God’s Name YHVH
Welcome back everyone to this episode of the Hebrew Key, one of the series we are doing here at Torah Today Ministries. The Hebrew Key is an effort to look into the depths of God’s word — into the Hebrew letters and words that will help unlock and open up the deeper messages that God has for us in the scriptures. And this week we’re going to look at probably the most important word in the Hebrew scriptures. And that word is not just a word — it is God’s own name.
The Tetragrammaton — it’s sometimes called the four-letter name of transcendence, the ineffable name of God, the name that is unpronounceable. Some people will say Jehovah or Yahweh; others will just spell it yud-hey-vav-hey (יהוה). We do not know how it’s pronounced. No one does. And I’m going to be doing a separate episode on that under the series Messy-Antics.
But in Judaism, when we encounter the four-letter name of God, normally we will just say Adonai (אֲדֹנָי), which means “the Lord,” or will say HaShem (הַשֵּׁם), which means “the Name.” Or I will spell it yud-hey-vav — and there you see God’s name as it appears in scripture: yud-hey-vav-hey (יהוה), the four-letter unpronounceable transcendent name of God.
There is much hidden here in this amazing and unique name, and there’s no way in one video — or in many hours of videos — can we delve into the full depths of this name. But we’ll give you enough to where you can begin to appreciate what you see when you see this name.
Now, in our English translations, when this name is found in Hebrew, our English translations will put the word LORD in all capital letters — capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. And when you see the word “God” in our English translations, that’s usually Elohim (אֱלֹהִים). So sometimes you will see “LORD God” — that would be Adonai YHVH Elohim. So just so you can interpret what you see in your own English translations.
Now, I am recording this during the counting of the Omer (עֹמֶר) — during the days between Passover and Shavuot (שָׁבוּעוֹת), or Pentecost. We count the days — we count each day. Today is day number 19. And when we get up to 49 days, the next day is Pentecost, which is the day when we celebrate two things: one is the giving of the Torah (תּוֹרָה) at Mount Sinai, because it was on Shavuot, Pentecost, that God spoke from atop Mount Sinai. But we also celebrate the events we see in Acts chapter 2, when God came down upon his apostles with fire. But that’s another story we’ll cover in another video.
But as we count these days — from the time of slavery and death in a pagan nation to a place where we stand in the wilderness at Mount Sinai and we hear God speak — these days are a progression. And as I was thinking about this, it occurred to me that learning God’s name, this four-letter name, is also a progression. Let’s take a look.
In Exodus chapter 3, verses 13 to 15, Moses is at the burning bush. Now you know Moses was 80 years old at this time. He had spent the first 40 years in Egypt, living as a prince of Egypt. And then when he was 40 years old, he saw an Egyptian enforcer beating a Hebrew slave. And so Moses — I guess he decided he was going to get up and get into the deliverance ministry and free his people — and so he killed the Egyptian and buried his body in the sand. Well, the next day he found out that he was found out, and that Pharaoh was going to be after him. And so he fled for his life. He fled to the land of Midian. 40 years old. And what a depression he must have been in — how he must have thought, “Oh my goodness, I had the world at my fingertips. I was in a position of authority and power where I could have done something substantial for my people, and all I did was murder an Egyptian servant and then flee for my life.” And then he was in Midian for 40 years, shepherding sheep. You talk about a demotion.
And now at the age of 80 years old — thinking he was a loser, thinking he was probably — I have to think he was at the end of his life, very close to it — and thinking that he was an utter failure. But God, as you know the story so well, speaks to him from a burning bush and calls to him and says, “Moses, I want you to go back to Egypt and lead my people out” — to tell Pharaoh, “Let my people go.” And Moses kept giving God excuses about why God had picked the wrong man. But the truth of the matter is, God had spent the last 80 years making Moses into the right man.
And one of the excuses that Moses gives God is, “Well, if they ask me who sent you — who do I tell them sent me? What is your name?” And here’s the passage, Exodus 3 starting with verse 13:
Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “Ehyeh asher ehyeh (אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה).” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘Ehyeh (אֶהְיֶה) has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘Adonai (אֲדֹנָי), HaShem (הַשֵּׁם) — the LORD — the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.” — Exodus 3:13–15
So we see here that God gives him three answers in a particular order. He says Ehyeh asher ehyeh — “I am who I am.” Ehyeh has sent me to you. And then yud-hey-vav-hey (יהוה) — he says, “This is my eternal name right here.”
