We come now in our studies to consider the name of God which has been suppressed in the English Bible. As noted earlier, whenever in the Authorized Version we have LORD in capitals, or GOD in capitals, the divine name is present in the original text.
Out of a mistaken view of such Scriptures as Exodus 20:7 and Leviticus 24:11 the Jews of Christ’s day (and for upwards of 200 years before) refused to pronounce the name of God. So afraid were the Jews of pronouncing this name, which, when it appeared in the text that they were reading, they read as Elohim or Adonay, that they subsequently resorted to a literary device to warn and help them when they read the Scriptures. The divine name in the original Hebrew Scriptures,which was devoid of vowel points, appeared simply as the four Hebrew consonants Yod, He, Waw, and He – YHWH. The vowel points were not added to the text until about 900 A.D. and then the vowel points of the word Adonay or Elohim were added to the consonants of the divine name. Thus, whenever the Jew came across the name of God, he was reminded not to pronounce it,but to read instead ‘Adonay’ or ‘Elohim:
It should be noted that when the Jew did this, i.e substituted either Adonay or Elohim for the divine name, he had a motive for doing it – he desired, so it is said, to safeguard the divine majesty in the minds of men. However, this attitude was based upon an interpretation of Scripture which is manifestly wrong, and it is to be deplored that this Jewish approach to the divine name has been given some support recently in a publication that circulates among us. Now, although the Jew did not pronounce the name, it is evident that when he read the Scriptures the name was brought before his eyes and he knew it was in the text.
In the English version the suppression of the name is almost complete, but not quite. We can, if we are aware that it is always in capitals, still detect it with the eyes and mentally restore it to its rightful place in the text. This writer finds it difficult to understand why most of our books and magazines insist, when quoting from the Scriptures, on printing the name in small letters,being thereby guilty of a complete suppression of the Divine name. Not only do they follow the Authorized Version in removing the name and reading instead either Lord or God; they proceed and remove from the quotation of the A.V. the capital letters which enable the reader to know where it originally occurred.
It is impossible to advance any reasonable justification* for removing God’s name from the text of Scripture, and when the significance of that name is appreciated there can be nothing but a desire to see it restored to the text where God originally placed it.
Vocalization of the Name
The name of God appears in the Hebrew Scriptures, as we have said, in the form YHWH,which is often referred to as the tetragrammaton – the name of four letters. Although most scholars support the spelling ‘Yahweh’, we cannot be certain how the name was originally pronounced. Professor Haupt states, “The true pronunciation seems to have been Yahwe…the final ‘e’ should be pronounced like the French ‘a’, or the English ‘e’ in’ there, and the first ‘h’ sounded as an aspirate. The accent should be on the final syllable.” (Quoted by Rotherham, “Emphasized Bible” p.25, from the “Polychrome Bible”.)
Occasionally in our Bible the translators have departed from their usual practice of suppressing the name and have rendered the tetragrammaton by the word Jehovah, e.g. Exodus 6:3. It should be noted that this pronunciation was unknown until the 16th Century and appears to be a combination of the tetragram-maton and the vowel points of the word “Adonay.” It is thus a hybrid or corrupted form of the divine name. We mention this because an attempt has been made in the past to demonstrate that “Jehovah” is the correct form of the name, and it would appear that this view has some support in the Ecclesia today.
A.B. Davidson, in his book “Theology of the Old Testament” page 47, writes, “The pronunciation Jehovah has no pretence to be right. It was not introduced into currency until the time of the Reformation about 1520…When vowel signs were invented and written in the MSS (600-900 A.D.) the practice, when one word was substituted for another in reading, was to attach the vowels of the word to be substituted to the consonants of the original word. Thus the vowels of ‘adonay’ were attached to the consonants YHWH. In 1518 A.D., Petrus Galatinus, confessor of Leo X, proposed to read the vowels and consonants as one word, and thus arose YeHoVaH – Jehovah – Y requiring to be spelt with e instead of a.”
