Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Genesis 2:4 | Date: August 15, 2021 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Today, we’re going to pause a little bit in our studies of Genesis. We’re still in Genesis, but it’s going to be a broader study. In Genesis chapter 2 and verse 4, we begin now the second section of the book of Genesis. You’ll notice that statement at the beginning of verse 4: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.” So that “these are the generations”—that’s the signal that we’ve begun a new section of the book. And you have ten of those through the book of Genesis. We’ve pointed them out before; we’ll talk about them again. But this one now begins a new section of the book of Genesis.

And I want to focus on one expression here in verse 4, and we’ll look at that. “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the,” here’s our expression, “the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.” So this morning, let’s just take time to look at the divine name and what is the significance of it. I suspect that many have been confused about how we refer to God, particularly, I think, from the pulpit when we do this without explanation. We sing sometimes and we’ll sing about Jehovah. In the pulpit, we tend to say Yahweh, and sometimes we say God, and sometimes we say the Lord. And what’s the significance of those words that are so dominant in our teaching, our preaching, our singing? So we’re just going to take some time today. I hope this won’t be too tedious, but I think it’ll be helpful just by way of explanation of the vocabulary we use and then the significance of it with respect to God and who he is.

So, verse 4: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.” Notice the word LORD is in all caps. You have the capital letter at the beginning, then small caps, O-R-D. “The Lord God made the heavens and the earth.” That expression, “the Lord God,” occurs about 37 times in the Old Testament. Twenty of those times are here in Genesis, and it becomes dominant particularly here in this passage. Chapter 2, you see it in verse 4 here. You also see it in verse 5 or 7, verse 8, 9, 15, 16—well, on through the passage up to chapter 3, verse 1, you see it over and again: “the Lord God.”

The Word God

So what are these terms that we use with respect to God? Well, first of all, let’s look at the word “God,” the second word there. This is the Hebrew word that many of you have probably heard: Elohim. It is simply—it’s not a name, it’s a title. It’s the term that is used for the supreme being, whether in Christian or Jewish or any circles; it’s just the word “God” referring to the supreme being. It’s probably Elohim that, when you see that “-im” ending on the end of words that we have in the Old Testament, that’s usually a Hebrew plural. And we have that here with—it’s like putting an “s” on the end of the word. Here it’s on the end of the word El or Eloah, God. Elohim is sometimes translated “gods” when referenced to the false gods of the neighbors of Israel. Sometimes it has other references, the word Elohim.

El or El probably means “strong one” or “strength,” something like that. And so the reference is to the supreme being, the one who’s omnipotent, the one who’s strong over all. And that is the term that’s used throughout Genesis chapter 1. The creator is God. He’s the one—that’s part of what it is to be God. He’s the one that made everything that is. He’s the strong one, the omnipotent one, the supreme ruler, supreme being.

And so you have some compound names of Elohim or that first part, El. You have some compound names that you’ve probably become familiar with in the Old Testament, particularly if you read the King James. The newer translations tend to translate it rather than just give us the transliteration of the Hebrew. But you might have heard terms like El Shaddai, God Almighty. It’s a common expression in the Old Testament. El Elyon, God Most High. El Roi, the God Who Sees. And expressions like that that you’ll see, as I say, particularly in the older translations.

But El, or Elohim, that is the word God. And you see that cropping up commonly in personal names in the Old Testament. Eli—see the “El” in that, Eli? We pronounce it Eli; Eli is probably better for the Hebrew. Eli, “my God.” Simply the “my” on the end, the “i” on the end is “my,” my God, Eli. That’s actually the same expression Jesus used on the cross: “Eli, Eli, why have you forsaken me?” My God, my God. That’s the name Eli. You’ll see it, the “El” in other personal names in the Old Testament as well: Israel—probably means something like “contending with God.” It was given to Jacob when he was wrestling with God. So, “prince with God,” “one who contends with God.” Israel means something like that. Samuel—means probably “the name of God.” Ezekiel—”God strengthens.” So you have the “El” names that come up, and that’s when you see that in the Old Testament personal names, the “El” on the end, that’s God. So it’s “God something,” and you get the meaning when you put the two together.

