If you’ve ever heard me preach there’s a good chance you’ve heard my “God has a name” rant. I give it a lot. We all have those soap boxes we hop on in a moment of passion. This is the gist of one of mine:
God has a name. His name is not “God.” His name is Yahweh!
Some people ask me how I know with such certainty what God’s name is. I know because I know (a little bit of) Biblical Hebrew. English translations often translate it as “the LORD.” This is because of an attempt to avoid saying the divine name as a sign of respect so that one does not accidentally misuse it. There is a blog post I wrote a while back detailing all of this.
I wanted to clarify one technicality in the Hebrew of this quirk though that I think has deeply important spiritual and theological implications.
technically, in Hebrew, the way the consonants are pointed with verbs, “the LORD” is an incorrect translation. It would actually be better to translate it as “my LORD” (Adoni).
he is not an abstract deity (a LORD). he is not an overly authoritarian helicopter deity (the LORD). he is our personal intimate partner (my LORD).
each of us are invited to take a certain level of personal ownership and acceptance of this deity.
we serve a personal – open and relational – deity.
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