Why did God give him three names? Why didn’t he go directly to the name we’re aiming at? Why this progression? Well, just as we are in the days of counting the Omer, as we make progress from a time of slavery to a time of freedom and receiving God’s Torah (תּוֹרָה), we have to make a progression in learning this name.
Let me explain what I mean. We see the three messages that God gives Moses: Ehyeh asher ehyeh at the top, then just Ehyeh by itself, and then yud-hey-vav-hey (יהוה). And this forms a progression as we approach knowing the true name of God.
What’s going on here? Well, let’s analyze these and set a foundation for understanding these words the best we can. I want to look at the top line — Ehyeh asher ehyeh. I want you to notice that the middle letter appears only here. In all three lines, we find this letter shin (שׁ) only here, in the first line, right in the very middle.
The letter shin (שׁ) is the letter of fire. It’s always considered the letter of fire in Hebraic thought. And I believe that God has placed this letter shin in the middle of this elongated name because fire is his essence. From Genesis to Revelation, when you see fire, it is God’s holy essence. The word of God almost shouts at us this reality — that God is a consuming fire. He is a holy fire. And when we see fire in its raw power, we’re seeing the nature of God.
And we need to understand this better. Just as he appeared on Mount Sinai in fire, he appeared on the apostles’ heads on Shavuot in fire. And Elijah was taken to heaven in a chariot of fire. God is speaking to Moses through a bush that is fire — but not consumed. And when John sees Yeshua’s (יֵשׁוּעַ) angel on the island of Patmos, he looked into his eyes, and his eyes were flames of fire. And we know that the eyes are the window of the soul — and as John looked into Yeshua’s (יֵשׁוּעַ) eyes, the essence he saw within was fire.
And John the Immerser said, “I immerse you in water, but the one who comes after me — Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) — he will immerse you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” And you may be wondering: why fire? Because our bodies do not like fire — and that’s true, my body and fire do not mix very well. But that spiritual part of me — my soul and my spirit — they’re impervious to the fire. Fire to them is like bath water to my body. Fire to them is purifying and empowering. So when we see that God is fire, we must also remember that he is spirit. And so the fire represents a spiritual purity, this spiritual reality of who God is. It’s a wonderful symbol. But when it comes to the physical realm, water is what my body likes — but that’s another story.
So we see fire is the essence. I want you to notice something else: this word in the middle — asher (אֲשֶׁר) — also means “that” or “which.” It is also a name of one of the tribes — the tribe of Asher. And when it’s pronounced that way, asher (אֲשֶׁר) means happy or contented. Psalm 1 begins with the phrase: Ashrei ha’ish (אַשְׁרֵי הָאִישׁ) — “Contented is the man” — the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of the scoffer. He’s contented. He’s happy.
And this is another thing — though our God is a consuming fire, he is a happy God. There is a phrase in one of Paul’s writings where he actually, in the Greek, refers to God as “the happy God.” If joy is a fruit of God’s Spirit, that means it is an attribute of God himself. Joy. He is a joyful God, and we should be a joyful people. Of course there are times we grieve — there are times that we hurt and we ache in this world — that’s expected. But deep down in our spirits there should be this undergirding awareness of joy, because we know the end of the story. Pleasure is a function of the flesh. Happiness is a function of the soul. But joy is much deeper and more permanent — and it is a fruit and a function of our spirit. So we see fire, and we also see happiness and joy.
Now notice that each of these words begins with the same letter. There’s an aleph in ehyeh, an aleph in asher, another aleph in ehyeh. Aleph (א) is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It is a silent letter. It has a numerical value of one. And its name means “ox,” lord, or master — and it is considered to be the lord and master of the alphabet. So it’s only appropriate that in this name that God introduces, each one begins with this letter aleph.
