The Names of God
Nobody writes a name in a margin on a day when nothing is happening.
The Bible came to him in a box with the tax files, and he nearly shelved it unopened, because his father had not been a man who talked about such things. The margins had four names in them, in his father's square print, each with a year. El Roi, 1979, which was the year his mother left. Jehovah Jireh, 1986, which was the year the shop closed and the man was eleven and never knew they were behind. Jehovah Shalom, 1994, and he could not think what 1994 was until he remembered it was the year he himself was in the hospital for nine weeks and his father drove up every night after work. The fourth was Jehovah Shammah, and the date was eleven days before the funeral. He sat on the floor of the garage with the box open. He had believed all his life that his father was a man who had never needed anything.
The summit gave a man the name God declared from a bush, a statement of nature and not a label. This chamber holds the rest, and the thing to understand before reading a single one is that almost none of them was handed down as theology. They were given at moments: to a slave woman dying of thirst, to an old man holding a knife on a mountain, to a farmer threshing wheat in a hole to hide it from raiders. When God gives a name, or a man cries one out, it is because something about who God is has just become a matter of life and death to somebody. Each one is a doctrine compressed into a word, and each was a rescue before it was a doctrine, and the margins of a dead man's Bible read exactly that way.
The chamber walks them slowly, in four rooms. The names of power, which God announced. The names cried out in the wilderness, which men and women gave him from the low places. The names of the King. And the name every one of the others converges on. A man will not need every name today. He should learn them anyway, because the day he needs one he will not have time to go looking, and his father did not.
Names of God
"God also said to Moses, 'Say this to the people of Israel: "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 3:15
Read the second half, which the summit did not quote. The name is not only who God is. It is how he is to be remembered, and the remembering is tied to three men by name, each of whom met him at a different moment and would have described him differently that night. A name in Scripture is a memory with a handle on it, something a man can pick up in the dark. This chamber is the shelf those handles are kept on, sorted by what kind of night they were made for.
The Names of Power
Elohim. God, the Creator. The first name in the Bible, the one in its opening sentence. The word is plural in form and Scripture uses it with singular verbs: one God, speaking with a fullness the grammar strains to hold, which is why the three persons do not arrive in the New Testament as a surprise. This is the name of sheer creative power, the one who speaks and things exist.
El Shaddai. God Almighty. The name God used with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, men promised descendants like the stars while holding no children, no land, and no evidence. "I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless." — Genesis 17:1. Abraham was ninety-nine when he heard it. The name of sufficiency for the impossible, given to a man too old for the promise to be anything else.
El Elyon. God Most High. Spoken by Melchizedek, the priest-king of Salem who blessed Abraham after the battle. "Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!" — Genesis 14:19-20. The name that settles rank, above every throne and every rival claim in a world crowded with gods, and the man who said it was not in Abraham's family.
El Olam. The Everlasting God. Abraham called on this name after planting a tree at Beersheba. "Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of the LORD, the Everlasting God." — Genesis 21:33. A tamarisk takes a lifetime to give shade. It is the act of a man building for a timeframe he will not see, under the name of the God who does not run out of time, for men who always do.
The Names Cried Out in the Wilderness
Some names God announced. These, men and women gave him, after an encounter, at the exact point where they had nothing left. These are the names from the low places, and a man who has been to the bottom of the well has been to the lowest of them.
El Roi. The God Who Sees. The first person in Scripture to give God a name was not a patriarch, a priest, or a king. It was Hagar, an Egyptian slave, pregnant, used, and driven out into the wilderness to die unrecorded, and God found her there. "So she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, 'You are a God of seeing,' for she said, 'Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.'" — Genesis 16:13. At the bottom of the well a man learned that evil does its work on the unseen and the unprotected. This name is the answer. No one is unrecorded. Nothing done in the dark is dark to him, and the first person to know it was a foreign woman with no standing at all.