The Word Lord

All right, so that’s the word “God.” And we have this other one, “Lord,” with all capitals. Now, when you see it in lowercase—capital L, and then lowercase o-r-d—that’s often Adonai or something like that. But when you see it in uppercase here, this is the term that used to be translated Jehovah, or more commonly now, Yahweh. This is the name of God. This is not a title. This is God’s name. His covenant name to Israel. It occurs something like 6,800 times in the Old Testament.

And the word Yahweh is related—there’s a lot of discussion about this. Endless ink has been spilled over this. Just what is the significance of this? I’ll give you the simple version of it this morning, but it is evidently related to the verb “to be.” So Yahweh means “the one who is.” “I am,” “I will be.” This is the “be” verb. So Yahweh is evidently related to the verb “to be.”

By the way, you might have heard the expression, the tetragrammaton. Have you heard that? The four letters, tetragrammaton, four letters. That’s this name, YHWH: Yahweh. Now, it’s four letters, YHWH, without any vowels. Because in the original Hebrew text, there are no vowels, just the consonants. Later on, the Masoretes came along and added vowel points. And so if you ever see the Hebrew text—I should have done this in PowerPoint for you this morning—if you ever see the Hebrew text, you have little markings, dots, or something like that, little small markings or lines underneath the consonants or sometimes above; those are the vowels. And you’ve got the consonants that are stable, that’s the original text, and the Masoretes give us the vowels. So when you read Hebrew, you read from not left to right, but right to left, and a little bit up and down as well, and so you come up with the vowels.

But the Tetragrammaton, this YHWH, is the name for God. So we have expressions like in Exodus 15 in verse 3: “The Lord [that is Yahweh] is a man of war; the Lord is his name.” In Exodus 33, we have something similar: “He said, I will make my goodness pass before you and proclaim before you my name, the Lord [that is Yahweh].”

Now, because we don’t have the original vowels for that, the pronunciation of Yahweh is really somewhat in question. By the way, notice the name Elijah. Remember I said Eli, “my God.” Eli-yah, that’s Yahweh. So “Yahweh is my God.” “The Lord is my God.” Elijah is the name. There it combines both of the names, the title and the name for God. But how to pronounce it is somewhat in question because there are no vowels in the original text. By the intertestamental period, the Jews did not pronounce the name Yahweh, or however it was pronounced. They did that—can anybody guess why they wouldn’t pronounce it? Yeah, afraid to take the Lord’s name in vain. So there’s such a reverence for the name of God that, “Well, if I can’t take it in vain and that’s such a serious matter, I’d be better off just not saying it at all.” And so you have little conventions that have remained through from intertestamental times into the New Testament. You have expressions like “kingdom of heaven” rather than “kingdom of God,” or rather than “Spirit of the Lord,” rather than say that, you have “Holy Spirit,” to avoid pronouncing the name of God and risk taking the name of God in vain.

So what would happen in the—this is all in the intertestamental period—rather than when they would come across in the text where it says YHWH, they would say Adonai, which is Hebrew for “my Lord,” Adonai. And then when it came to putting vowels in the text, what they did is they, because that’s the way they read it out loud, they put in the vowels for Adonai after YHWH. And so how do you work that out? Yehovah, Yehovah, Yahweh—what’s the way to pronounce that? But the original pronunciation then was lost. Now, the word Jehovah, which was much more common years ago, that’s due to various conventions of translating that go back to the Middle Ages and also more immediately to the German translations, where the Y in Hebrew is pronounced like a J, and the W is pronounced like a V, and so “Jehovah” is the way it was pronounced. There is no J in Hebrew. So we’re sure “Jehovah” is pretty clearly wrong. But it has a deep history in the English usage, and so we still use it a lot today.

But we have with Yahweh, the word “Yah” almost certainly is correct. And you see that in some Hebrew words that you have in your English translation. Hallelujah. Yah. Hallelu is just an imperative: “Praise.” “Praise Yah.” “Praise the Lord.” Hallelujah means simply “praise the Lord.” And so we have that part I think that’s almost certainly correct. It should be pronounced Yahweh. And you have some—”Yah” actually becomes the short form of the name Yahweh. And you find that reflected in some personal names like Obadiah, “Servant of the Lord,” Zechariah, “Yahweh remembers” or “Yah remembers.” How the way Yahweh works out is still some question. There have been some historical changes in the spellings, some mix of traditions, but that’s probably correct, I think, to say Yahweh.