Now you must understand that each of these words — of course ehyeh is repeated — there’s two words here. Ehyeh (אֶהְיֶה) and asher (אֲשֶׁר) are both very common everyday words in the Hebrew. We find the word ehyeh just as it’s spelled here more than 40 times in the Tanakh, and it’s not referring to God’s name — asher just means “that” or “which,” it connects “I am that I am.” And it’s found hundreds of times. So these are very common words.
And then he shortens it all down — he compresses it down into just ehyeh: “I am” — maybe better translated “I will be.” But then he leaves normal language behind, and he has a new word. Which is not just a word — it’s a name. It’s a name that is unpronounceable. We don’t know how it’s pronounced. It’s pronounceable, but we just don’t know how. And anyone who claims that they do is simply mistaken — be patient with them, they’re doing their best — but we don’t know how it’s pronounced.
So we’ve left the physical — we’ve left the world of common language — and now moved into the world of spiritual things. And however you pronounce this name, spelled yud-hey-vav-hey (יהוה), we know this: it is a verb. It’s more than just a name — it is a verb.
To say “I was,” we would say hayah (הָיָה). To say “I will be,” one of the most common ways is yihyeh (יִהְיֶה). And hoveh (הֹוֶה) can mean “is.” But all the ways of saying “was,” “is,” or “will be” can be spelled using either a combination of yud, hey, vav. So this name is a verb. That’s the point I want to drive across.
And here’s the lesson — catch this: we don’t pronounce God’s name with our lips. We pronounce his name with our actions — with our deeds. That’s how we pronounce his name. If we knew how his name was pronounced with our lips, then we could train a parrot to say his name. But we can’t train a parrot to do God’s works. That is something that is up to us to do — with our own free wills, and with his word within us informing us how to live. We can live out his name. We’ll come back to this in a moment.
Because there’s another progression that I want us to see. Three chapters later, in Exodus chapter 6, God is having another conversation with Moses — and once again concerning his name.
In Exodus 6:3, God tells Moses: “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai (אֵל שַׁדַּי), but by my name yud-hey-vav-hey (יהוה) I did not make myself known to them.” — Exodus 6:3
Now this is very interesting, because we know that Abraham used the name yud-hey-vav-hey, and so did Isaac, so did Jacob. In fact, if we go all the way back to Genesis, it appears that Adam himself was aware of this name of God.
In Genesis chapter 3, verses 8 and 9, it says: “And they — Adam and Eve — heard the sound of Adonai YHVH Elohim walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Adonai YHVH Elohim among the trees of the garden. But Adonai Elohim called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’” — Genesis 3:8–9
It would certainly seem — it’s implied from this — that Adam was aware of this name. So what does God mean when he says, “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai (אֵל שַׁדַּי), but by my name yud-hey-vav-hey I did not make myself known to them”? What does that mean?
To understand that, we must again see that God is revealing his name in a progression. He starts with El Shaddai but then we arrive at yud-hey-vav-hey. In chapter 3, he began with Ehyeh asher ehyeh, moved to Ehyeh, and then to yud-hey-vav-hey. Here he begins with El Shaddai and moves to yud-hey-vav-hey.
Now what is this name El Shaddai mean? Well, two things. The word El (אֵל) means “God” — okay, so there’s no controversy there. But Shaddai (שַׁדַּי) has two possibilities.
The first two letters of Shaddai — shin (שׁ) and dalet (ד) — spell the word shad (שַׁד), which is the Hebrew word for a woman’s breast. So an infant child nurses at his mother’s shad. And so some translations and commentators will inform us that El Shaddai can mean “God the Breasted One.”
Now that may seem very odd to us — for God, who is portrayed in the masculine almost all the time, to be thought of in the feminine. But as unusual as it is, it’s not that unusual. There are a number of places where God portrays himself in a feminine role. Because after all, masculinity and femininity both come from him — they’re both his idea. And though he refers to himself in the masculine, as a “he” and not a “she” or an “it,” there are many times when he’ll express something feminine about himself — as if to let us know: “Don’t think of me just as your Father, but everything you see in your mother that you love so much, those attributes also were my idea, and they come from me, because they expressed something about me.”
