Life of Christ in Five Phases 4

Many Offices, One God

As we have noted, humans in their finiteness are complex creatures who all function in a variety of positions but each one is still one person. Much more than the puny human, God is infinitely convoluted in His Person and fills a limitless number of roles in His creation. Yet He remains one Almighty God. For example, God referred to Himself as “the Almighty God [El Shaddai]” on one occasion when talking to Abraham. (Gen. 17:1) God told Moses much later in the history of the Israelites that El Shaddai was the name by which Isaac and Jacob also had known Him. (Ex. 6:3) But God had another more specific and personal name (and yet He remained one God) that He revealed to Moses when He met Moses at the burning bush. (Ex. 3:13, 14)

Text Ref. 6

On this occasion God had commissioned Moses to deliver the Israelites out of their bondage in Egypt. Moses demurred, saying, “When I tell the children of Israel that the God of your fathers has sent me to you, they will say, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I tell them?” God then gave Moses the specific and personal name full of majesty and significance. He said, “I AM WHO I AM. Say to them, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ Thus shall you say to them, ‘The Lord God (Jehovah Elohim)…the God of Abraham…of Isaac…of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever.” Ex. 3:15. (Ref.,  (Clarke n.d., 306, vs. 15 notes.)Which is His name forever: I AM or Jehovah? Both. They stem from the same verb and are both indicative of God’s eternal being. In the Old Testament, wherever “LORD” is spelled with all capital letters it is used in place of “Jehovah.” (Dummelow 1943, 51, “What is his name?”)

Jehovah or Yahweh (the earlier form of the same word) was in the original text. Jehovah derived from Yahweh which in turn derived from the Hebrew JHVH (pronunciation unknown), the name of God that the Hebrews considered too sacred to utter. So whenever they would come across the tetragram­maton JHVH in their reading, they would substitute “Adonai,” meaning “My Lord,” for the sacred utterance.

Hebrew was at first written without vowels; they were not a part of the written language. When vowels were added later, the scribes combined the vowel signs of Adonai with JHVH and so brought into being the word, Jehovah, variously rendered Yahweh, Jahveh, Jahweh, etc., all forms derived from the one word, JHVH.

J.R. Dummelow, in his “A Commentary on the Holy Bible,”  (Dummelow 1943) informs us that “Jahveh” is similar to the Hebrew verb, “jahve,” meaning “he is.” God was Jahveh (He is) to the Israelites, but in referring to Himself as He was talking to Moses, God said that He was “Ehyeh (I AM).” By these expressions God was stressing that He is completely independent of any outside source, including time itself; He only of all beings has the power to stand unrestricted and alone.

There is more to this holy name. Scholars assert that it can also mean “I will be,” thus denoting God’s constancy and faith­fulness: He will always exist so that His creation, man in particular, may fully depend on Him. There is absolutely no one else on whom so much and so many depend and who never falters under such a heavy burden.

Another meaning contained in Yahweh is “He who CAUSES to be” or “He who creates.” We can now begin to see the full significance in the name Jehovah.

We can sum it up this way: Jehovah is He who created all things, who exists completely self?sustained and will always remain constant and unchangeable. His “being” is the only true existence; it is absolutely self?contained and dependent upon no one and no thing. His being reaches back an eternity and extends forward into infinity. No other entity can ever dream of making this assertion.

Even with this condensed definition of Jehovah/Yahweh we do the name an utter injustice. Our minds are limited, but our spiritual side senses there is so much more to it. As we probe into its significance we find meanings of strength and self?reve­lation and glorious majesty. (Clarke, Adam Clarke’s Commentary on the New Testament n.d.).

To put a very complex subject in absurdly uncomplicated terms (how can one really reduce this immense God to a simple statement?), God simply IS. He is, unaffected by past or future, unlimited, invincible, all?wise, all?powerful, everywhere present, sustained by His own Person. God needs no one, needs no one’s consultation or acquiescence, did not come into being by creative fiat nor will He ever cease to be. He is Yahweh. He is Jehovah.

Text Ref. 7

There were also Jehovah combination names that arose from God’s many functions in relation to His people. Many times in the long history of the Hebrews descending from Abraham, God would, in His unique way, very effectively fill a need. It was because of this comforting habit of Jehovah’s being there and being what they needed that the Jehovah combination names came about. For instance, on one occasion God provided a lamb of sacrifice for Abraham so that he did not have to slay his only son of the promise. Abraham in his overflowing gratitude named the place Jehovah-jireh (Clarke, Clarke’s Commentary, vol. I n.d.), 141, verse 14 notes, meaning “God will provide.” (Gen. 22:14) At another time God “healed” the bitter waters of Marah so that the Israelites could drink of them and not die of thirst or poison. God made a covenant with them there that if they would diligently hearken to His words He would not afflict them with the diseases he had brought upon the Egyptians. “For I,” God told the Israelites, “am the Lord that healeth thee [Jehovah-ropheka].” (Ex. 15:26)

There were more of these Jehovah combination names such as Jehovah-shamma (the Lord is there), Jeho­vah?tsidkenu (the Lord our righteousness) and others. We cannot adequately deal with them here. They all, along with the more generic terms of Eloah, Elohim and El Shaddai, were references to the one true God.

To wrap it up: The evolution of the names of deity, ranging from God (Eloah, Elohim), God Almighty (El Shaddai) and various other names that were just as impersonal, to the more personal Jehovah (Yahweh) and its many descriptive combination forms was in step with the gradual unfolding by God of Himself to His people. He had first become a personal God to individuals such as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and then to an entire nation: Israel. To this people He was a great, majestic yet loving God who tenderly carried them through a flood of adversity brought on by their own idolatrous and carnal excesses.

God’s relationship with Israel was one of a kind, never having happened on that wise with any other nation before or since. He was to them Yahweh, a personal God, and they were to Him His peculiar people: they belonged only to Him. To bring it down to us: The Father whose identity we have been seeking is the same Jehovah or Yahweh who began His dealings with mankind by introducing Himself first to the Israelites.