There are so many titles and names that we read throughout the Bible for the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But which of these is the “real” name? The arguments for one of any number of them goes on and on and on.
But God tells us how HE wants to be known, and, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why so many people ignore that.
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After Moses asked what name should he use when the people ask who sent him, God gave a name we call the Tetragrammaton, which is composed of three Hebrew letters, the Yud, Heh, and Vav, and it looks like this:
יהוה
Now, Hebrew is a language that doesn’t have vowels, so no one can really know how those 4 letters are to be pronounced. In Judaism, we use the word “Adonai”, which means “Lord”, to represent God. Sometime in the past, the vowels for Adonai were placed under the letters of the Tetragrammaton, and so when we have yud-heh-vav-heh with the sounds of ah, o, and ah under them, we get Yahovah, or Jehovah.
Is that the one and only correct way to pronounce those letters? Maybe; all we can state with certainty is that it is a pronunciation we made up.
In Exodus 3:13, we read:
God said to Moshe, “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh [I am/will be what I am/will be],” and added, “Here is what to say to the people of Isra’el: ‘Ehyeh has sent me to you.’”
So here, God says that we are to call him “I am”.
In Exodus 3:14-15, we read:
God said further to Moshe, “Say this to the people of Isra’el: ‘Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh [Adonai], the God of your fathers, the God of Avraham, the God of Yitz’chak and the God of Ya‘akov, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever; this is how I am to be remembered generation after generation.
Now God says we are to call him the God of our fathers, the God of Avraham, etc. , and that is how he is to be known throughout our generations!
In Isaiah 51:15, God said:
For I am Adonai your God, who stirs up the sea, who makes its waves roar — Adonai-Tzva’ot is my name.
(Lord of Hosts)
Oy! Now he wants to be called Adonai Tzva’ot!
So, even God doesn’t know what to call himself, since he has told us no less than three different ways to refer to him.
C’mon…make up your mind, already!
And that wasn’t enough for us! We had to go and make up even more names for him, such as El Shaddai (God Almighty), El Elyon (God on High), Jehovah Jira (God who Provides), and these are just some examples. If you do an Internet search, there are some 100+ names used to identify God.
But are any of these really a “name”? To me, they are more of a title or description than some unique identifier, such as Steven or Harry, or Elizabeth, or Mary.
Why do we even have names? Isn’t it to identify someone as different from someone else? I mean, if we were all called “Steven” (I picked that name because I am most comfortable with it) , and someone yelled, “Hey, Steven!”, wouldn’t everybody look? How would any of us know which “Steven” the person was calling to?
So, in human society, we need to have a name which may have meaning in our native tongue, but is specifically designed to identify us as separate and unique from anyone else like us, i.e., human.
But God isn’t human, and there is no other like him, so he doesn’t really need a name, does he? Yet we still have to be able to have some way to refer to him, so since we don’t really know how to pronounce Y-H-V-H, we use titles, such as God (which isn’t a name, it is a description), or Adonai (Lord), or Yah (God), or El Elyon (God on high), or…well, you get the idea.
So, nu? To all you “Holy Namers” out there who insist that if we don’t use the name for God that you believe is the one and only correct name for him, consider that God- you know who I mean, that guy who created the universe, who flooded the earth, who brought the Jewish people out from Egyptian slavery, who gave the world the 10 Commandments, who did all those miraculous things throughout history, and who sent Yeshua, the Messiah so that we all can be saved from our sins (still with me?)- never gave us just one name or title by which to call him.
And if you ask me, because God identifies himself in different ways, using different titles, then it seems very clear to me that if we use those same names he uses, he won’t have a problem with it.
Thank you for being here, and please remember to share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. After all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.
That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!