Didn’t the Master himself, riding into Jerusalem, cry over the city and say, “Oh, God wanted to gather you under his wings as a hen” — feminine — “gathers its chicks”? We see places in the scriptures where a cow — not a bull, but a cow — is a picture of God, a symbol of him. And in the Psalms, in one place, David — I believe it’s Psalm 131 — David is talking about God and says, “I am like a weaned child leaning against my mother,” referring to God as being that mother. So again, I hope you don’t take this to an extreme. God is portrayed in the masculine nine-tenths of the time. But there are these times, as here, that he also takes on the feminine — because he loves us not just as a Father but also as a nursing mother.
Now there’s another thing as well. If we take the last two letters of Shaddai, they spell the word dai (דַּי). Now in Hebrew, dai doesn’t mean “to die” — dai means “enough,” “sufficient.” And at your Passover Seders you may sing that song Dayenu (דַּיֵּנוּ) — “It would have been enough.” And in the Seder we say: if God had freed us from Egypt but not crossed us across the Red Sea, that would have been enough — Dayenu. If he’d brought us across the Red Sea but not fed us with manna, that would have been enough — Dayenu. If he’d fed us with manna but not given us the Torah (תּוֹרָה), that would have been enough — Dayenu. Sufficient. Enough. More than enough. And so this name can also mean that God is the all-sufficient one.
And so the two terms — the sufficient one and the breasted one — really go along with each other. Because to an infant child, all he needs is his mother. She provides his nourishment, his protection — everything he needs. And God as El Shaddai is also the all-sufficient — he takes care of all of our needs.
So what is with these two names? And I have an important insight for you, and I hope you catch this.
For most of us — I would say probably for all of us — we begin our walk with God and our experience with God knowing him only as El Shaddai. And when we pray, we ask for things. In fact, we equate prayer with asking God for things — asking God for finances, for health, for a wife or a husband, for a home, for a repaired relationship. We’re always asking, asking, asking. Because God is the all-sufficient one, and he can give — there’s nothing we need that he cannot provide.
For some people, though, they never grow past knowing God only as El Shaddai. He will always be El Shaddai to us. But he wants to be something more. He wants to be to us — I think Rabbi David Aaron put it best in one of his books — he talks about how God is the be-er and we are the be-ings. It’s like God is the singer but we’re the singing. He’s the dancer but we’re the dancing. He’s the writer but we are the writing. And to sum it all up: he is the be-er — he is the verb — his name is a verb. But we are the be-ings.
Now let’s figure out how this applies to us. I encourage you — in your prayer time, instead of just asking God for things, spend time in prayer praising God, thanking God, rehearsing his attributes. Get yourself a good siddur (סִדּוּר), a prayer book. Because in the prayer book, yes, there are requests, but most of the prayers in a prayer book are praising God — focusing on who he is and what he has done for us, and just resetting our minds on who this great God is.
And as we do that, what we can do is begin to grow up. Of course we’ll always be asking God for things — that will never stop, and he doesn’t expect it to. But we’ll become something more. It will go beyond just asking God to give us something or to do something for us — but a surrendering to where we say, “Father, what can I do for you?” It’s like a little child who always just wants something from its mother, but growing to the point and saying, “Mother, what can I do for you?”
And here’s what we can do for God. There’s nothing we have that he needs. But there’s something he invites us to do. He wants to be known in the world. He wants to bring tikkun (תִּקּוּן) — repair — to the world. He wants to see the needs of the world met. And he especially wants to do that through you and me. And when you and I submit ourselves in humility to him, and when we take in his instruction, his commandments, and we do them in love for God and love for our neighbor, then something amazing happens — God is doing the thing through us. He is the be-er, and we are the be-ing.
This is, after all, what we were created for. Paul tells us we were created for good deeds, good works, in Messiah Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ). And when we are doing the works of God — when he’s doing his work through us — then are we truly bearing his image in the world. Then his image is being truly restored in us. Then the image of Adam is being restored — the fallen image — because instead of rebelling against God and disobeying him, we are now allowing him to operate through us.
So yes, God is El Shaddai (אֵל שַׁדַּי). But let’s continue to grow to where we know him as yud-hey-vav-hey (יהוה).
Now you might ask the question: why is it here, in this early stage of Moses’ ministry of bringing the Israelites out of Egypt, that this is happening? Why is God at this time saying, “I am really making myself known to them as yud-hey-vav-hey? I’m expressing an attribute of myself that I was not known by — by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and others before now”? What is he doing?
