If I want a superior coffee experience, I
have only to walk to the corner, or drive to my friend Rod’s house. If I want
to know what’s happening across the world, five minutes with CNN will
probably do it. If I want to feign expert knowledge of virtually any subject, half
an hour of Googling enables me to pass myself off as conversant with all but
the genuinely knowledgeable.
God doesn’t operate that way. It’s a bit
vexing at times, I must admit.
“God spoke to Moses and said to him, ‘I am the Lord [YHWH]. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty [El Shaddai], but by my name the Lord [YHWH] I did not make myself known to them.’ ”
And of course my first question is, “Why
not?” Why didn’t God make his personal name known to the patriarchs? I mean, what
was so special about Moses?
El Shaddai
In Hebrew, El Shaddai is a compound name, generally translated into English in
our Bibles as “God Almighty”. El means “god” in the generic sense.
Shaddai is … something else. Scholars argue about whether the word derives from the Akkadian shadu (“mountain”) or the Hebrew shad (“breast”); and thus whether it is primarily a name that
denotes kingship and sovereignty or one that implies blessing and fertility. I
suspect it may be the latter, since Jacob on his deathbed engages in a little bit of wordplay
involving “The Almighty” and “blessings of the breasts and of the womb”.
Either way it is not a debate I am equipped
to resolve, but that should hardly matter: it was primarily for the patriarchs
that God revealed himself as El Shaddai,
not for you and me. I bet each of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had a very solid
idea what the name denoted, and it told them enough about God to get the job
done in their day. I also note that this particular iteration of God’s name
gets left behind in the patriarchal period pretty quickly: 42 of its 48 occurrences
in scripture are during that period, and it appears most frequently in the book
of Job.
It is by this name that Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob knew God, though he appeared to them on numerous occasions. They never
knew God as Jehovah.
That hardly seems fair, but what do I know.
The Big Reveal
The one that got the big reveal was …
Moses. The guy who grew up Egyptian rather than Hebrew, but identified with his
blood relatives anyway. The guy who killed an Egyptian and went on the run for
40 years, tended sheep in the wilderness, married the daughter of a Midianite
priest, neglected to circumcise his son and nearly died because of it, and
balked at pretty much everything God asked him to do.
Oh, I know he turned out alright in the end,
but it hardly seems fair. Abraham went up a mountain prepared to sacrifice his
son, but nobody told him God’s name. Jacob wrestled with God all night without
hearing a single “I am Jehovah”. Isaac? Well, I’m sure he did something
important apart from blessing the wrong son by mistake and being manipulated by
his wife.
But at the time God told Moses his name, Moses had not done a whole lot to merit it. Even his signal act of faith (striking down the Egyptian and leaving home for Midian) involved what most people (including his own) would call an act of murder. And Moses just kept telling God, “Please
send someone else” and “How will Pharaoh listen to me?”
What’s the deal?
Jehovah
Jehovah is the common English translation
of a name of immense significance to the Jew. The Hebrew equivalent is YHWH,
and because ancient Hebrew was written without vowels, nobody knows how it ought to be
pronounced. Some devout Jews will not say it or even write it in full (my Jewish
friend R’B can’t even write the English words “God” or “Lord” without hyphens
for vowels). YHWH occurs in the Hebrew scriptures nearly 7,000 times. It
is by far the most common way by which God has revealed himself prior to the
coming of Jesus Christ, and by which he has been known in the world.
Its meaning appears to be “the unchanging, eternal,
self-existent God”, the “I am that I am”. There are monumental, life-changing truths to be unpacked from this revelation,
but it’s not our subject today.
The patriarchs knew nothing of this name
despite all their dealings with God. About this name, God tells Moses, “This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations”. Up until the coming of Christ, if you needed a one sentence descriptor for the Most Powerful Being in the universe, this was the ticket.
It’s the big one. And Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob didn’t know it.
Why Not?
It is in our nature to wonder why, and it
starts early. Why did my brother get the red shirt and I got the brown one? Why
did my sister get all the looks in the family? Why did I have to work to put
myself through college while most kids get a free ride? Why do I suffer from
depression and OCD when my best friend is laid-back and entirely comfortable in
her own skin? Why are the poor starving in Africa and bloated in inner-city America?
Why didn’t I get the red shirt? And why did
Moses get the revelation of God’s name?
I suspect it has less to do with Moses
personally than we might think, and it’s probably not a slight to Abraham,
Isaac or Jacob either — anymore than being 5'2" is a slight and being
6'3" is a blessing. I think it just wasn’t time yet. God’s people had to
come to a place in their history when they were ready to hear God’s
personal name. And God knew exactly the right time for that. He
always does.
Romans tells us, “At the right time Christ died for the ungodly”. Galatians says, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son”.
Not a moment earlier. Not a moment later.
At just the right time. There are factors in God’s calculations that have
nothing to do with you and me.
I noted Jo Nesbo’s complaint about this
feature of God’s self-revelation in yesterday’s post. He sees Christianity as implausible because of it: Why would God wait so long and apparently bypass so many people
to send his Son when he did?
The answer is probably somewhere in the name
Jehovah, I suspect. By definition, one who is self-existent cannot be said to
owe his creatures explanations. Sometimes he graciously gives them, but he
certainly doesn’t have to.
Quite often we wouldn’t grasp them if he
did. Most often, I think.
Sometimes these revelations await our own maturity.
No comments :
Post a Comment