What’s
in a name?What’s
in a name?
First published in:
Creation 23(4):39-41 September-November 2001
The terms for God in Genesis 1 and 2: no contradiction!
In Biblical times a person’s
name had deep significance and was often an expression of his or her origin,
character or destiny.1
There are many terms for God in the Bible, all having special meaning or
significance. Even the first book, Genesis, uses different terms, for very good
reasons, as we shall see.
In
Genesis chapter 1,
Moses2
uses Elohim for God. This is the plural of El, which corresponds
to God in English, theos in Greek and deus in Latin. El
means ‘the strong one’, and stresses the awesome omnipotence and power of the
God who is Creator and Ruler over all of nature and the universe.
This Hebrew plural, Elohim,
actually means ‘more than two’; however it does not mean ‘In the beginning
gods created …’, because it is used here (and over 2,000 times in the rest
of the Old Testament) in the singular, i.e. with a singular verb (or adjective).
Nor is it simply a plural of majesty, like the ‘royal we’, even though the
meaning includes that God is the Supreme Ruler over all.3
Rather the use of Elohim tells us that there is something plural about
God Himself. (See
Does
the Trinity feature in Genesis 1?)
Elohim
is a lofty title and is thus the appropriate
term for Moses to have used for the account of God’s creation of the whole
universe and of all living things including people. God’s power is seen much
more clearly in His having created the vast contents of space, as well as the
astounding complexities of life on Earth, in the short timespan of six days,
than it would have been if He had used some long, drawn-out process. Similarly
for His goodness, which would be undermined if God had sanctioned death before
sin, or even created via death. Death is the ‘last enemy’ (1
Corinthians 15:26) and the essence of evolution’s long ages.
We bow in reverence and holy
awe at what Elohim has done.
In
Genesis 2, from
verse 4 on, Moses adds the Hebrew term Yahweh. Yahweh is often
transliterated as ‘Jehovah’ and is usually spelled Lord in large and small
capitals.4
Yahweh
is the truly personal name of the living God.5
It was revealed to Moses in the incident of the burning bush (Exodus
3:13–15). It means ‘I am who I am’ and thus ‘the self-existent One’. It
tells us that Elohim has permanent existence, and announces the
faithfulness and unchangeableness of the One who is always true to His Word, and
is the same yesterday, today and forever.6
It is the name that the God
of compassion, grace and mercy uses in His covenantal relationship with His
chosen people as their protector and the object of their worship, as well as in
His personal relationship with people, particularly believers; but also with
opponents, such as Pharaoh, as their judge (Exodus
7:16 ff.).
Why did Moses use this
different term for God in Genesis 2? Does it mean there are two different (and
contradictory) accounts of Creation in Genesis 1 and 2?
Answer:
In Genesis 2, Moses describes God’s very intimate and personal relationship with
the first human pair, Adam and Eve. This requires the use of God’s name,
Yahweh. Yahweh is joined with Elohim every time it is used in
Genesis 2, as Yahweh Elohim, and is translated ‘the Lord God’. It tells
us that Elohim, the Supreme Creator, is Yahweh, the One ‘who is
intimately concerned to maintain a personal relationship with those who will
walk and talk with him’.7
Having given us the fact
of the creation of man, on Day 6, as the last of a series of events in
chapter 1, Moses now gives us some details in chapter 2.
In
Genesis 2:4–14
the focus is on the man and the Garden of Eden, where he was to live. Verse 7
describes how God made Adam from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life. Verses 8–14 tell us what Eden was like, with its
various kinds of trees sustained by the river that flowed there. Then
verses 15–17
record Yahweh’s personal interaction and conversation with Adam,
giving him the responsibility of caring for the garden, and telling him that he
was free to eat from any tree there except the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and
Evil.
Next,
Genesis
2:18–20 tells us there was no suitable mate for Adam among the animals that
God had created and Adam had named.
Genesis
2:21–24 records Yahweh’s further personal care for Adam, providing
him with a wife, fashioned from a part of him nearest to his heart, and
instituting marriage.
Critics who try to make
Genesis 2 a second and contradictory version of chapter 1 fail to take into
account what Moses plainly wished to convey.8
The omission of any mention of the sun, moon, stars, ocean or seas in chapter 2
plainly shows that Moses did not mean to write a second Creation account.
Some have found fault with
Genesis 2:19
because it mentions the field animals before the birds and this is a different
order from their creation in Genesis 1. However, again this is not meant to be
an account of their creation. The ‘beasts of the earth’ are not mentioned, and
the use of the pluperfect tense ‘had formed’ in
Genesis 2:8
and 19 in
some Bible translations (which the Hebrew allows) effectively answers the
criticism that the order of events in Genesis 2 is different from that in
Genesis 1. The most probable explanation is that v.19 gives the order in which
God brought the animals to Adam for naming.
Other critics say that the
words Elohim and Yahweh indicate two different authors, (P) and
(J), who lived well after Moses’ time. This is part of the documentary or
JEDP
hypothesis which postulates that the Pentateuch was written by several
different anonymous authors who lived up to 900 years after Moses. A prominent
exponent was Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918), who said that the concept of ‘one
God’ was not revealed to Moses but evolved from polytheism, animism, ancestor
worship, etc. Hence the need to find or fabricate later authors than Moses.9
However, this view is
completely false. History, both Hebrew and secular, knows nothing of these
alleged authors—neither their names nor any other works by them. The
‘scholarship’ used to promote the idea would be laughed out of court if applied
to any other ancient book.10
We can trust the Word of
Yahweh, the Creator God who always was, now is, and ever shall be. The
Biblical worldview in Genesis gives us the true history of the beginning—of the
universe, of the Earth, and of mankind.