The Idea behind a Name in Hebrew
“In the Bible the term ‘name’ stands for the definition of the characteristics of the person, place or thing indicated” (C.C.Walker,”Theophany”, page 14). And so it is that all names in the Old Testament of Hebrew origin have a meaning, very often profound. Thus, in the early chapters of Genesis, we have such interesting names as ‘Cain’ which means ‘gotten’ or ‘acquired’ (Genesis 4:1) and ‘Seth’ meaning “appointed” (Genesis 4:25), which are clearly significant in relation to the purpose of God outlined in Genesis 3:15. Sometimes a name was prophetic in its meaning, for example, ‘Methuselah’, which means “in his death it shall come,” which was a reference to the sending of the flood,which came the year Methuselah died. The name Noah was also prophetic prophetic of the deliverance and comfort to be brought subsequent to the flood, for it means “rest” or “comfort” – see Genesis 8:21 where this is substantiated.
The name ‘Shem’ is very interesting in connection with our study and this too has reference to the purpose of God. The word Shem means “name”, and Genesis 9:26 is a most interesting prophecy: “Blessed be Yahweh, God of Shem (name); and Cainan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Cainan shall be his servant.” Thus it was to be with the descendents of Shem that God would work out His purpose, and this purpose, as we shall see, was revealed and memorialized in his name – hence the appropriateness and the significance of the name Shem.
The name of God no less than the names of the men with whom He was working was full of significance.
The Giving of the Name to Moses
In Exodus chapter 3 we have the inspired comments on the significance of the divine name and we will do well to note the context. In Exodus 2:24 we read concerning the children of Israel, who were in the bondage of Egypt, that “God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac,and with Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them.” Then follows in chapter 3 the account of the appearing of the angel to Moses at the bush, and we want especially to note chapter 3:7-8:
“Yahweh said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites…”
Thus the giving of the name recorded in verses 14-15 of this third chapter occurs in The context of this declaration by God that He was about to bring the Abrahamic covenant nearer to its fulfilment. God had come down to deliver His people from Egypt, so that ultimately the Abrahamic covenant could be fulfilled. From the point we now stand in history we can see how much has been accomplished in this great work of God, but we still await the completion,for it was a work which would extend thousands of years into the future from the time of the Exodus. This is important if we would appreciate the significance of God’s declaration in verse 14.
Let it be said now that when Moses asked in verse 13,
“Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name?
what shall I say unto them?”,
he was not confessing on his own part, or on the part of the children of Israel, an ignorance of the form of God’s name. It is clear from a careful reading of the book of Genesis that the name was used by the worshippers of God right from the time of creation; see for example Genesis 4:26; 13:4; 22:2 and 14. Neither Moses nor the children of Israel could have been ignorant of the form of the name of God. As one writer has correctly assessed – “The question, ‘What is his name?’ presupposed that the name expressed the nature and operations of God, and that God would manifest in deeds the nature expressed in his name.” (C.F. Keil, “The Pentatuch” volume 1, page 442). Moses wanted to know and to be able to relate to Israel the significance of the name by which God had made Himself known to Abraham. God had said,
“I am Yahweh that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it” (Genesis 15:7).
Thus in God’s revelation to Abraham there was an association between His name and the promise that God made to him, and so it is very understandable that at this time,when God had come down to bring about the fulfilment of the Abrahamic covenant, as we have seen, that Moses should say in effect, “What is the significance of the name which you employed when you gave this covenant to Abraham?” Since all Hebrew names have meaning this was an obvious question for Moses to ask.
In answer to the question, “What is his name?” Yahweh gave to Moses an explanation as to what the name signified, demonstrating that this was really the point of Moses’ question. “God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM (Hebrew ehyeh asher ehyeh): and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, the LORD (Yahweh) God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, bath sent me unto you…” The name of God, Yahweh, is derived from the word “ehyeh”, and the statement of God, “ehyeh asher ehyeh” constituted the answer to Moses’ uestion, “What is his name?”
