Archived Daily Manna | Rejoice Fellowship | A mission to release people to rejoice in the world.

Friday, June 12, 2026

Today's Passage : Today's Passage :The Name of God

Bible Verse: Exodus 6:1-9

"Then the Lord said to Moses, “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh. For with a strong hand he will let them go, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land.” And God spoke to Moses and said to him: “I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name Jehovah I was not known to them. I have also established My covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, in which they were strangers. And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel whom the Egyptians keep in bondage, and I have remembered My covenant. Therefore say to the children of Israel: ‘I am the Lord; I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, I will rescue you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. I will take you as My people, and I will be your God. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and I will give it to you as a heritage: I am the Lord.’” So Moses spoke thus to the children of Israel; but they did not heed Moses, because of anguish of spirit and cruel bondage. "

Message: God does not have a name, in the normal human sense. But when He manifests Himself to us, He sometimes gives us a name by which we may call Him. God knows our limitations. He knows we cannot know Him as He is and our minds cannot grasp Him as He is. He must adopt some kind of form to communicate with us, a “face” or “incarnation”, and He will sometimes give us a name by which we can call the incarnation. I AM from Exodus 3:14 “I AM” (Exodus 3:14) In today’s Scripture, God makes it clear that although He is the God of Abraham, the face He presents to Moses and the Hebrews is different from that shown to Abraham. Abraham was a righteous man and God came to him in the form of a man, sitting down at his table and sometimes engaging him in conversation like a friend. But the incarnation of God seen by Moses and the Hebrews is quite different. First, where Abraham was proven faithful and righteous, even to the point of sacrificing Isaac, Moses and the Hebrews are not. God is angry with them, for their idolatry and lack of concern. This said, the “God of Abraham” intended to form a covenant with him, to make promises to him, to show him love. He did destroy Sodom and Gomorrah quite terribly, but this was not the face that Abraham saw. (And, in fact, the only one of his family who saw it was turned into a pillar of salt.) In Exodus, though, God manifests Himself very differently, for although His ultimate purpose is to save the Hebrews, they are a sinful and idolatrous people who must learn to respect and worship Him. He will also, ultimately, lead them into a period of tremendous violence. And so, He uses a different name from the name by which Abraham knew Him. Still, the Hebrews, who are still weak in faith, cannot fully appreciate the nature of Jehovah/Yahweh, for they are completely immersed in the difficulties of their day-to-day life. God will save them, but He will require severe atonement from them for their lack of faith. There are insurmountable textual difficulties concerning the “name of God” in Exodus. If this interests you at all, keep reading. If not, you can stop here. Problems in Discussing the “Name of God” The first problem, of course, is one of humility. We might say God does not “have a name” in our way of understanding, but when He tells us “My name is . . .”, or something similar, we bow our heads and accept His words in obedience. That said, God’s “name” meant something different to the Hebrews than it does to us. To the ancient Hebrews, a word representing the name of God was a source of power and fear. So they guarded and hid the name(s) of God. There were names they would not write or even say out loud, which makes reading Genesis and Exodus a bit difficult sometimes. We don’t know what the names mean; we don’t know how they are pronounced; and in at least some cases, they were written down wrong! This could be accidental, given the very ancient nature of the books, but the problem could just as easily be that Jewish mystics did not want to put a secret name of God in writing. God calls Himself by two notable names in Exodus, and both of them present considerable difficulty. The name given by God in the burning bush is translated by the King James Version as “I AM” and “I AM WHAT I AM.” (Exodus 3:14) We must realize, however, that this is an educated guess; scholars have been arguing about it for at least 2300 years, because nobody actually knows what the ancient Hebrew words mean. Most likely, the name connotes a Being who was not created by something else, or alternatively, a Being who will never cease to exist. The good news is that we need not get tripped up by the words. We know that the God we worship existed before the creation of the universe and will continue to exist after it ends. He was not created by something or someone else. He will not die. The meaning of the name translated as “I AM” lies somewhere in this general concept, which is sufficient to give us the significant meaning of the passage. Much more common is the name used in the passage today. The four consonants “YHWH” (generally translated as “Jehovah” in early English Bibles and “Yahweh” by modern scholars) are the most common actual name of God in the Old Testament, but it is fraught with problems for modern readers. First, as with “I AM”, nobody is really positive what it means. It actually could mean “He who is,” and thus be very similar to the first name, but it could also mean “He who created” or “He who gives life”; and there have also been a number of less likely meanings suggested. Secondly, nobody knows how YHWH is pronounced, because Jews stopped saying it out loud almost 2000 years ago and the original Hebrew writing omitted the vowels. But the biggest problem is that it is, at least in some places, not even spelled correctly! Today’s Scripture tells us that “by My name Jehovah (YHWH) I was not known to them” — “them” being Abraham and the patriarchs of Genesis. However, God is frequently called Jehovah (YHWH) in Genesis and was worshiped by that name. E.g., an accurate translation of Genesis 13:4 reads “Unto the place of the altar which he made there at the first, and there Abram preaches in the name of Jehovah.” Nevertheless, we understand the meaning of the passage perfectly clearly in our spirit. God has spoken a new name to Moses, a name previously unknown, because He has manifested Himself in a new relationship with the Hebrews. The manifestation of God when He spoke to Abraham was a God who made a promise; the manifestation of God who appears to Moses is God putting the promise into violent action.