1.
E.g. Adam sounds
like, and may be related to, the Hebrew for ground, adamah; Jesus is the
Greek form of Joshua which means the Lord saves (Matthew
1:22). A change in a person’s character or status could warrant a change of
name, e.g. Abram = exalted father became Abraham = father of many
(Genesis 17:5).
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2.
Moses, under divine
inspiration, was the author/editor of Genesis. See Grigg, R.,
Did Moses really write
Genesis? Creation 20(4):43–46, 1998.
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3.
Linguist Dr Charles
Taylor says, ‘Nobody is in a position to show that in Moses’ day or earlier,
people were in the habit of addressing kings and princes in the plural. In fact,
there is no evidence at all from the Bible itself, and the Bible is one of the
oldest books.’ Taylor, C., The First Hundred Words, (above) The Good Book
Co., Gosford, Australia, p. 3, 1996.
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4.
The name had four
Hebrew letters, which are the equivalent of YHWH or JHVH. The Hebrew alphabet
has no vowels. ‘Points’ are used to indicate the pronunciation. While the likely
pronunciation was Yahweh or Yahveh, Jews eventually regarded this
name as being too sacred to pronounce. They inserted the vowel points for
Adonai to tell readers to substitute this word. The English word ‘Jehovah’
is the result of a misunderstanding of this history.
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5.
The many other terms,
e.g. God the Father, Rock, King, Holy One, El Elyon (= the Most High
God), Adonai (= Lord and Master), etc., are titles or descriptive
expressions rather than names.
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6.
Cf.
Hebrews 13:8,
where this description of divinity is also given to the Lord Jesus Christ.
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7.
Kaiser, W.C., Davids,
P.H., Bruce, F. and Brauch, M.T., Hard Sayings of the Bible, InterVarsity
Press, Illinois, p. 88, 1996.
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8.
The key to
understanding the correct meaning of any passage in the Bible is to ask, ‘What
was the intention of the author?’
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9.
Sadly, many Bible
colleges and seminaries today approvingly teach this spurious doctrine, which
postulates that the whole of the Old Testament is a gigantic literary fraud, and
calls into question both the integrity of Moses and the divinity of the Lord
Jesus Christ, who frequently spoke of Moses’ writings or ‘the Law of Moses’,
e.g. Luke 24:27,
44;
John 5:45–47;
7:19.
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10.
For further
refutation, see ref. 2.
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Names were an important
subject in ancient times. The Egyptians considered a name to hold special
spiritual significance. Out of respect for their gods they often incorporated a
god’s name within their own, such as Tutankhamen (living image of Amen).
Specifically masculine or
feminine endings were often customary in personalizing the name of a child, but
royal names had no denotion of male or female. Sometimes a nickname like ‘Red’
might be applied to someone with auburn hair, just as today. The name
Amenhotep was commonly abbreviated to Ameny.
Hebrew names carried great
importance also, for example Jesus (Joshua in the Old Testament)
means ‘God saves’. The act of naming was an exercise in authority.
2 Kings 23:34
reads that the Egyptian Pharoah Neco appointed Eliakim (‘El
raises’) puppet King of Judah, and renamed him Jehoiakim (‘Yahweh
raises’), presumably to assert his authority over him.
Adam was given the task of
naming all the animals. Jacob had his name changed to Israel by the angel with
whom he struggled, and Abram was the former name of Abraham. God’s names denote
his characteristics in a way we can understand. The whole significance of names
has become largely lost in modern western cultures. Naming children often
depends simply upon a liking for a particular celebrity rather than on any
spiritual significance.
The use of Elohim (the
three-or-more plural of El = God) in Genesis 1 suggests that there is something
plural about the person of God. And the use of singular verbs with Elohim
(bara = ‘created’, amar = ‘said’, raah = ‘saw’, etc.)
throughout Genesis 1 intimates the uniplurality of God; i.e. God is one, yet in
another sense is more than one.
Genesis 1:2
says that
‘the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters’.1
Creation is described as
being the result of God speaking, i.e. by His word.2
In the New Testament we are told that one of the names of the Lord Jesus Christ
is ‘the Word’ (John
1:1–14), and that God created everything through Him.3
Thus, in the very first chapter of the Bible we have a first suggestion of the
Trinity, which is spelled out for us in much greater detail in the rest of the
Bible.
We should be wary of using
passages of Scripture as ‘proof texts’ which were not written with this purpose
in mind. However, the rest of the Bible, particularly the New Testament, reveals
the doctrine of the Trinity to us (e.g.
Matthew
3:16–17). We can look back into Genesis and see that the terms and words
Moses used by divine inspiration are not inconsistent with later revelation, but
in fact foreshadowed later teaching on the Trinity.
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1.
The Hebrew word
ruach can mean ‘wind’, ‘breath’ or ‘spirit’; the context determines the
correct meaning. The Hebrew construction here precludes the meaning from being
‘a wind from God was moving …’, as some liberals claim.
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2.
Thus 'And
God said …’ (Genesis
1:3, 6,
9,
11,
14,
20,
24,
26).
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3.
E.g.
John 1:3;
Colossians
1:15–16;
Hebrews 1:2.
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