C Proper 6 11 Ord Paul 2025I Kings 21:1-24August 3, 2025
One
of the most profound wisdom-givers of our age has been Kentucky farmer, Wendell
Berry. I remember reading the book, The
Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture,
about 10 years ago and I remember being just blown away by how he saw
rightly what was coming for all of us—what needed changing and transforming,
what we were losing in our choices and our mindset about the land. Berry wrote that great book over 40 years ago.
But his predictions were like he was living in 20 to 30 years into the
future. Berry once wrote, “The great
obstacle to [collective action] is simply this:
the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependent on what is
wrong. But that is the addicts excuse,
and we know that it will not do.”[1]
The
land is one of the primary themes of all of Hebrew Scripture. The central covenant promise God extends to
the sojourning Abraham and Sarah and their descendants is land. Abraham and Sarah leave their ancestral
homeland for the promise of descendants and land. Salvation in Hebrew Scripture, as defined by
the HarperCollins Bible Dictionary, is a broadening or a widening of a
space for community life and conduct.
Salvation for the Jewish people becomes a space, a land, where they
might be able to practice their faith.
“Cultivating affection for place is a major theme of the Hebrew
Scripture.”[2] In Jewish thinking, “not to have one’s place
is to cease to be.”[3]
The
western Apache frequently speak of the land as “stalking people” or “going to
work on them” playing tricks on them so as to reconnect the people to their
roots in the land. For the western
Apache, the land and the teaching stories of the land had a way of “shooting
them with arrows,” calling them back to an identity and responsibility for the
land.[4]
Hebrew
Scripture scholar, probably the most famous in the United Church of Christ, Walter
Brueggemann, saw land as such a central Biblical topic that he wrote a whole
book, a full 256 pages, titled simply, you guessed it, The Land.
How
we are to be in relation to the land, how the land defines our faith and our
relationship to God, and how the land is in relationship to our larger
community are all central questions for people of faith. Scripture teaches again and again that the
land is a central actor, a bellwether, for knowing ourselves to be just and
righteous. When we are just and
righteous, the land is bountiful in life, brings forth food and color and
goodness, a representation of when we are right with God. But when we are not in right relationship,
when we are violent and oppress the poor, the land dries up, cracks and trembles,
and becomes desert and wasteland. The land
and the food become poison and toxic.[5] If we should defile the land, Scripture says,
the land will vomit us out.[6]
Israel
was not the owner of their place. They
lived in relation to their place. And
cultivating affection for the place is a major theme in Jewish tradition. Again, how things went for the land was a
signpost of either righteousness or sin.
The
Creator of the Universe wants to make it clear.
The land is not a dead, inanimate object. The land is an actor, living in relationship,
relating to us that our values are good or right or square. Or, conversely, telling us when our values
are misguided, askew, seeking after the things that are not in line with God’s
heart.[7]
Sometimes
I am not sure that is about God’s judgment but about the reality that how we
are in relationships has consequences.
We reap, what we sow. I have
marveled at the number of Christians who deny climate change by somehow
suggesting that the land and water do not matter in the grand scheme of things. Or that God has made the expanse of the
universe far larger so as not to expect what we do to land and water does not
then have consequences.
Again, Hebrew Scripture
makes it clear that land and water are living, sentient parts of God’s good
earth. We are related to them and tied
to them. Like any real relationship
then, how we are with them has real consequences for how life shall goes for
us.
All
of that is the context for our Scripture verse for today. And we should know, God establishes that
relationship with the land for it not to be known as a commodity but as an
ancestral heritage. For the Jews, the
land represented God’s covenant promise, God’s faithfulness remembering when life
was difficult in slavery and when they were a wandering, nomadic people. The land was not to be “owned” or bought and
sold. Because a particular piece of land
or place represented your family’s ability to carve out a livelihood. As I shared last week, within the covenantal
tradition and law and practice, land was to revert back to a family so that your
ancestors were not without resource in perpetuity.
King
Ahab, ruler of Israel, looks upon the land as a way to expand his wealth, to
manifest more profit. How opportune that
Naboth’s vineyard abuts the royal property.
