The Command That Two Thousand Years of Tradition Reversed
This is my name forever. This is my memorial to all generations.
Part 1 of 7
The Command at the Bush
When Moshe (Moses) stood at the burning bush and asked YHWH what he should tell Israel when they asked the name of the one who sent him, YHWH gave a two-part answer. The first part is the one the tradition preserved, I am that I am. Tell them I am has sent you.
The second part is the one the tradition buried.
Exodus 3:15, YHWH also said to Moshe: Say this to the people of Israel, YHWH, 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 this is my memorial to all generations.
This is my name forever. Not this is my name for the priests. Not this is my name for the initiated. Not this is my name to be protected by silence. Forever. And this is my memorial to all generations, the Hebrew word translated memorial is zikron, from the same root as Tzekaryahu (Zechariah), YHWH remembers. The name was to be remembered. Spoken. Declared. Carried from generation to generation as the living memorial of who YHWH is and what YHWH does.
This was not a suggestion. It was a command embedded in the name itself. The name was given to be used. It was given to be spoken. It was given so that every generation, not just the generation of Moshe, not just the covenant people of Israel, but every generation to all generations, would know exactly who was being referenced when salvation was declared, when judgment was announced, when the covenant was invoked.
YHWH said speak it. The entire subsequent tradition that developed around not speaking it, however sincere its stated motivations, stands in direct contradiction to the explicit command of the one whose name it claims to protect.
This is my name forever. This is my memorial to all generations. YHWH commanded the name to be spoken, remembered, and carried forward. The tradition that silenced it contradicted the one whose name it claimed to reverence.
The Name in the Text
6,828 Times
YHWH did not hide his name in the scriptures he gave through the prophets. He saturated the text with it. The divine name appears 6,828 times in the Hebrew scriptures, more frequently than any other proper noun in the entire collection. It appears in Genesis and it appears in Malachi. It appears in the law, in the history, in the poetry, in the prophecy. It is the most consistently present word in the entire covenant library.
This is not accidental. The frequency of the name is itself a declaration. YHWH was not being subtle about his identity. He was not leaving room for the name to be gradually replaced by a title. He was signing the text, every major section, every major declaration, every covenant affirmation, every prophetic announcement, with the same signature. YHWH. Present. Active. Identified. Not anonymous.
The text was read publicly. Every Sabbath in every synagogue across Israel and the diaspora, the Torah was read aloud. The name appeared in every reading. The congregation heard it, or was supposed to hear it. The command of Exodus 3:15 was being enacted in every public reading of the text that bore the name 6,828 times.
When the name was removed from the text, replaced in the Septuagint, replaced in the Vulgate, replaced in the English translations with the capital LORD that signals a substitution without restoring the original, what was removed was not merely a word. What was removed was the 6,828-times repeated signature of the divine identity. The text without the name is a letter with the author’s name blacked out on every page.
What the Name Actually Declares
YHWH is not a title. It is not a category. It is not a description of divine attributes in the abstract. It is a name, specific, personal, covenantal, irreplaceable by any synonym or substitute.
The name derives from the Hebrew verb to be, hayah. YHWH is the one who is, who was, and who will be. But more precisely, the one who causes to be. The one whose existence is the ground of all existence. The one who is not defined by anything outside himself because nothing outside himself existed before him.
In Exodus 3:14, when YHWH said I am that I am, he was not giving a philosophical description of divine self-existence. He was giving Moshe the content of the name, the declaration that when this name is spoken, what is being invoked is the presence that is the source of all being, the one who is not contingent on anything, the one who simply and absolutely is.
That is the name that was spoken 6,828 times in the Hebrew text. That is the name that was embedded in the names of the prophets, Yeshayahu (Isaiah), Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah), Tzekaryahu (Zechariah), Eliyahu (Elijah), Yochanan (John), Mattityahu (Matthew). Every time a name bearing YHWH was spoken, the absolute self-existing ground of all being was being declared as present, active, and identified with the person and work of the vessel bearing the name.
And the name Yeshua (Jesus), YHWH saves, was the declaration that the absolute self-existing ground of all being was saving. Not offering to save. Not making salvation available. Saving. The name was the announcement and the accomplishment simultaneously.
When that name became Jesus, a sound with no semantic content in any language other than Hebrew, the announcement disappeared. The accomplishment became a doctrine rather than a declaration. And two thousand years of theological systems had to be constructed to replace what the name had already said in three syllables.
When Yeshua became Jesus, the announcement disappeared. Two thousand years of theological systems were constructed to replace what three Hebrew syllables had already declared. YHWH saves.
The Name Points and That Is the Problem
The name YHWH does not sit still. It points. Every time it is spoken in its full covenantal weight, as the one who manifested through the named vessels across the thousand year reign, as the one whose presence was in every YHWH-bearing prophet, as the one who arrived in full as Yeshua, it raises a question.
Who is this?
And the Hebrew scriptures give an answer that two specific communities, for two specific reasons, could not afford to let stand. The answer is that YHWH, the one whose name is forever, whose memorial is to all generations, is the one who was always present, always active, always appearing through named vessels, and who arrived in complete and final human form as Yeshua. Who accomplished everything at the cross. Who rose from the dead defeating the last enemy. Who poured out the ruach on all flesh. Who is now the permanent indwelling presence of all humanity. God all in all.
That answer is devastating to the framework of the first community, the rabbinical tradition that defined itself after 70 AD in direct opposition to the claim that Yeshua was the fulfillment of everything YHWH had been doing across the covenant history. If YHWH points to Yeshua, then the entire post-cross rabbinical project, the reconstruction of Judaism without the temple, without the priesthood, without the sacrificial system, centered on Torah observance and the authority of the rabbis, is built on the refusal of the fulfillment it was designed to point toward.
And that answer is equally devastating to the framework of the second community, the Gentile church that had spent centuries constructing a religion that was comfortable for people who did not want their savior to be Jewish, whose theological categories were Greek rather than Hebrew, whose salvation was individual and future-oriented rather than universal and accomplished. If YHWH points to Yeshua, and Yeshua is inseparably, irreducibly, incomprehensibly Jewish, the son of Miriam (Mary), the teacher in the Hebrew synagogues, the fulfiller of the Hebrew covenant, the one identified by the Hebrew prophets whose names bore the Hebrew divine signature, then the Gentile religion built around him cannot avoid its own Jewishness. And it has been trying to avoid it for two thousand years.
Silence the name. And the pointing stops. The question does not get asked. The answer does not have to be given. And both communities can continue building their frameworks undisturbed by the declaration that the name has been making since YHWH said it to Moshe at the burning bush.
This is my name forever. This is my memorial to all generations.
It was never going to stay silent. The documents that follow this one examine how the silence was achieved and what it cost.
YHWH said speak it. To all generations. Forever. The command was given at the bush and has not been revoked by any authority that had the right to revoke it.
The silence that followed was not reverence. It was suppression. From two directions. For two reasons. Arriving at the same result, a name that the one who gave it declared should be known to all generations, reduced to a category so protected that the protection itself became the erasure.
YHWH. This is my name forever. It still is.
The Gospel Revolution • Mike Williams Ministries
William Ethan Massengill • Michael Lilborn Williams • Daniel Thomas Rouse
Published by Audrey Williams