Well, all that’s extra. You can have that for free. Translating it then becomes another difficulty, because the Jewish translation rendered, when they would not speak the name Yahweh, but would say the word “my Lord,” Adonai, because they would say “my Lord,” that became the Jewish tradition. And so when the Septuagint came around—that is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, this is before the New Testament times—the Jewish community had been heavily influenced by Greek now. And so we have Jewish translators translating the Hebrew into Greek; rather than just translating Yahweh and whatever its meaning was, they just put Kurios, “Lord.” Lord. So we have a title now instead of a name. And actually that continues when we get to the old Latin, Dominus. It’s just the title following the Septuagint use and the New Testament use. So you have the Jewish community themselves who won’t say Yahweh and so instead say “my Lord.” Then you have the Septuagint translators come along and translate it “Lord.” Then you have the New Testament writers coming along and just following the same tradition saying “Lord” when Yahweh comes. And then you have the Latin translation, which is dominus, “Lord,” just the title of God instead of his name. And then when it comes down to English, it’s still—we do the same thing, only we give it all caps in the Old Testament to give a signal that this is Yahweh, his name.

The Meaning Of God’s Name

All right, oh, that’s kind of tedious. But what’s then the meaning of God’s name? Y-H-W-H. “Lord” is just a title—the one who rules or something like that. But when God says Yahweh is his name, there’s some meaning attached to it. And as I’ve said, it is related to the verb “to be.” So we have the meaning of the name given to us. And let’s look there now at Exodus chapter 3. Exodus chapter 3.

Let me go ahead and read the passage. Exodus 3, beginning with verse 1: “Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of the bush. He looked and beheld the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. Moses said, ‘I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.’ When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses.’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ And he said, ‘Do not come near. Take your sandals off your feet for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.'” And that is because God’s there. “And he said, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. Then the Lord said, ‘I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, and now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppressed them. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.'”

“But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?’ He said, ‘But I will be with you and this shall be the sign for you that I have sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.’ Then Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you” and they ask me, “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?’ God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: I AM has sent me to you.’ 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, the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever. And thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.'”

All right, you’re familiar with the passage. I don’t think I need to back up anymore after reading it. You’re familiar with it. But Moses asks God here to reveal his name. “You want me to lead your people out of Egypt? They’re going to ask me, ‘What’s your name?’ What is it?” And God responds, “I AM WHO I AM. This is my name, the Lord.” You see how that’s linked together? God said, verse 14, God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: I AM has sent me to you.” 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, the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever. And thus I’m to be remembered throughout all generations.”

So notice again the link. You have “I AM,” that’s my name. And “the Lord,” that’s my name. So you can see that the word “Lord,” in all caps here, is related to the “be” verb. “I AM.” “I AM has sent me to you,” that’s my name. That’s my name, the Lord. So they’re linked together. So what’s the significance of that? If God’s name is related to the “be” verb, and it’s “I AM,” what does that indicate about God?

Well, it could indicate his eternality. He is. He is who he is. It could indicate his immutability. He is who he is; he doesn’t change. It indicates his self-sufficiency, self-existence, his aseity that we’ve talked about. God exists from himself. He just is who he is. And he’s not dependent on any other things. And that’s signaled for us in this passage, by the way. I think that’s the significance of the fact that the bush, although it’s burning, is not consumed. God, as it were, doesn’t need other fuel to burn. He just is who he is. And so the bush is not consumed when it burns when he is there. That is, God is, in a sense, self-perpetuating.

And some of the connotations of that are, then, God’s faithfulness, his constancy, his immutability. God is who he is, and that doesn’t change. God is trustworthy then because he is who he is. And that’s indicated in this passage too, where he tells Moses, “You tell them this: I’m the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, that’s who I am.” Well, he’s been around for a long time then. If he’s the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and he’s still the God of Israel, my people—well, this God doesn’t change. He just is. He’s self-existing.

And so we find some places in the Old Testament where that’s referred to, even if not in connection with the divine name itself. But think, for example, of Psalm 90 verses 1 and 2, where Moses writes, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.” Notice the emphasis on the self-existence of God. “You have been our dwelling place in all generations before the mountains were brought forth. Wherever you had formed the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.” And then he goes on to contrast that with humanity, which is like the grass of the field. It grows up, it’s cut down, and the flowers that fade and so on. God is not like that. He’s just the God who is self-existing.