As something that can be bought and sold, Ahab offers Naboth a property that
is commensurate with his. Seems
fair. Seems just, right?
But
that is counter to the Jewish ethic that understands the land as an actor, the three-way
street of covenant between Naboth, the land, and God. Walt Brueggemann writes that “the vineyard
could not be without Naboth belonging to it.
Naboth could not be without this land.”[8]
Not every place is
the same. Even if it might be
financially better, Naboth and the land have a relationship which will provide
for his family and all the generations to come.
It is Naboth’s place—the touch of it, the smell of it, the goodness of
it. So he tells the king, “No, there are
deeper things at play. He uses the
language used by God to tell the Jews of the covenant God makes between them and
the land. According to Numbers
33:54 and Joshua 13-19, the land of promise had been divided among the children
of Israel and each family’s division was to be kept in perpetuity.[9]
Naboth
says no. Naboth speaks with a strong
voice. He knows that if you are going to
stand for something, you have to stand somewhere.[10] Where he stands is that vineyard that abuts
the palace. The land is given by God to
the Jewish people as an ancestral heritage, a particular place and space, that
acts upon them for their salvation and deliverance. In saying no, Naboth not only remembers that
the land is fastened to his family and tribe, but also supports the infrastructure
of his community and wider society.
And, it is said, that
King Ahab withdraws, bummed that Naboth cannot understand the way of the
world. Ahab goes to his room and
pouts. As in many stories told by men,
it is Queen Jezebel who reminds King Ahab he has many more options. He is the king, after all. He can take and take and take whatever it is he
wants. With the wealth and power
afforded to the palace, Jezebel hatches a plan in which she is able to find two
witnesses who will vouch for the fact (*cough, cough, “payoff” cough, cough*) that
Naboth cursed God and King. Jezebel, with
executive, royal privilege, corrupts the judicial system that leads to the execution
and death of Naboth.
Ironic that Naboth is
accused of the very thing he did in faithfulness by telling Ahab no—he does not
curse but honors God. Naboth faithfully
lived in relationship with God and the land. Naboth is found guilty of the crime
and taken outside the city, out of sight so injustice can be done, so his blood
does not defile or pollute the city.
The
report is sent back. “Naboth has been
stoned. He is dead.”
No longer brooding in
his bedroom, King Ahab goes and does what kings do with land that rightfully
belongs to the community. King Ahab
takes.
Always a thorn in
King Ahab’s side, God sends the prophet Elijah to the palace. In echoing the Exodus story, when the
original covenant was established, God tells Elijah to “God down!” Go down as Moses did to Egypt where he confronted the Pharaoh.
Every children’s
sermon I ask the children to speak with a strong voice so that they might
emulate someone like Elijah. This is one
of those moments, sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins I want you to take
into your hearts and make part of your bloodstream. African-American writer Ralph Ellison
stated: “I was never more hated than
when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate
exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied.”[11]
Now Elijah was go
speak hard but truthful words to the Ruler of Israel spoken by the Ruler of the
Universe. So often passed over when read
as a Scripture passage, this is when the music swells, Elijah musters what is
in his heart and comes to speak with the voice of God.
It takes courage to
walk into a place that just murdered the righteous and say, “God has seen
you. And you shall reap what you sow.” Elijah is much more graphic. “Where the dogs licked up the blood of
Naboth, so they shall lick up your blood.”
Violence begets violence. And the
Scripture goes on to say that the root of all of Ahab’s injustice is his idol
worship, how he did not consider the values of God primary. Elijah speaks with a strong voice knowing
that Ahab and Jezebel could easily do to him what they have done to
Naboth. Elijah speaks with the voice of
God.
What do we imagine
the voice of God sounds like in our day?
As you know, I look
at the wealth in land so many United Church of Christ churches have in greater
southwest Michigan, imagine how God might want us to be faithful, and hope once
again that we will know our church buildings and land as God’s own, the land as
an actor waiting for us . . . the land hoping we hear the call to relationship
so that our children and our children’s children might have an ancestral
heritage.
The land cries out
hoping that we are listening. And God
gives so much grace and abundance for us to get it right, to dream how we might
partner with God to make our land and our building part of the wider Bainbridge
and Watervliet community.