Well, as he takes the Israelites out of slavery and death and brings them to Mount Sinai, he’s going to make a covenant with them. And everything that happens there at Mount Sinai is pictured by the Jewish wedding ceremony. His covenant is literally a covenant of marriage — where he’s taking a people as his bride. And when a man and a woman enter into the covenant of marriage, into that intimacy, they become one. And the man expresses himself through the woman. In fact, a man cannot truly express himself unless he is in a relationship of marriage with a woman — because his seed can never come out into the world; this picture of his love for his wife and her love for him, this third person cannot emerge. That is an expression — a three-dimensional, walking, talking picture of their love for one another.
And the woman is an amazing vessel through whom the husband can take what he has, and she will take that and she will prosper it and make it fruitful and impact the world. This is a topic we’ll discuss another time — but it’s a very, very deep and very spiritual topic.
But as the people come to Mount Sinai, they’re entering into this new relationship with God — something Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not know. And then they’re going to receive his commandments. In other words, the mind of God, the will of God, and his desires are going to be given to them, so that they can do his desires. He’ll be the be-er — they can be the be-ings.
And of course we know that didn’t work all that well. There’s a lot of stumbling about — a lot of misunderstandings and ego and selfishness and pride and disobedience — and things went horribly wrong at times. But God still managed to bring his people into the land. And he’s not done yet.
But what was started at Mount Sinai will eventually reach completion. And when it does, as Jeremiah tells us in the 31st chapter of his book:
“No man will tell his neighbor, ‘Know Adonai,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” — Jeremiah 31:34
We’ll all know God as the great be-er, and we will find our fulfillment in being his be-ings and doing his will — allowing him to express his love and his attributes through us.
And that is when life is at its fullest. Life can be very full knowing God is El Shaddai. Ah, but when we begin to know him as yud-hey-vav-hey (יהוה) — and remember that name as a verb — then life really reaches a fullness that is abundant life. That I hope we all experience.
But it is a progression. We have to take steps to get to yud-hey-vav-hey. And we’re all on this journey together as we come to truly know God’s name.
So I hope this teaching is a blessing to you, and I look forward to talking to you next time on the Hebrew Key. So tune in again and check out our other series on Torah Today Ministries — click the link below, subscribe, and we’ll make sure you get all the teachings as they come out. God bless and shalom (שָׁלוֹם).
YHVH / Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey (יהוה) — The Tetragrammaton; the four-letter name of God. Called the “ineffable name,” the “name of transcendence,” and the unpronounceable name. In English Bibles rendered as LORD (all caps). Not merely a noun but a verb — built from the Hebrew root hayah (הָיָה), “to be,” encompassing past (hayah, “was”), present (hoveh, “is”), and future (yihyeh, “will be”). It is the name God revealed to Moses as a progression from Ehyeh and El Shaddai. We do not pronounce it with our lips — we pronounce it with our deeds. — Strong’s H3068 · Sefaria: Exodus 3
Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh (אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה) — “I am who I am” or “I will be what I will be”; the first of three names God gives Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:14). Ehyeh (אֶהְיֶה) alone is found more than 40 times in the Tanakh as an ordinary verb — “I will be.” Here it is the first step in the progression toward the full revelation of the divine name. — Strong’s H1961
El Shaddai (אֵל שַׁדַּי) — “God Almighty”; the name by which God was known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exodus 6:3). Contains two meanings: shad (שַׁד) — “breast,” suggesting God as the all-nurturing one; and dai (דַּי) — “enough, sufficient,” suggesting God as the all-sufficient one. Together: the God who nourishes and provides all we need. The beginning of our experience with God — asking and receiving. — Strong’s H410 · Strong’s H7706
