the mountains turning to powder which I understood to mean something pertaining to mining activity. The reference does not exclude that it could be about earthquakes too, but there are other Signs that are more specific to earthquakes than 56:4-56:6.

The two that spring to mind are 7:91 and 7:78 which refer specifically to the fate of 2 communities that suffered actual earthquakes.

The word for the activity jolting the earth in 56:4 is رُجَّتِ with a primary sense of shake, rattle, concuss (an injurious shock or jolt).

In 7:91 and 7:78 however, there is a more subtle use of the word رَّجْفَةُ meaning tremor, shiver, and tremble indicating earthquake.

The subtlety is that in 56 the effect is a mechanical shaking or concussion (which also implies injury), but in 7 the effect pertains to wave dynamics since a tremor refers to a fluctuation in sound or light; and shiver and tremble refer to shaking from illness, intense feelings or fear.

Just as a point of interest, one of the Divine Attributes or Names of God is The Subtle.

So, what are we to look for if we want to predict Earthquakes?

I guess we have to ask a friendly Seismologist, but tremors have to do with quivering or flickering, so we would want to look for a sputter in the electromagnetic profile of the earth or perhaps in its acoustics (do we study Earth acoustics?)