You may have heard
the story of what happened recently out in the Western United States along the
Klamath River. The history of water in the West has been shaped by conflict,
greed, and scarcity. The King Ahabs in
the world had created a dam system in the Klamath River to maximize profit and
greed.
The
headwaters of the Klamath River originate in Oregon, flowing through the
Cascade Mountain Range, into Northern California, and emptying into the Pacific
Ocean. Running 263 miles (423km), the river was once the third-largest salmon-producing river on the West Coast.
But the dams blocked
fish migration, leading to mass fish die-offs and
degraded water quality. Fall chinook salmon numbers plummeted by more than 90% compared
to their pre-dam numbers and spring chinook by 98%. Steelhead trout, coho
salmon and Pacific lamprey numbers also saw drastic declines, and the Klamath
tribes in the upper basin have been without their salmon fishery for a century
. . . .[12]
In August
2024, through persistent campaigning of Native communities, to see the land and
water as actors, subjects themselves, with their own wisdom and goodness, the
last of the four dams were demolished. This
was the largest dam removal project in U.S. history, dams usually used for the very
wealthy to direct waters to land and agricultural systems owned by them.
Yurok tribal member, Barry McCovey
said, “The river is healing itself.”[13]
In January 2025, those monitoring the return of the salmon
reported that more than 6,000 Chinook salmon returned to their original
spawning grounds.[14] Places where salmon
had not been seen for over a century were now replete with salmon. Far faster and far greater than anyone ever imagined,
the goodness, the abundance returned to a place where Naboth’s vineyard had
been sold off to the highest bidder. Now
the land, as an ancestral heritage to so many peoples, was returned to them. And the Creator of the Universe brought forth
abundance and goodness, food for so many people who had depended on this
ecosystem for centuries.
Let us once again faithfully cultivate affection for our
place.
The music swells as God speaks to faith communities in great
southwest Michigan about how their land shall become part of the faithful
story. The land waits, hoping that we,
in our righteousness and justice, will choose abundance remember how the land
is fastened to us in relationship. We reap
what we sow. Let us sow for the generations
to follow us that we remember the covenant promises God has made between us and
the land. Amen.
[1]
Matthew Humphrey, “A Pipeline Runs through Naboth’s Vineyard,” Watershed
Discipleship, ed. by Ched Myers, (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2016), p. 123.
[2]
Ibid, 127.
[3]
Belden C. Lane, Landscapes of the Sacred:
Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality. Expanded Second Edition (Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2001), p. 244.
[4] Ibid,
p. 264.
[5]
Deuteronomy 29:23; Deuteronomy 32:32; Jeremiah 2:21.
[6]
Leviticus 18:25.
[7] e.g.,
Leviticus 26:3-5.
[8] Walter
Brueggemann, “The Prophet as a Destabilizing Presence,” in A Social Reading of the Old Testament:
Prophetic Approaches to Israel’s Communal Life, ed. Patrick D. Miller (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), p. 239.
[9]
Nancy deClaisse’-Walford, “Commentary on 1 Kings 21:1-10 [11-14] 15-21a,” Working
Preacher, June 13, 2010, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-11-3/commentary-on-1-kings-211-1011-1415-21a.
[10]
Ched Myers in Humphrey, “A Pipeline,” p. 125.
[11]
Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man.
[12] Lucy
Sheriff, “After 100 years, salmon have returned to the Klamath River –
following a historic dam removal project in California,” BBC, November
25, 2024, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241122-salmon-return-to-californias-klamath-river-after-dam-removal.
[13]
Ibid.
[14] “More
Than 6,000 Salmon Return to Spawning Grounds on Klamath River Following Dam
Removal,” ActiveNorCal, January 5, 2025, https://www.activenorcal.com/more-than-6000-salmon-return-to-spawning-grounds-on-klamath-river-following-dam-removal/.
One
of the most profound wisdom-givers of our age has been Kentucky farmer, Wendell
Berry. I remember reading the book, The
Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture,
about 10 years ago and I remember being just blown away by how he saw
rightly what was coming for all of us—what needed changing and transforming,
what we were losing in our choices and our mindset about the land. Berry wrote that great book over 40 years ago.