Shin (שׁ) — The 21st letter of the Hebrew alphabet; the letter of fire. Appears uniquely in the middle of Ehyeh asher Ehyeh and nowhere else in the three-stage progression. God is a consuming fire (Deuteronomy 4:24) — from the burning bush to Mount Sinai, from Shavuot to the eyes of Yeshua in Revelation. Fire is God’s holy essence in the physical realm; in the spiritual realm, fire purifies and empowers. — Sefaria: The Letter Shin · Hebrew4Christians: The Letter Shin
Asher (אֲשֶׁר) — “That, which, who”; the connecting word in Ehyeh asher Ehyeh. Also the name of one of the twelve tribes of Israel. When read as a standalone word, asher means “happy, blessed, contented” — as in Ashrei ha’ish (אַשְׁרֵי הָאִישׁ), “Blessed/contented is the man” (Psalm 1:1). Our God is a consuming fire — and also a happy God. Joy is a fruit of his Spirit and therefore an attribute of God himself. — Strong’s H836 · Strong’s H835
Aleph (א) — The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet; a silent letter with the numerical value of one. Its name means “ox,” conveying the idea of lord or master. It is considered the lord and master of the alphabet. All three words in the opening divine name — Ehyeh, asher, Ehyeh — begin with aleph, pointing to the singular lordship of God even in the very structure of his name. — Hebrew4Christians: The Letter Aleph
Adonai (אֲדֹנָי) — “My Lord, my Master”; the title spoken in place of the Tetragrammaton when the four-letter name is encountered in reading. Means “lord” or “master” — cognate with aleph, the “lord” of the alphabet. — Strong’s H136
HaShem (הַשֵּׁם) — “The Name”; another reverential substitute for the Tetragrammaton used in everyday Jewish speech. Literally means “the Name,” acknowledging that the name of God is so holy it cannot be casually spoken. — Strong’s H8034
Tikkun (תִּקּוּן) — “Repair, restoration, fixing”; the concept that God desires to repair the broken world (tikkun olam, תִּקּוּן עוֹלָם) — and that he especially wants to do this through us. When we know God as yud-hey-vav-hey and allow him to act through us, we participate in his repair of the world.
Omer (עֹמֶר) — “Sheaf”; the 49-day counting period between Passover and Shavuot, commanded in Leviticus 23:15–16. Each day of counting is a progression — from slavery and death in Egypt toward the freedom and revelation of Torah at Sinai. This teaching was recorded on day 19 of the Omer counting. — Counting of the Omer
Shavuot (שָׁבוּעוֹת) — “Weeks, Pentecost”; the festival 50 days after Passover celebrating both the giving of the Torah at Sinai and — in the Apostolic Scriptures — the descent of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2). The culmination of the Omer count; the day God made himself known as more than El Shaddai. — Shavuot
Dayenu (דַּיֵּנוּ) — “It would have been enough for us”; the Passover Seder song celebrating each of God’s acts of redemption as independently sufficient. Rooted in dai (דַּי) — “enough, sufficient” — the same root embedded in Shaddai (שַׁדַּי). God is the all-sufficient one who always gives more than enough.
Siddur (סִדּוּר) — “Prayer book”; from the root seder (סֵדֶר), “order.” The Jewish prayer book, which contains not primarily requests but praise and acknowledgment of who God is and what he has done. Recommended in this teaching as a tool for growing from El Shaddai (asking) toward YHVH (being).
Shalom (שָׁלוֹם) — “Peace, wholeness, completeness, well-being.” — Strong’s H7965
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Exodus 3:13-15 – Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: “YHVH, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is My name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.”
אהיה אשר אהיה
Ehyah Asher Ehyah
אהיה (Ehyah)
יהוה (YHVH)
Exodus 6:3 – “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as El Shaddai, but by My name YHVH I did not make Myself known to them.”
אל שדי (El Shaddai)
REFERENCES:
Genesis 3:8-9 – And they heard the sound of Adonai Elohim walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Adonai Elohim among the trees of the garden. But Adonai Elohim called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”
Genesis 17:1 – When Abram was ninety-nine years old Adonai appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am El Shaddai. Walk before Me and be blameless.”
Rashi: “It does not say, ‘I did not inform them’, but rather, ‘I did not become known’. I was not recognized by them in My attribute of making promises come true, for which my Name is called ‘HaShem’ [or ‘Adonai’ – יהוה] – faithful to make My words come true. This is because I had promised to them, but I had not yet fulfilled My promise.”
Psalm 1:1 – Contented [אשרי, ashrei] is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers.
