The Name
Let them know that your name is Lord, you alone are the Most High over all the earth. Psalm 83:19 New American Bible Revised Edition
Your name is Lord – Let’s start this Gregorian calendar year with the right name. For most of our lives we’ve followed the Jewish convention of using “Lord” for the Hebrew consonants Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey. Our English Bibles translate this sacred name in ways that the authors of the text would never have imagined. Pick nearly any psalm that mentions God and you will find His personal name, not a circumlocution. Read Moses’ interactions with the God of Israel and you’ll find the same thing. Men addressed God with His name, not His title, because in their world all the gods had names. Simply mouthing “god” or “lord” didn’t identify which one. Of course, in the Western post-Christian world, believing that there is only one supreme being means we can technically get away with saying “God” since there are no competitors. But that was not the case in ancient Mesopotamia, or Egypt, or Canaan. David couldn’t make it any clearer than he does in this psalm. Why? Because there isn’t even a verb in his choice of designation.
In Hebrew the translated phrase “your name is Lord” is really ki-attah simka YHVH lebaddekah, something like “that Your name YHVH alone.” Here it is in the text:
וְיֵדְעוּ כִּי-אַתָּה שִׁמְךָ יְהוָה לְבַדֶּךָ
עֶלְיוֹן עַל-כָּל-הָאָרֶץ
You can see why the translators “correct” the grammar, but doing so misses a vital point. It isn’t that God has the name “Lord” or even that God has the name “YHVH.” It is rather that the name YHVH is God alone, the only God. Following the Hebraic assumption that names have ontological significance, His name, His proper personal name, is the manifestation of the one supreme being.
In Western languages, names are rather arbitrarily assigned. Think about your name. How did you get it? Was it family tradition? Did it come about by a family vote? Off a list? Does your name really speak about the real you, the essential who you are? Probably not. My legal name, the name given me by my parents is Arthur. It came from my grandfather. But now almost no one calls me by that name and wouldn’t recognize that name as a description of me. In fact, I don’t even think of myself with that name. It sounds odd to me. I am another name, “Skip.” And “Skip” doesn’t have any real linguistic history, like “Bill” does for William. Even more importantly, our names aren’t really connected to who we are or who we will become. Not so with YHVH. His name is who He is. It says everything we need to know about Him—if we only knew what it means. That’s David’s point. No verb necessary. The name is the action, the character of being God. Maybe we need to be more like the ancients of the tenth century B.C.E. instead of the rabbis who stopped saying God’s name. Maybe we need to be more like Abraham, Moses, and David and start speaking with YHVH by His real name.
Topical Index: name, YHVH, Lord, Psalm 83:19