But his predictions were like he was living in 20 to 30 years into the
future. Berry once wrote, “The great
obstacle to [collective action] is simply this:
the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependent on what is
wrong. But that is the addicts excuse,
and we know that it will not do.”[1]
The
land is one of the primary themes of all of Hebrew Scripture. The central covenant promise God extends to
the sojourning Abraham and Sarah and their descendants is land. Abraham and Sarah leave their ancestral
homeland for the promise of descendants and land. Salvation in Hebrew Scripture, as defined by
the HarperCollins Bible Dictionary, is a broadening or a widening of a
space for community life and conduct.
Salvation for the Jewish people becomes a space, a land, where they
might be able to practice their faith.
“Cultivating affection for place is a major theme of the Hebrew
Scripture.”[2] In Jewish thinking, “not to have one’s place
is to cease to be.”[3]
The
western Apache frequently speak of the land as “stalking people” or “going to
work on them” playing tricks on them so as to reconnect the people to their
roots in the land. For the western
Apache, the land and the teaching stories of the land had a way of “shooting
them with arrows,” calling them back to an identity and responsibility for the
land.[4]
Hebrew
Scripture scholar, probably the most famous in the United Church of Christ, Walter
Brueggemann, saw land as such a central Biblical topic that he wrote a whole
book, a full 256 pages, titled simply, you guessed it, The Land.
How
we are to be in relation to the land, how the land defines our faith and our
relationship to God, and how the land is in relationship to our larger
community are all central questions for people of faith. Scripture teaches again and again that the
land is a central actor, a bellwether, for knowing ourselves to be just and
righteous. When we are just and
righteous, the land is bountiful in life, brings forth food and color and
goodness, a representation of when we are right with God. But when we are not in right relationship,
when we are violent and oppress the poor, the land dries up, cracks and trembles,
and becomes desert and wasteland. The land
and the food become poison and toxic.[5] If we should defile the land, Scripture says,
the land will vomit us out.[6]
Israel
was not the owner of their place. They
lived in relation to their place. And
cultivating affection for the place is a major theme in Jewish tradition. Again, how things went for the land was a
signpost of either righteousness or sin.
The
Creator of the Universe wants to make it clear.
The land is not a dead, inanimate object. The land is an actor, living in relationship,
relating to us that our values are good or right or square. Or, conversely, telling us when our values
are misguided, askew, seeking after the things that are not in line with God’s
heart.[7]
Sometimes
I am not sure that is about God’s judgment but about the reality that how we
are in relationships has consequences.
We reap, what we sow. I have
marveled at the number of Christians who deny climate change by somehow
suggesting that the land and water do not matter in the grand scheme of things. Or that God has made the expanse of the
universe far larger so as not to expect what we do to land and water does not
then have consequences.
Again, Hebrew Scripture
makes it clear that land and water are living, sentient parts of God’s good
earth. We are related to them and tied
to them. Like any real relationship
then, how we are with them has real consequences for how life shall goes for
us.
All
of that is the context for our Scripture verse for today. And we should know, God establishes that
relationship with the land for it not to be known as a commodity but as an
ancestral heritage. For the Jews, the
land represented God’s covenant promise, God’s faithfulness remembering when life
was difficult in slavery and when they were a wandering, nomadic people. The land was not to be “owned” or bought and
sold. Because a particular piece of land
or place represented your family’s ability to carve out a livelihood. As I shared last week, within the covenantal
tradition and law and practice, land was to revert back to a family so that your
ancestors were not without resource in perpetuity.
King
Ahab, ruler of Israel, looks upon the land as a way to expand his wealth, to
manifest more profit. How opportune that
Naboth’s vineyard abuts the royal property.
As something that can be bought and sold, Ahab offers Naboth a property that
is commensurate with his. Seems
fair. Seems just, right?
But
that is counter to the Jewish ethic that understands the land as an actor, the three-way
street of covenant between Naboth, the land, and God. Walt Brueggemann writes that “the vineyard
could not be without Naboth belonging to it.
