The Significant Name of God (5)
The meaning of God’s glorious Name יהוה - YaHUaH
André H. Roosma
11 May 2020 (NL original: 24 Nov. 2014)
I have written about it before,1 but I cannot remain silent
about it: the extraordinarily rich meaning of God’s glorious Name.
In the time and land of the Bible, names were not just a simple
identification as they are with us, but names had meaning. Someone’s name
said who he was. A name was a description of the person, his or her
background and/or his or her vocation of life. Some examples:2
- Moses’ name, in Hebrew: משׁה - Mosheh, comes from mashah
- to pull out; under his guidance God had the people of Isra’el pull out
of Egypte;
- the prophet Elijah was called in Hebrew: אליהו - ’Eli-yahu - YaHUaH is my God. Most well-known about him is the
battle against the idol priests (1 Kings 18); a
battle that ended in that all the people cried out in unison:
YaHUaH is God! (verse 39);
- Jesus’ name, in Hebrew: ישׁוע - Yeshu‘a, a shortened form of: יהושׁוע or יהושׁע -
originally: Yahu-shu‘a (as I described recently),
is a contraction of God’s glorious Name YaHUaH and the verb
yash‘a - to save, deliver; He is God in His human form as
Savior!
So if we want to get to know the God of the Bible in more detail, it is
first of all good to look at what His great Name tells us about Him.
He who is there, was there and will be there, in one Word
In the first place, the beautiful Name יהוה - YaHUaH can be seen as the he-form of the ancient Hebrew
verb הוה - hawah or huah - ‘to be there, to live,
to come into existence’. First of all YaHUaH is the God Who is
there. That is a form of ‘being’ that stands above time. His ‘being’
encompasses time: past, present and future (cf. Revelations 1: 8, 11, 17).
We recognize this being above time in the statement of Jesus
(Yahu-shu‘a): “Before ’Abraham was,
I am” (John 8:58; the Pharisees
were offended because Jesus equated Himself with God here).
There is something awesome about this. Where we as humans derive our
identity from our origins or our achievements, God simply is there.
YaHUaH period. He is of a completely different order than us,
His creatures. He is, from eternity to eternity. This may evoke our
awe for Him! God’s ‘being’ is far beyond our comprehension!
We exist in Him
God’s exalted ‘being’ is at the same time the basis for our humble
‘being’. We are created by Him and unto Him, and with all this created world,
we find our existence, our ‘being there’ only in Him (Acts 17:28; Colossians 1:17; Hebrews 1:3; 2:10). We do
not exist in our own strength.
I have noticed that when doctors or biologists announced major breakthroughs
in their science, it was never the case that they themselves had created life,
they had only led the life God gives in slightly different directions.
Think for example of stem cell research. Why are people investing so much
money here? Because it is God’s mechanism to form all kinds of human
or animal tissues, and beyond that, man himself cannot form even one living
cell.
This was elementary for Jesus. Also as a human being He was constantly
aware of the fact that His ‘being’ was derived from the higher ‘being’
of God the Father. And so He constantly attuned His actions to the Father.
As recorded in Joh. 5:17, “My Father is working until
now, and I am working too.” (cf. John 5:19,30;
9:4; 14:10).
The consequences of this are enormous – anthropologically and
pastorally as well. Because our ‘being’ originates in God’s ‘being’,
our first and most important task is also: to honor and glorify Him. And
it underlines that our performance is only of secondary importance.
That He loves us and is merciful to us does not depend on our position,
how well we do it, or how our environment thinks about us, but is grounded in
His ‘being’, so in His Character. It is His Character to be gracious
and loving and faithful.3 In problems or in our failures, this can
and may be a great comfort! We never have to doubt Him. He wanted us.
He loves us, and that love of His spans time as well. We too, like Jesus,
may derive our lives from Him, and attune all that we do to Him.
Another dimension: He is there!
That ‘being there’ of that old Hebrew verb הוה - hawah or huah - ‘to be there, to live’ has yet
another dimension. In the Bible it is also used in the sense of ‘being there
with someone’, ‘being present’. In the glorious Name יהוה - YaHUaH, with which God reveals Himself to us, He also
says that it is His Character to want to be there with
His people. The Bible does not use this glorious Name yet in Genesis
1, but only from Genesis 2, when God created man, onward. God wants to be
with us humans. And He wants us to be with Him. Only then do we really have
Life, only then will our existence reach its goal.
That means that we have to abandon our old culture of ‘I can do it myself.’
We must give up that ‘life’ in order to find true Life in and with Him.
Therefore, Jesus said:
“He who finds his life shall lose it. And
he who loses his life for My sake shall find it.” ...
“For whoever desires to save his life shall lose it, and whoever
desires to lose his life for My sake shall find it.
For what does it benefit a person if he gains the whole world but forfeits
his life? Or what can a person give in exchange for his
life?” Mat.10:39; 16:25-26
Note: In the Source text the word translated ‘life’ is sometimes also
translated as ‘soul’ and it could also be translated as ‘being’ as I talk
about it here. We have to give up our old miserable life in order to find our
real ‘being’ (after God’s model) in Jesus.
In God’s being present; in our relationship with Him through
Jesus, we come to our goal as human beings!
Hallelu YaHUaH !
Notes
| 1 |
The names in the Bible have meaning. That is why I
transliterate them carefully so that they remain recognizable. Especially
the glorious Name of God I represent here as accurately as possible from the
oldest Hebrew original, instead of replacing this grand personal Name of The
Most High by a common word, such as ‘Lord’. For more background
information see:
André H. Roosma, ‘Life, security and belonging in joyful adoration,
from the hand of God’  , brief Hallelu-YaH article about the Biblical Name of God in the earliest
Hebrew (old Semitic) script, January 2011.
André H. Roosma, ‘The Shema‘
– the First Testament declaration of faith (1)’, Hallelu-YaH! web article, February 2012.
André
H. Roosma, ‘The
wonderful and lovely Name of the God Who was there, Who is there, and Who
will be there’ , extensive Accede! / Hallelu-YaH! study, July 2009. |
| 2 |
On my Dutch site www.Hallelu-JaH.nl I have a series of
articles on Hebrew names that are illustrative as
well here. Several of those can be found in the large draft research document
on the oldest form of Hebrew: ‘The Written
Language of Abraham, Moses and David – A study of the pictographic
roots and basic notions in the underlying fabric of the earliest Biblical
script’ , a living document by André H. Roosma, 1st English version: 18 April 2011 (1st Dutch original: January 2011). |
| 3 |
See also:
‘The Character of God – חסד ואמת - chesed we ’emet - grace and
truth/ faithfulness’, 10 July 2015;
‘חֲנַנְיָה - Chanan-YaH – (the) grace and
mercy of YaHUaH’, 2 Feb. 2019
‘What God YaHUaH says about Himself – the
Message of Exodus 34: 6-7’, 20
January 2012. |
|