One of my favorite expressions of this is Isaiah 57 verse 15: “Thus says the one who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity. The holy one who inhabits eternity.” Now, if your mind is stumped and can’t really get a grasp on the idea of eternity, because we’re finite creatures—it’s hard enough to understand that God is eternal without beginning, without end. But what this expression is—he inhabits eternity. Exactly what that means, I’m not sure. But it’s at least meaning that God is eternal, he’s self-existing, self-perpetuating, he’s independent of any other consideration. Again, all that we have here in Exodus chapter 3 when God says, “I AM WHO I AM,” but he identifies further, “I’m the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God who always is.”

So “Lord,” then, even with the all capitals, when it comes to English, is still just a title. And so because of all of this, particularly in Exodus chapter 3, Bruce Waltke—who is one of the deans of Old Testament scholarship alive today; I think he’s 91 now—he has argued that we should just, when we come across this name Yahweh, we should just go ahead and translate it: “I AM.” When we give it “Lord,” all we’re giving is a title. There’s no meaning attached. And so he argues every time we see Yahweh, we should just say, “I AM.” That’s how God himself defines it in Exodus chapter 3. He’s the one who is.

Now, how all of that becomes significant here in Genesis chapter 2, or in Exodus chapter 3, I mean, where he’s talking to Moses, revealing the identity of his name and what it means—what that tends to connote then in talking to Moses is God, as the one who is self-existing and independent, God is not dependent on the cooperation of Pharaoh to bring his people out of Egypt. This is the God who is. He doesn’t need anyone else’s help. He’s the eternal, independent, self-existing God.

Turn a couple of pages over. Exodus chapter 6. I’m going to take a verse here that is puzzling to many, puzzling to all of us. You have to think through what does he mean here. Exodus chapter 6, I’m sorry. Exodus 6 and verse 3, where God says again to Moses, “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty [that’s El Shaddai]. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name, the Lord [there’s Yahweh], I did not make myself known to them.”

Now at first reading, that sounds like this word Yahweh was not known at all until now, until Exodus chapter 3. The problem with that is we do find that word Yahweh before Exodus chapter 3. In fact, we find it as early as Genesis chapter 2. You might say that, well, Moses is just using it after the fact, but there are other occasions like Genesis 4 and verse 1, where Eve says, “I’ve gotten a man with the help of Yahweh.” So the word is on Eve’s lips. In Genesis 4 verse 26, at that time—that is the time of Seth and Enosh—people began to call upon the name of Yahweh. So people did know the name Yahweh before Exodus chapter 3. And in fact, we find the name Yahweh on the lips of the patriarchs: Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob.

So what does it mean here in Exodus 6 and verse 3 when it says, “I appeared to them by the name El Shaddai, God Almighty, but by my name, the Lord, I did not appear to them”? Well, some, many actually, have suggested that we just translate it differently. And that is, make it a question: “My name is Yahweh. Did I not make myself known to them?” Well, that is a very legitimate translation and many Old Testament scholars have argued for that translation, but no Bible translations have ever picked that up. And I think it’s because there’s a better, I think a better explanation for it. And that is when he says, “I have not made myself known as the Lord until now,” what he’s saying in its essence is he’s not yet disclosed the significance of his name, Yahweh. So he’s not revealing—he’s not saying in Exodus 6 here that he’s revealing a new name, but he’s making known to them the significance of this name in a fuller way.

And so if you have a New International Version, anybody have that here? Yeah, you’ll see that it’s translated, “I did not make myself fully known to them.” Now that word “fully” is not in the Hebrew text. But what they’re giving is an interpretive rendering of what God means here. So Israel would come to know the meaning of the name as God displays himself now as the covenant-keeping God. So when he says, “I didn’t—they didn’t know this, my name Yahweh before, but now they’re going to know it,” what he means in essence, I think, is that now you’re going to know the significance of it—a recognition formula. And that actually is very common. And that’s why I think this interpretation is winning out. That’s very common in the Old Testament.

Let me give you a few samples. Isaiah 52 and verse 6: “My people shall know my name.” Now this is long after Moses. And Isaiah is saying, “My people will know my name.” Obviously it means you’ll know the significance of his name, what it implies as their covenant God. Jeremiah 16 verse 21: “They shall know my name, that my name—they shall know that my name is the Lord.” The prophets are full of this: “I’ll make my name known.” If you’ve ever read through the prophets, you’ve seen this kind of thing: “You will know that I am the Lord.” “You will know my name, the Lord,” because of the great things that he does. Psalm 9 and verse 10 says, “Those who know your name put their trust in you.” And obviously it does not mean simply they know that he is Yahweh. It means they know the significance of the name.