Yahweh Yireh. The LORD Will Provide. Abraham named the mountain this at the moment the knife stopped and the ram stood caught in the thicket. "So Abraham called the name of that place, 'The LORD will provide'; as it is said to this day, 'On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided.'" — Genesis 22:14. The name was born at the near-sacrifice of an innocent son. On another hill, centuries later, the provision it pointed to was made in full, and that time the knife did not stop. A man met the one it was provided for on the summit.
Yahweh Rapha. The LORD Who Heals. Given in the desert at the first bitter water, before any of the law. "I am the LORD, your healer." — Exodus 15:26. The name for the man whose wound is older than his faith.
Yahweh Nissi. The LORD Is My Banner. Moses built an altar and gave it this name after Israel's first battle, against Amalek, a fight won while his hands were held up and not while the army was strongest. "And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The LORD Is My Banner." — Exodus 17:15. A banner is what soldiers look up to in the chaos to find out where they stand and whose they are. The name for the man in a fight that will not be won on his own strength.
Yahweh Shalom. The LORD Is Peace. Gideon named his altar this while he was still a frightened man threshing wheat in a winepress, hiding from the raiders who owned his country. "Then Gideon built an altar there to the LORD and called it, The LORD Is Peace." — Judges 6:24. God had called him a mighty warrior before there was any evidence, and Gideon's first act of war was to build an altar named Peace. The name for the man whose circumstances are still at war while his footing has been settled, which is the name a father wrote in a margin in 1994 while his son was in a hospital bed.
The Names of the King
Adonai. Lord, Master. The name of address, spoken aloud in place of the four letters that observant Jews to this day treat as too holy to pronounce. In most English Bibles the personal name appears as LORD in small capitals; when a man sees it, the name from the bush is underneath. Adonai states the relationship plainly. He is the Master. The reader is not.
Yahweh Sabaoth. The LORD of Hosts. The LORD of armies, the heavenly ones. This is the war name, and it appears most often in the mouths of prophets standing alone against kings. It is the name a shepherd boy threw at a giant. "You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied." — 1 Samuel 17:45. A man learned on the summit that the dark is on a leash and whose hand holds it. This is the name of the one holding it, and of the one commanding the other army.
Yahweh Tsidkenu. The LORD Our Righteousness. Jeremiah's name for a king not yet born, given to a nation whose own kings had failed. "And this is the name by which he will be called: 'The LORD is our righteousness.'" — Jeremiah 23:6. Not a righteousness a man produces. One that is named for him and handed over.
Qedosh Yisrael. The Holy One of Israel. Isaiah's name, used again and again by the prophet who saw the throne room and came apart at the seams. "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!" — Isaiah 6:3. Holiness is the attribute that makes God unlike everything else that exists, set apart, undiluted, unable to be bargained with. The name that forbids a man from shrinking God to a manageable size.
Attiq Yomin. The Ancient of Days. Daniel's vision name: the white-haired Judge enthroned in fire, with ten thousand times ten thousand standing before him, the court seated and the books opened. "As I looked, thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days took his seat; his clothing was white as snow… the court sat in judgment, and the books were opened." — Daniel 7:9-10. Empires rise and strut and fall in that vision like beasts coming up out of the sea, and the throne outlasts all of them. The name for the man tempted to believe the current regime, whatever it is, is permanent.
Yahweh Shammah. The LORD Is There. The last verse of Ezekiel gives the future restored city this name. "And the name of the city from that time on shall be, The LORD Is There." — Ezekiel 48:35. Not was there, not is coming. Is there. The whole story of Scripture bends toward this name, presence as the permanent address, and a man wrote it in a margin eleven days before he died.
The Name Above Every Name
The New Testament does not retire the old names. It gathers them into a person.
Immanuel. God With Us. Yahweh Shammah made flesh: the presence Ezekiel put at the end of the story stepped into the middle of it.
Jesus. Yeshua, YHWH Saves. The name itself is a sentence, and the angel attached the meaning directly. "She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." — Matthew 1:21. The personal name of God and the rescue of God fused into a name a mother called across a courtyard at supper time.
