Jehovah

Jehovah—The Self Existent God of the Covenant

Ex 3:13-15
Ex 6:1-8

1. Some Basic Facts About The Word “Jehovah”

a. The Name itself

(1) The Tetragrammaton (a word with four letters)

(2) The letters do not exactly correspond in English, hence the confusion over pronunciation, etc.

(3) The Vowel points were added to the original text, so no one knows for sure how to pronounce the word.

(4) JHVH, YHWH, etc.

b. The meaning—

(1) from our texts, the self-existent One—“…14 And God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And He said, "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'"
(2) Covenant Name of the God of Israel—“…"I have also established My covenant with them…”

c. Occurrences:

(1) Including the compound Names, Jehovah occurs over 6500 times in the OT

(2) The commonly-known Jehovah compounds

Name Translation
Jehovah Elohim LORD God
Adonai Jehovah Lord GOD
Jah Jah—I AM
Jehovah Hossenu The LORD our Maker
Jehovah Jireh The LORD our Provider
Jehovah Shammah The LORD who is there
Jehovah Rapha The LORD Heals me
Jehovah Nissi The LORD our Banner
Jehovah M’Kaddesh The LORD who Sanctifies
Jehovah Shalom The LORD of Peace
Jehovah Tsabaoth The LORD of Hosts
Jehovah Ra’ah The LORD is My Shepherd
Jehovah Tsidkenu The LORD my Righteousness
Jehovah Malak The LORD Who Reigns


d. As we talked about last time, Adonai was often used by the Jews as a verbal substitute for Jehovah when reading the Bible out loud.

(1) A devout Hebrew would never say the Name YHWH (Jehovah), so when they were reading the Bible out loud, they always substituted “Adonai” for The NAME.

(2) In reliable English translations, the following rules apply for these various root names.

(a) LORD, or GOD, all capital letters, is Jehovah.

(b) Lord, only one capital letter—another name for God—Adonai
(c) “ lord,” with no capital letters, is adonai applied to a human master

(d) Lord GOD is Adonai Jehovah

(e) LORD God is Jehovah Elohim

(f) And the special names are variously translated, depending on the rules of each translation or version.

2. The Unknown Name?—

a. A puzzle on the surface—

(1) (Exo 3:13) "Then Moses said to God, "Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they say to me, 'What is His name?' what shall I say to them?"
(2) Ex 6:2-3—“… And God spoke to Moses and said to him: "I am the LORD. 3 "I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name LORD I was not known to them…”.

b. Did the people of God not know the name YHWH before this passage? Theologians are mixed on this point.

(1) Adam and Eve knew God by YHWH—(Gen 4:1) "Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, "I have acquired a man from the LORD.""

(2) Cain and Abel Knew His Name—(Gen 4:3-4) "And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the LORD. 4 Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the LORD respected Abel and his offering,"

(3) There was a revival of the worship of YHWH in the days of Enosh, son of Seth—(Gen 4:26) "And as for Seth, to him also a son was born; and he named him Enosh. Then men began to call on the name of the LORD."

(4) Noah’s Father Knew—(Gen 5:29) "And he called his name Noah, saying, "This one will comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD has cursed.""

(5) Noah knew—(Gen 8:20-21) "Then Noah built an altar to the LORD

(6) Abram Knew from early on in his relationship with God—(Gen 12:7-8) "Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your descendants I will give this land." And there he built an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. 8 And he moved from there to the mountain east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; there he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD."

(7) And so on, with Issac, Jacob, the sons of Jacob and with Joseph—but something had either been lost during the captivity or never established.

c. There are two possibilities here

(1) Possibility #1—The true Name of the True God had been lost by the time of Moses, the children of Israel had forgotten YHWH’s Name

(2) Possibility #2—the Hebrews had some knowledge of Jehovah, but He had not been revealed to them as their covenant God until Moses’ day. MacArthur says that they knew His Name, but did not know Him nor His attributes.


