The Bible insists that God not only addresses mankind universally through nature, history, and the reason and conscience of man, but that he also addresses his Word articulately to chosen persons in a special way. Time and again Yahweh is identified as the speaking God who communicates his message to a specific individual in a particular place at a given time. See, for example, many statements such as these: “The words of Jeremiah.… The word of the LORD came to him in the thirteenth year of the reign