Christ. Mashiach, the Anointed One. Not a surname. A title: the promised King, the one every anointed king of Israel was a rough sketch of, and the one Jeremiah had already named our righteousness.
The Word. The name that reaches back past Bethlehem to before the first sentence of Genesis: the one through whom Elohim spoke everything into being, now speaking in person.
The Lamb of God. The name this whole hall turned on. The innocent one at the bottom of the well, provided on the mountain Abraham named, carrying what he had none of. A man met him on the summit before he came in here.
Son of Man. The title Jesus used for himself more than any other, lifted straight out of Daniel's vision. "And behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom." — Daniel 7:13-14. The crowds heard humility in it. Daniel's readers heard the throne.
Alpha and Omega. the Beginning and the End. "'I am the Alpha and the Omega,' says the Lord God, 'who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.'" — Revelation 1:8. The first and last letters, the name that brackets everything: nothing started before him and nothing outlasts him.
"Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow." — Philippians 2:9-10. Every name in this chamber converges there.
How Men Handle the Names
The man with the vocabulary list. He can say all of them in Hebrew and has never once needed one. He has the handles and has never picked up anything by them, and he will find, on the night he needs one, that knowing a name and calling it are different acts.
The man with one name. He met God once, in one season, and has used that name for everything since, the way a man with one tool uses it on every job. The God who provided is also the one who sees and the one who is there, and the man has been praying to a third of him.
The man who thinks the names are for other men. Patriarchs, prophets, people in deserts. His own life has no mountain and no winepress, only a garage and a box of tax files, and he has not noticed that the names in the margins were written in a town like his.
The man who will not say the war name. He is comfortable with the God who heals and the God who provides and quietly embarrassed by the LORD of hosts. He has edited the chamber, and the name he removed is the one the men at the bottom of the well most needed to hear.
The man who learned the names and skipped the person. He has the whole catalog and has never bowed at the one they converge on. He is standing in a room full of handles, and the door is behind him.
Three Questions in the Chamber
TRUTH: Which name is the one a man is actually living under this year? Not the one he would give in a survey. The one he would write in a margin tonight, with the date, if he were honest about what the year has been. If he cannot answer, the year has been happening to him without a handle.
LOVE: Who near him is in a wilderness with no name for the one who sees them? A wife, a son in a hospital, a man at work whose shop is closing and who has told no one. The names were given to be handed on. A man who has one and keeps it is not protecting it. He is hoarding it.
LAW: If the name is to be remembered throughout all generations, a man who has not passed it to the next one has broken something, and the box in the garage is what it looks like when the chain almost failed. He should notice that the name carries an obligation. The third column of this foundation is where obligations are kept.
Meeting Him by Name
All of this a man can do. Learn the four rooms of the chamber. Match the name to the night. Say the war name out loud. Write the year in the margin. He should. The names are how God meets a man in the place the man is actually standing, and a man stands in most of these places in one lifetime.
And he should notice something about the two names that came from outside, because the chamber did not expect them. The first person in Scripture to name God was Hagar, an Egyptian with no covenant and no standing, and the first man to bless Abraham in God's name was Melchizedek, a Canaanite king who was not in the family and had never been told. Neither had been taught. Both had it right. The names did not stay inside the fence, and the one who gave them to a slave woman and a foreign king is the one who sees the man on the garage floor, who never once in his life said any of them and whose father, it turns out, said all four. That is as far as this chamber will say it. The man came in here already knowing whom the names belong to.
Where the Chamber Lets Out
This chamber is a room off the summit, and the summit is behind a man now. Everything he saw up there came in here with him: every attribute on that page has a name in this room, given on the day somebody found out it was true. He leaves the hall from here, by the same door the summit uses, and he carries the names with him.
He should carry one more thing. Hagar had no Scripture and Melchizedek had no covenant, and both of them had the name right before anyone from inside the fence could have told them. That is not an accident of this chamber. It is the subject of the next hall, where a man finds out how much of what he learned at the summit was already known in places that never heard it, by people who were never told.