3. Obeying the GOD of the Name: Moses’ obstacles

a. The greatest obstacle in the way of Moses was not the Egyptian army, or its chariot corps, nor its magicians. All of these were helpless before the might of God

b. However, there were a set of enemies which caused more trouble than anyone else, and that would be the very people Moses was there to deliver.

c. Consider

(1) The Hebrews did not “get” the rescue thing—

(2) The person who turned him in to the Egyptians forty years earlier was a Hebrew.

(3) From the time Moses and Aaron came to deliver them, and throughout the wilderness, Moses struggled with this “stiff-necked” and rebellious people called Hebrews.

(4) The real truth about the Hebrews was that they did not want any government unless it was going to provide for them and require nothing out of them

(5) The first meeting with Pharaoh only got them more work, so they murmured against Moses and Aaron—and so it went on, for the whole history of the Jewish people through the first Passover, through the wilderness, led by Joshua, the Judges, and the Kings—

(6) To burn Egypt and the worship of idols out of Israel’s heart took roughly a thousand years, until they returned from Persia under Ezra and Nehemiah

(7) And here we can see how deeply the 430 years in captivity had damaged the faith of God’s elect people—surely we need to consider from this the effects on professing Christians of exposure to pagan rites, rituals and (most vitally) immoral acts and lifestyles.

(8) They had forgotten His Name, or had only a surface knowledge of that Name.

4. The Revealed Name

a. God always reveals Himself—it is not that we “discover” about God, but He freely reveals Himself

(1) Through Nature—Ps 19:1-6

(2) Through Conscience—Rom 2:15-16

(3) Through Providence—Is 46:8-11

(4) Through His Word—Ps 19:7-12

b. He revealed Himself to Moses as the Self-Existent One—"I AM WHO I AM [or THAT I AM

(1) I AM as a Name of God is seldom used, but the nature of God as self-revealing is a major theme of the Bible

(2) Here, God reveals the most basic of attributes of Deity—He is UnCaused, Self Revealed, God Unto Himself.

(3) Self Existence and Self-Revelation are attributes that are Trinitarian, because God reveals each of His Persons many times in the Bible

(a) Father—John 17:1-3

(b) Son (John 8:58) "Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.""

(c) Spirit—Jn 14:16, 26

(d) The IAMs of Jesus—several in John’s Gospel

c. The Link to the Fathers—

(1) “…15 Moreover God said to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: 'The LORD 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 this is My memorial to all generations.'"

(2) Ex 6:4 "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…”



(3) The God of their ancestors

(4) Now the children of Israel know who they are and who their God is.

(5) He is, as Jesus said—the God of the living—and these men live on with the Lord.

(6) This is the Abrahamic Covenant alluded to, with its promise of land, among other things.

(7) This is different from the Mosaic Covenant, which will be cut later, and which is a temporary covenant of Law.

d. The promised deliverance, based on the Covenant with Abraham—

(1) They had been doing some serious praying—5 "And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel…”

(2) Their predicament was obvious and serious—the world’s first and at that time, only superpower had enslaved and were oppressing God’s people—“…whom the Egyptians keep in bondage…”

(3) But God does not rescue them because of their cries, nor because of their need—He delivers them because of His Covenant wit Abraham—“… and I have remembered My covenant…”

(4) God reveals to Moses exactly what He will do

(a) First, another reminder of Who He Is— “…'I am the LORD…”

(b) What He Will Do—

(i) “…I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians…”

(ii) “…, I will rescue you from their bondage

(iii) “... and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments….”

(iv) “… 7 'I will take you as My people…”

(v) “… and I will be your God….”

(vi) His reason—that they would really know Him as He is to be known. “…Then you shall know that I am the LORD your God who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians…”

(vii) And He Won’t Stop There!—“…8 '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…”

(viii) How and Why can they have faith that this will take place? –“…I am the LORD.'""