Dr. Thomas, in “Eureka’ Volume 1, page 99, points out that ehyeh “is the first person singular of the future tense of the verb, hahyah, ‘to be or become’. It does not mean, and never did, what it is made to signify in the English version, i.e. ‘I am.’ Concerning the word “asher” he says, “The word asher in the memorial is the relative pronoun ‘who’, and is both singular and plural, masculine and feminine. It stands therefore for a multitude as much as for one person.” Thus according to Dr. Thomas “ehyehasher ehyeh” means “I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE,” and we have here a remarkable instance of Dr. Thomas’s grasp of this subject, for his translation hasreceived wide support from more recent scholars.
For example, Davidson,writing on the verb of which ehyeh is the imperfect tense (Dr. Thomas called it the future) writes, “The imperfect must be rendered, ‘I will be'” and continues by saying that the verb “does not mean’to be essentially’, but’to be phenomenally:..the translation ‘I am’ is doubly false: the tense is wrong, being present; and the idea is wrong, because ‘am’ is used in the sense of essential existence. All those interpretations which proceed on the sup- position that the word is a name of God as the self existent, the absolute…must be set aside ” (“Theology of the Old Testament”, page 55). What Davidson here is saying is that by using the word ‘ehyeh’, God is not saying “I AM”, that is, “I exist”, but “I WILL BE”, that is, “I have a purpose and I will work it out.”
But as we have before remarked, we are not to rely on what the scholars say in our endeavour to understand the way in which words are used in Scripture. Rather should we examine the way in which the word is used in the word of God,and we note that it is indeed given a future significance and is connected with God working, out His purpose (and not His existence) as the following examples show. In Exodus 3:12 God says to Moses, “Certainly I will be (ehyeh) with thee” and in Hosea 1:9 God says,
“Call his name Lo-ammi; for ye are not my people, and I will not be (lo-ehyeh) your God.”
There can be no doubt that ‘ehyeh’ carries a future significance,and that the name Yahweh which is derived from it means “HE WHO WILL BE”. Thus God explained to Moses that His name signified “HE WHO WILL BE”, that is, phenomenally. God intended to reveal, or manifest, Himself in the fulfilment of the Abrahamic covenant,and this, as we have seen, is the context which surrounds the giving of this name.
If the name Yahweh means “He Who Will Be”, the question naturally arises, “If this refers to a future manifestation of God, how would God manifest Himself?” We remember that “asher” is both singular and plural and Exodus 6:7 demonstrates that the plural was intended, for there God says, in the context of His redeeming people from the bondage of Egypt, “I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God (Elohim): and ye shall know that I am Yahweh your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.” Thus God says that because He is Yahweh -“HE WHO WILL BE”- He is going to act, He is going to bring them out of Egypt and will take them to Him for a people and,
“I WILL BE TO YOU ELOHIM = MIGHTY ONES.”
It is more than interesting to note the very next verse continues, “And I will bring you into the land, concerning the which I did sware to give it to Abraham, to Isaac,and to Jacob; and I will give it you for an heritage: I am Yahweh” (verse 8). Thus the answer to our question is that in the outworking of His purpose, in fulfilling the Abrahamic covenant and taking the nation descended from Abraham to Him as a people, and in giving to them the land which He had promised to Abraham, He would reveal Himself to this people as Elohim. What would He be? He would be Elohim – Mighty Ones.
And this of course is the message of Exodus 3:15 where God says, “Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Yahweh Elohim of your fathers, the Elohim of Abraham, the Elohim of Isaac, and the Elohim of Jacob, hath sent me unto you”. Thus His name is Yahweh – He who will be. The answer to the question,”What will He be?”, is that He will be revealed as mighty ones. And if we should ask to which mighty ones God here refers, the answer is given the mighty ones of Abraham, of Isaac and Jacob, which in this context are none other than the seed of Abraham, known in the New Testament as the body of Christ, which is to possess the gate of his enemies (Genesis 22:17).
