Opus 2025-136: Password or Trap?

I was reading a very familiar passage this morning about God calling Moses to go and set His people free.  You may be familiar with it,

Exodus 3:13 (KJV) And Moses said unto God, Behold, [when] I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What [is] his name? what shall I say unto them?

I found myself wondering what kind of questions are these, first, the question that Moses asked, and second, the question that the children of Israel would ask.

The questions centered around the name of God, which will be revealed was Yahweh.  Moses has been raised in his early years by his real mother in a Jewish community.  Did he really not know the name of God?  Which brings up the second question, I guess, of did the Hebrew children know the name of God?

The actual name of God is always been a mystery.  The Jews considered it so holy that they refused to pronounce it.  All we have are the consonants and by filling in the gaps we can come up with a couple of possibilities for pronunciation.  The early attempt was by taking the vowels from Adonai and fitting them between the consonants, and that’s coming up with Jehovah.  For some reason, modern scholars have changed their mind and come up with Yahweh.

But that doesn’t answer the question.  Did the children of Israel know the answer and were just checking to see if Moses had the password?  Were they totally ignorant and genuinely curious to know what the name of their God was?  That seems a little strange, but I guess it is possible.  Of course, that brings up the question of why they would believe Moses anyway.

Either way, both God and Moses considered it an important point.  Names were important in those days because names spoke to you about who the person was.  They didn’t just sit down like modern parents seem to do and try to come up with some strange combination that was fun for them and embarrassing for the child.  They sought a name that meant something.

Jesus means Savior, Emmanuel means “God with us” and Yahweh means “I am”.

I was named after my two grandfathers.  For my children, we chose Bible names deliberately.  Do you know what your name means?  Are you living up to it?

It is never too late to begin unless your name means “Immature one year old”.

homo unius libri