Naboth could not be without this land.”[8]
Not every place is
the same. Even if it might be
financially better, Naboth and the land have a relationship which will provide
for his family and all the generations to come.
It is Naboth’s place—the touch of it, the smell of it, the goodness of
it. So he tells the king, “No, there are
deeper things at play. He uses the
language used by God to tell the Jews of the covenant God makes between them and
the land. According to Numbers
33:54 and Joshua 13-19, the land of promise had been divided among the children
of Israel and each family’s division was to be kept in perpetuity.[9]
Naboth
says no. Naboth speaks with a strong
voice. He knows that if you are going to
stand for something, you have to stand somewhere.[10] Where he stands is that vineyard that abuts
the palace. The land is given by God to
the Jewish people as an ancestral heritage, a particular place and space, that
acts upon them for their salvation and deliverance. In saying no, Naboth not only remembers that
the land is fastened to his family and tribe, but also supports the infrastructure
of his community and wider society.
And, it is said, that
King Ahab withdraws, bummed that Naboth cannot understand the way of the
world. Ahab goes to his room and
pouts. As in many stories told by men,
it is Queen Jezebel who reminds King Ahab he has many more options. He is the king, after all. He can take and take and take whatever it is he
wants. With the wealth and power
afforded to the palace, Jezebel hatches a plan in which she is able to find two
witnesses who will vouch for the fact (*cough, cough, “payoff” cough, cough*) that
Naboth cursed God and King. Jezebel, with
executive, royal privilege, corrupts the judicial system that leads to the execution
and death of Naboth.
Ironic that Naboth is
accused of the very thing he did in faithfulness by telling Ahab no—he does not
curse but honors God. Naboth faithfully
lived in relationship with God and the land. Naboth is found guilty of the crime
and taken outside the city, out of sight so injustice can be done, so his blood
does not defile or pollute the city.
The
report is sent back. “Naboth has been
stoned. He is dead.”
No longer brooding in
his bedroom, King Ahab goes and does what kings do with land that rightfully
belongs to the community. King Ahab
takes.
Always a thorn in
King Ahab’s side, God sends the prophet Elijah to the palace. In echoing the Exodus story, when the
original covenant was established, God tells Elijah to “God down!” Go down as Moses did to Egypt where he confronted the Pharaoh.
Every children’s
sermon I ask the children to speak with a strong voice so that they might
emulate someone like Elijah. This is one
of those moments, sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins I want you to take
into your hearts and make part of your bloodstream. African-American writer Ralph Ellison
stated: “I was never more hated than
when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate
exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied.”[11]
Now Elijah was go
speak hard but truthful words to the Ruler of Israel spoken by the Ruler of the
Universe. So often passed over when read
as a Scripture passage, this is when the music swells, Elijah musters what is
in his heart and comes to speak with the voice of God.
It takes courage to
walk into a place that just murdered the righteous and say, “God has seen
you. And you shall reap what you sow.” Elijah is much more graphic. “Where the dogs licked up the blood of
Naboth, so they shall lick up your blood.”
Violence begets violence. And the
Scripture goes on to say that the root of all of Ahab’s injustice is his idol
worship, how he did not consider the values of God primary. Elijah speaks with a strong voice knowing
that Ahab and Jezebel could easily do to him what they have done to
Naboth. Elijah speaks with the voice of
God.
What do we imagine
the voice of God sounds like in our day?
As you know, I look
at the wealth in land so many United Church of Christ churches have in greater
southwest Michigan, imagine how God might want us to be faithful, and hope once
again that we will know our church buildings and land as God’s own, the land as
an actor waiting for us . . . the land hoping we hear the call to relationship
so that our children and our children’s children might have an ancestral
heritage.
The land cries out
hoping that we are listening. And God
gives so much grace and abundance for us to get it right, to dream how we might
partner with God to make our land and our building part of the wider Bainbridge
and Watervliet community.
You may have heard
the story of what happened recently out in the Western United States along the
Klamath River. The history of water in the West has been shaped by conflict,
greed, and scarcity. The King Ahabs in
the world had created a dam system in the Klamath River to maximize profit and
greed.
