Almighty God revealed Himself to Israel through many names that identified His attributes, and together they disclosed His nature and character, mostly in how he related to them through acts if protection and provision. God permitted Israel to invoke these names, but never “in vain” — profanely or carelessly.
Elohim is a generic Semitic word for deity, and refers to God in the widest sense, and even to other gods. Elohim is also translated “judges” (Psalm 82:1; Exodus 22:28). The LORD appeared to Abram as God Almighty, El Shaddai (Gen 17:1) and to Israel through other names, each name relating to His people’s needs and His ability to provide for and protect them.
God’s most sacred name was the fully consonant YHWH, to which vowels were added by translators to form the more easily pronounced “Jehovah” (which Jews never use). The name YHWH is God’s proper name, and occurs 6,828 times in the Old Testament. Its shorter form JAH appears 50 times in the Old Testament, often as “Hallelu-jah” (“praise Jah!”). The King James Version of the Bible uses “LORD” for YHWH (in capitals to distinguish it from Adonai, which means, Lord in the sense of Master — as in, “Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him…” (Isaiah 40:10).
“And God spoke to Moses and said, I am the LORD, and I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by the name of God Almighty, but I was not known to them by my name JHWH.” (Exodus 6:2, 3) The LORD’S revelation of Himself to Israel was progressive: each of his names disclosing an aspect of His nature.
The names included:
• YHWH Jireh (Gen. 22:14): “The Lord Will Provide.”
• YHWH Ropheka (Exodus 15:26): “The Lord Our Healer.”
• YHWH Nissi (Exodus 17:15): “The Lord is My Banner.”
• YHWH Shalom (Judges 6:24): “The Lord is Peace.”
• YHWH Ra’ah (Psalm 23:1): “The Lord is my Shepherd.”
• YHWH Tsidkenu (Jeremiah 23:6; 33:16): “The Lord Our Righteousness.”
• YHWH Shammah (Ezekiel 48:45): “The Lord is Present.”
These names were given to reassure God’s people of His care for them. For example, YHWH Ropheka: “the Lord our Healer” was given after the bitter waters of Marah were sweetened when Moses threw into them a tree branch. Marah was the first encampment of the children of Israel after their crossing of the Red Sea. When our first expectations turn sour, the Branch, who took the bitterness of sin into himself, is the LORD our Healer. (Exodus 15:23-26)
Devout Jews refer to God as “Hashem” — Hebrew for “the Name”. (Leviticus 24:11) Jews still retain their age-old aversion to any careless use of God’s name. Jesus, who taught his disciples to pray, “Hallowed be Your Name” (Luke 11:2) spoke of himself as “sitting at the right hand of Power” (Matthew 26:64), in response to the high priest’s question, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” (Mark 14:61) The words “Power” and “Blessed” are euphemisms; both Jesus and the high priest avoided using the revered name “God” (as do pious Jews today, writing instead the unpronounceable “G-d”).
Think about this! Israel knew so much about the invisible God through His many revealed names. Then, after 400 long years of prophetic silence (between Malachi, the last book in the Old Testament and Matthew, the first book in the New Testament), God made Himself known in the person of His Son Jesus, who was “the image of the invisible God.” (Colossians 1:15; 2 Corinthians 4:4; I Timothy 6:16; I John 4:12) The Son was the very image of his Father! The Jews already referred to the coming Messiah as “the Son of God” (John 1:49).
Were God’s chosen people ignorant of the character and attributes of their God? Of course not! Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “We Jews know what we believe.” (John 4:22) Christians are correct in saying the Jews do not know God as intimately as they might, this because rejecting God’s Son limits them to knowing Him only through His names rather than through His Son, who the names describe perfectly!
Jesus said, “No man can come to me unless the Father who has sent me draws him. So, everyone who has heard, and has learned from the Father comes to me.” (John 6:45) We have a relationship, not merely a religion.
It is true that for 2000 years the Jews as a people have largely rejected Jesus as the Messiah; however, it is also true that if the church had taught that Jesus was the Son of God by his divine nature through conception and the Son of man through his virgin birth, who knows how many Jews might have believed? Moses wanted the “crooked and perverse generation” of his time to know that the Most High was their Father (Deuteronomy 32:6); and the Lord had spoken of Israel as “My son, my firstborn.” (Exodus 4:22, 23)
It was Jesus who first called God “Father” in the personal sense, and taught his disciples to pray, “Our Father in heaven…” (Luke 11:2)
In I John 5:19, 20, the apostle John records three things that believers in Jesus know:
“And WE KNOW that we are of God, and the whole world lies in wickedness. And WE KNOW that the Son of God has come, and has given us an understanding, that WE may KNOW him that is true, and we are in him that is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.” (I John 5:19, 20)
The word translated “know” in English in NT Greek is “ginosko”, which means, “to come to know” (through a process). John’s doubly emphatic “WE KNOW that WE KNOW” in I John 2:3 emphasises that we can know him with absolute certainty by keeping His commandments!
In dealing with issues of idolatry in the church at Corinth, the apostle Paul includes the following, unambiguous statement:
“As concerning therefore the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one. For though there be that are called gods, either in heaven or in earth….
“But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him. However, that knowledge is not in every man…” (I Corinthians 8:4-7) The Greeks did not know God as a Father, but to the Jews the knowledge of Him as their Father was basic to belief and crystal clear.
The apostle Paul referred to his natural kinsmen as “Israelites”, adding that to them belonged “the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises…” (Romans 9:4, 5)
In stark contrast, the Greeks, who were totally ignorant as to the identity of the True God, worshipped a whole pantheon of pagan gods. The Athenians even included (as spiritual insurance, perhaps) a memorial to “the Unknown God.” (Acts 17:22-31)
When the apostle Paul commanded a man who had never walked to stand upright on his feet, and he leapt and walked, the pagans of Lystra shouted, “The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!” They promptly identified Paul as the Roman wing-heeled, messenger-god Mercury, and called the older Barnabas Jupiter (Zeus). (Acts 14:8-18)
The town clerk of Ephesus proudly identified his city as “temple-keeper of the great goddess Diana (known also as Artemis), and of the image which fell down from Jupiter (a breast-shaped meteorite).” (Acts 19:35)
The responsive Thessalonians “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God…” (I Thessalonians 1:9) Idolatry was pandemic in the Roman Empire — the sole cure for it being faith in the One True God through His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ.
Jesus is called “the Son of God” many times in the New Testament, but never — not once — God the Son. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself…” Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” and in him dwells all the fulness of the Deity bodily.”
Israel, God’s chosen people, known today as the Jews, were not ignorant as to the nature, character and attributes of their God: they misunderstood the words that Jesus said about himself in statements such as “Before Abraham was, I AM”. I wonder what they would have thought of the Apostle John’s later statement that Jesus was “crucified from the foundation of the world”?
If Christians came to understand the God of Israel, I believe that Jews would believe that Jesus of Bethlehem was indeed their Messiah and would turn to him in great numbers in the dark days that lie ahead. God’s chosen people were not ignorant but rather those who were misled by Constantine the Great, who lured Christians away from the Jewish Sabbath and their One God to the Sunday observance of the emperor’s pagan sun god. More on this later…