And I think that’s what’s going on then here in Exodus chapter 6. If you look down to verse 6, we see that: “Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God [Yahweh your God] who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into a land that I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and to Jacob, and I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.'”

So it is God’s actions now that reveal the significance of his name. Again, he’s not revealing a new name, but he’s showing them the significance of it. By the way, it shows up then in the Old Testament, because at this point now it becomes common to find Hebrew personal names ending in “Yah.” God has demonstrated the significance of his name, Yahweh, and Israel now has recognized that, and so you start to see Hebrew names reflecting that, like Yahoshua, Joshua, “the Lord saves.” Isaiah, “Yahweh is salvation,” or “Yah is salvation,” and some others.

All right, we have the word “God,” which is a title. We have “Lord” in all caps. That’s God’s name, Yahweh, which used to be pronounced and often still is, particularly in our hymnody, Jehovah. And that reminds us of God’s covenant relation to Israel and all that it entails in his relationship to them.

All right now, returning to Genesis chapter 2. Here we have the opening of the second section of the book of Genesis. “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.” As Moses writes this, he’s writing to Israel as a new nation. Yahweh has pledged to become their God, make them his people. He will be their king. And the significance here in verse 4 is that he’s linking God, the creator—Genesis 1, all through Genesis 1, “and God said,” “God said,” “God said”—he’s linking God with now the covenant God of Israel, Yahweh. The one who has committed himself to Israel, revealed his name to them in all of its significance—this is one and the same God who created all things.

Now that becomes a massive influence in the Old Testament when it comes to Israel trusting God, obeying God, believing his promises and so on. This is the God who’s revealed the significance of his name. This is the God who created everything that is. This one and the same God has become the God of Israel. And you then can trust him.

By the way, there are some compound names with Yahweh that you find in the Old Testament as well. Yahweh Sabaoth—we find that one, Psalm 46. In some other places, “Lord of hosts,” “Yahweh of hosts.” The hosts are the armies. Often people look at that quickly and they think it says “Lord of Sabbath.” That’s not what it says. Lord Sabaoth. Lord of the hosts. It’s another Hebrew word. So sometimes it’s in our newer translations just translated that way: the Lord of hosts. But there it pictures God as the Lord of the armies. The Lord of the hosts of heaven. Lord of the angels or whatever.

Looking Ahead To The New Testament

All right. Now looking ahead—we just do this quickly—looking ahead to the New Testament, where does all of this point us? Look at John chapter 17. John 17 verse 6: “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me.” Now we often focus on the last part of this verse and its implications for the doctrine of election: “the people whom you gave me.” These are the ones Jesus came to save. But he says there, in characterizing his work now for those people, “I have manifested your name to them.” That is, now in Jesus we have the climactic revelation of the name of God on who he is and what he is like. Look at verse 26: “I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.” “I’ve made known to them your name.” So Christ has come and in doing his saving work, what he has done is revealed the name of God, the significance of all that God is. In fact, Jesus is called Yahoshua, “the Lord saves.”

Now one more verse then quickly, Matthew 28 verse 19, familiar verse. Matthew 28:19. Verse 18: “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them,” here we have it again, “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Here is the fullest revelation of the name of God. We would call him Yahweh in the Old Testament, but Jesus is saying that from here forward, now God is known as Father, Son, and Spirit. God is the triune God, the one God sharing in the one same name. It does not say “baptizing them in the name of the Father and the name of the Son and then the name of the Holy Spirit.” That would be three separate gods. This one name, this one ineffable name is shared by all three. The name singular, but yet it’s shared distributively by the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. All three sharing in all the significance of the name, and yet differentiated according to their persons.

So now we have God revealed as triune. Whatever Yahweh is, is shared equally by Father, Son, and Spirit. And here Christ has made the supreme revelation of the name of God. And now we know him to be God triune who has come in his great significance, his powerful work in saving us.

All right, well, this was a little more tedious than usual. But I thought, well, maybe it’ll be of interest to some to see why we have these expressions both in our Bible and our hymnody and so on. Any questions?