The
headwaters of the Klamath River originate in Oregon, flowing through the
Cascade Mountain Range, into Northern California, and emptying into the Pacific
Ocean. Running 263 miles (423km), the river was once the third-largest salmon-producing river on the West Coast.
But the dams blocked
fish migration, leading to mass fish die-offs and
degraded water quality. Fall chinook salmon numbers plummeted by more than 90% compared
to their pre-dam numbers and spring chinook by 98%. Steelhead trout, coho
salmon and Pacific lamprey numbers also saw drastic declines, and the Klamath
tribes in the upper basin have been without their salmon fishery for a century
. . . .[12]
In August
2024, through persistent campaigning of Native communities, to see the land and
water as actors, subjects themselves, with their own wisdom and goodness, the
last of the four dams were demolished. This
was the largest dam removal project in U.S. history, dams usually used for the very
wealthy to direct waters to land and agricultural systems owned by them.
Yurok tribal member, Barry McCovey
said, “The river is healing itself.”[13]
In January 2025, those monitoring the return of the salmon
reported that more than 6,000 Chinook salmon returned to their original
spawning grounds.[14] Places where salmon
had not been seen for over a century were now replete with salmon. Far faster and far greater than anyone ever imagined,
the goodness, the abundance returned to a place where Naboth’s vineyard had
been sold off to the highest bidder. Now
the land, as an ancestral heritage to so many peoples, was returned to them. And the Creator of the Universe brought forth
abundance and goodness, food for so many people who had depended on this
ecosystem for centuries.
Let us once again faithfully cultivate affection for our
place.
The music swells as God speaks to faith communities in great
southwest Michigan about how their land shall become part of the faithful
story. The land waits, hoping that we,
in our righteousness and justice, will choose abundance remember how the land
is fastened to us in relationship. We reap
what we sow. Let us sow for the generations
to follow us that we remember the covenant promises God has made between us and
the land. Amen.
[1]
Matthew Humphrey, “A Pipeline Runs through Naboth’s Vineyard,” Watershed
Discipleship, ed. by Ched Myers, (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2016), p. 123.
[2]
Ibid, 127.
[3]
Belden C. Lane, Landscapes of the Sacred:
Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality. Expanded Second Edition (Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2001), p. 244.
[4] Ibid,
p. 264.
[5]
Deuteronomy 29:23; Deuteronomy 32:32; Jeremiah 2:21.
[6]
Leviticus 18:25.
[7] e.g.,
Leviticus 26:3-5.
[8] Walter
Brueggemann, “The Prophet as a Destabilizing Presence,” in A Social Reading of the Old Testament:
Prophetic Approaches to Israel’s Communal Life, ed. Patrick D. Miller (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), p. 239.
[9]
Nancy deClaisse’-Walford, “Commentary on 1 Kings 21:1-10 [11-14] 15-21a,” Working
Preacher, June 13, 2010, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-11-3/commentary-on-1-kings-211-1011-1415-21a.
[10]
Ched Myers in Humphrey, “A Pipeline,” p. 125.
[11]
Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man.
[12] Lucy
Sheriff, “After 100 years, salmon have returned to the Klamath River –
following a historic dam removal project in California,” BBC, November
25, 2024, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241122-salmon-return-to-californias-klamath-river-after-dam-removal.
[13]
Ibid.
[14] “More
Than 6,000 Salmon Return to Spawning Grounds on Klamath River Following Dam
Removal,” ActiveNorCal, January 5, 2025, https://www.activenorcal.com/more-than-6000-salmon-return-to-spawning-grounds-on-klamath-river-following-dam-removal/.
[12] Lucy
Sheriff, “After 100 years, salmon have returned to the Klamath River –
following a historic dam removal project in California,” BBC, November
25, 2024, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241122-salmon-return-to-californias-klamath-river-after-dam-removal.
[13]
Ibid.
[14] “More
Than 6,000 Salmon Return to Spawning Grounds on Klamath River Following Dam
Removal,” ActiveNorCal, January 5, 2025, https://www.activenorcal.com/more-than-6000-salmon-return-to-spawning-grounds-on-klamath-river-following-dam-removal/.
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