9.2.2026
What’s in a name?
For the people of the Old Testament, a person’s name indicated a person’s character. In Exploring Exodus, Nahum Sarna explained it as “the totality of the intricate, interwoven, manifold forces that make up the whole personality of the bearer of that name.” So, when God tells Moses His name, “I AM WHO I AM” or “I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE,” God is expressing the quality of His being. He is revealing Himself to humankind.
And so the irony kills me.
In Sunday’s sermon, we heard about God calling Moses from the burning bush. Moses asked him, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”
In those days, people believed that if they knew the name of a god, then they could control that god. Many of the pagan gods were known by nicknames, so that no one could get the upperhand without knowing the god’s ‘real’ name.
But did God try to hide his name? No. As Carmen Joy Imes writes, “. . . rather than hiding his name and maintaining a measure of distance, [the LORD] invites Moses into his counsel. He and the Hebrews are welcome to address [the LORD] directly. They’re on a first name basis.”
“I AM WHO I AM,” God tells Moses. “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.”
Rather than having to pray to “I AM WHO I AM” all the time, God shortened the phrase, using the consonants to create a name that is represented by our word, LORD. Notice the name LORD is printed in all caps because we’re using a title instead of the name God gave us.
Centuries after God appeared to Moses on the mountain, the Jewish leaders were afraid they might accidentally use the Lord’s name in vain (breaking one of the 10 Commandments) so they decided to substitute something else, a respectful title, rather than speak the Lord’s name. Instead of calling God by the name God gave them at the burning bush — what we call the Covenant name of God, and the name used all throughout the Old Testament — the Jewish leaders substituted either the Hebrew words ha-shem (“the Name”) or adonai (the Lord).
In almost every English translation, the translators followed suit. For example, in Psalm 8, we read: “O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth” (KJV). The first LORD represents that Covenant name, so we have it printed in all caps.
What was the original name? By what name did God say “this is my name forever, and my title for all generations?”
This is where the irony comes in. We know what it looks like, but no one knows for sure how to pronounce it! God graced us with his name, but Those Who Know Best built a wall around it so no one could accidentally break a commandment (they did that kind of stuff all the time, which was one of the major issues Jesus had with the Pharisees), and eventually forgot how to pronounce it! In Hebrew Bibles, the name is represented by the capital letters YHWH, and would be pronounced something like “Yahweh.” There might have been an “o” sound in there (Yahoweh), but, again, they don’t know!
What if Andy called Aunt Bea for so many years so often that he forgot whether her name is really pronounced BE-atrice or Be-A-trice? Aunt Bea would not be pleased!
The saga gets worse.
Sometime between the 6th and 10th centuries, Jewish scribes (called the Masoretes) added the vowel sounds of Adonai (a,o,a,i) to the consonants (YHWH) to remind readers to say “Adonai.” Christian scholars in the Middle Ages and Renaissance mistook that hybrid word for an actual pronunciation and, giving it a Germanic flavor by changing the Y to a J and the W to a V, eventually came up with Jehovah.
It’s a little rare to come across “Jehovah” anymore. We see it occasionally in hymns, like “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah,” but no modern Bible translations use it.
What do we do? The safest thing is simply to stick with our translations and use LORD — but not as a title, but a name. “The LORD” as a title sounds distant and formal (which is the opposite of what God wanted to begin with), so instead let’s remember it and use it as His name, the one the God gave.
This works fine for New Testament believers. By the time the New Testament was written, the Greek version used kurios or “Lord,” a name the Apostles also applied to Jesus. Paul, in Philippians 2 writes, “so that at the name given to Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Jesus Christ is Lord, identifying Jesus as the God who called to Moses from the burning bush. And I suppose the easiest way to understand what the Name meant to the Jews is to see what it came to mean, as their story of salvation slowly unfolded throughout the years. It ultimately meant to them what the name Jesus means to us, a ‘shorthand’ for all God’s dealings of grace.
Blessings,
Pastor Terry