This interpretation is borne out by the fact that God says in Exodus 3:15, “This is my name for ever” The word translated “for ever” is the Hebrew word “olam” and means a hidden or indefinite period of time, and since the whole context of the giving of the divine name is the fulfilment of the Abrahamic covenant, it would appear that the hidden period referred to is the kingdom age when the promises to Abraham will receive their complete fulfilment. This word is so used in Scripture on numerous occasions. For example, concerning the Messiah it is written,
“Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever(Hebrew, ‘olam’)” (Isaiah 9:7).
Furthermore God says in Exodus 3:15, “This is my memorial unto all generations.” The phrase here translated “unto all generations” is literally “to generation generation” (Hebrew l’dor dor). Wigram in “Englishman’s Hebrew and Chaldee Concordance”, page 337, renders this to generation of generation” which is very similar to Dr. Thomas’s translation in Eureka, Volume 1, page 99 – “my memorial for a generation of the race.” This generation out of the race who would become mighty ones for Israel are spoken of in the 22nd Psalm,where we read, “A seed (the seed of Abraham) shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation (I’dor)” (verse 30).
Thus the name of God relates to His intention in the outworking of the Abrahamic covenant to manifest Himself in members of the human race, and this manifestation would be for the kingdom age; these people would be counted to Yahweh for a generation and they would be to Israel for mighty ones.
Before proceeding to examine the way in which this purpose of God is being worked out, I want to comment briefly on two important Scriptures.
EXODUS 6:2-4
“And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am Yahweh: and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name Yahweh was I not known to them. And I have also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers.”
This passage is often used to show that the name “Yahweh” was not known before the incident of the bush, but this clearly cannot be the case. We have already referred to Genesis 15:7, where God said to Abraham, “I am Yahweh that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it,” and it is just not good enough to say that Moses,when he later recorded the history of these times,inserted the name which had been subsequently revealed to him, for in an earlier chapter of Genesis we read of Abraham building an altar unto Yahweh, and calling upon the name of Yahweh (Genesis 12:8).
Further, in the record of the offering up of Isaac in the land of Moriah we find that “Abraham called the name of that place Yahweh Yireh” which he could not have done had he not been familiar with God’s name (Genesis 22:14). What then is the significance of this passage in Exodus 6? W. J. Martin, M.A., PhD, in “Stylistic Criteria and the Analysis of the Pentateuch” (Tyndale Press 1955), has demonstrated that this passage could legitimately be rendered as a question, and indeed the context demands it.
God appears to be saying to Moses, “I appeared to Abraham as El Shaddai, but is it not also true that by my name Yahweh I was known to them?” – “By my name Yahweh was I not known to them?” The answer of course was Yes, God was known to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as Yahweh – HE WHO WILL BE – this is essentially the covenant name –
“I am Yahweh that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees to give thee this land to inherit it.”
God is saying to Moses,
“Was I not known to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by my name of Yahweh? and furthermore, my present actions are in keeping with and in fulfilment of my covenant with them which was associated with my name,” and so verse 4 naturally continues the thought, “I have also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan.”
EXODUS 34:5-7
“And Yahweh descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of Yahweh. And Yahweh passed by before him, and proclaimed, Yahweh, Yahweh, a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth; keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin: and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation.’ (R.V.)
In this proclamation of His name before Moses, we have the wonderful revelation from Yahweh that He is not only a God who has the power to act (a God who says “I will be,” and has the power to perform it), but when He acts – when He moves to reveal himself in men – He does so in accordance with His moral character which is here proclaimed.
It might be noted in passing the connection that this passage has with the future outworking of the purpose of God (that is, future to the days of Moses) by comparing it with chapter 33:19.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One