A rare term appearing only in Romans 11:4, where Paul recalls God's response to Elijah's complaint. The Greek root relates to business transactions and official pronouncements, but here it carries the specialized sense of a divine oracle or authoritative word from God. Paul uses it to introduce God's counter-declaration that 7,000 had not bowed to Baal—heaven's official answer to the prophet's despair. The multilingual evidence (divine-response, respuesta-divina, réponse-divine) consistently captures this sense of authoritative communication from the throne.