The Declaration and the Name
What the First Word and the Divine Name Say Together
The first word of the Torah declares what the Son will do. The name of YHWH declares who he is. Together they are one announcement, written before anything was made, silenced by the tradition that was supposed to carry them, restored now in full.
Part 8 of 9
(Special thanks to MWM Contributor, Lisa MacPeek)
Two Declarations
One Announcement
This series has moved through the first word of the Torah letter by letter, layer by layer. Bereshit. The Son declared in the first two letters. The covenant framing the word from outside in. God and destruction at the center. The hand and the cross closing the word. The house enlarged at the opening. The nail at the center of the entire Torah. The Aleph-Tav standing silent in the fourth position of the first sentence, the first and the last waiting to be named.
What has not yet been brought together in a single document is the relationship between the first word and the divine name. Between what Bereshit declares and what YHWH declares. Between the announcement written into the opening of the Torah and the name that was supposed to carry that announcement through the entire covenant text, and was removed from it six thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight times.
Bereshit and YHWH are not two separate declarations. They are the same declaration spoken in two registers. The first word speaks it in the language of event, what will happen, who will do it, what it will cost, what it will establish. The name speaks it in the language of identity, who YHWH is at the level of his own self-declaration, what the four letters of his name show when they are read in the script Moshe used to write them.
Read together they are one announcement. And removing the name from the text while leaving the first word did not silence the announcement, it left the event declaration without the identity declaration. The cross without the name of the one on it. The house without the name of the one who built it. The covenant without the name of the one who held both sides alone.
What YHWH Declares in Its Four Letters
The divine name is four letters in Hebrew. Yod. Heh. Vav. Heh. In the square Aramaic script these four letters became abstract strokes. In the Paleo-Hebrew script Moshe used when he first wrote the name, each of these four letters was a drawn picture. And the four pictures together make a declaration.
Yod י — A Hand or Arm
The working hand. The outstretched arm. The hand that acts, makes, reaches, and gives. The same letter that opens the name is the same letter that appears in the fifth position of Bereshit, the Yod that declares by his own hand. The name of YHWH opens with the hand. The first word of the Torah includes the hand. They are speaking about the same hand.
Heh ה — A Man With Arms Raised — Behold, Look, Reveal
The letter of revelation. The command to look, to see, to pay attention to what is being shown. YHWH placed the Heh, the behold, into the names of Avraham and Sarah when he made covenant with them, giving them each one of his two Heh letters and keeping the Yod and the Vav himself. He gave the behold to the covenant people. He kept the hand and the nail.
Vav ו — A Nail or Tent Peg
The connector. The fastener. What holds two things together. The nail that is the center letter of the entire Torah, the enlarged Vav of Leviticus 11:42 preserved in every Torah scroll. The nail that Bereshit’s fifth letter declares was driven by the willing hand. The nail that David’s name, two doors connected by a nail, says connects heaven and earth. YHWH’s name contains the nail in its third letter.
Heh ה — A Man With Arms Raised — Behold, Look, Reveal
The second behold. The name does not say the hand and the nail once. It says behold, then the hand, then the nail, then behold again. Look. See the hand. See the nail. Look again. The declaration is framed by two commands to behold, with the hand and the nail between them. YHWH’s name is a sentence with punctuation: look at this, the hand, the nail, look.
The four Paleo-Hebrew pictures of the divine name read together: Behold the hand. Behold the nail.
This is not a reading imposed on the name from the outside. It is what the pictures show. And it is a declaration that does not stand alone, it stands in direct relationship with what Bereshit declared in its six letters before the name was even introduced in the third word of the first sentence.
Bereshit: The Son of God destroyed by his own hand on the cross.
YHWH: Behold the hand. Behold the nail. One announcement. Two registers.
How the Two Declarations Speak to Each Other
Read them side by side and the relationship becomes exact.
Bereshit says: the Son of God, destroyed, by his own hand, on the cross. It declares the identity of the one, the event, the manner, and the instrument.
YHWH says: behold the hand, behold the nail.
It says: look at the hand. Look at the nail. These are what identify me. These are what my name shows. When you see the hand and the nail, you are seeing YHWH.
Bereshit says it will happen. YHWH says it is who he is. The first word of the Torah announces the event. The name of YHWH announces the identity of the one the event reveals.
Together they are the complete declaration: this is what will happen, and when it happens you will know who YHWH is, because his name has been showing you the hand and the nail since Moshe first wrote it.
Yeshua said, he who has seen me has seen the Father. He was not making a metaphysical claim about divine unity as an abstract theological proposition. He was reading YHWH’s name. Behold the hand. Behold the nail. The one whose hand was pierced and whose body bore the nail, that is the behold the name has been commanding since the beginning. See him and you have seen YHWH. Because YHWH’s name has been pointing to him since before anything was made.
Yeshua said: he who has seen me has seen the Father. He was reading the name. Behold the hand. Behold the nail. The name that was supposed to be spoken in every generation had been declaring him since Moshe first wrote it.
What Was Removed and What It Cost
The name YHWH was removed from the covenant text six thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight times. Replaced with titles. The LORD. Adonai. Kyrios. Dominus. Generic designations of authority that carry none of the pictographic content of the four letters Moshe drew.
What was removed when the name was removed was not merely a proper noun. What was removed was the identity declaration, the behold the hand, behold the nail, that was supposed to accompany every occurrence of YHWH throughout the covenant text. Every time the prophets said thus says YHWH, the name they used was showing the hand and the nail to anyone reading it in the script it was written in. Every time the Psalms cried out to YHWH, the name was declaring the one to whom the cry was directed, the one whose hand was pierced, whose body bore the nail, whose covenant was held alone between the pieces while Avraham slept.
Six thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight removals. Six thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight times the hand and the nail disappeared from view in the text. Six thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight opportunities for the covenant reader to see behold the hand, behold the nail, and miss Yeshua at each one because the name that declared him had been replaced with a title that declared only authority.
The title says: there is a God and he is Lord. The name says: behold the hand. Behold the nail. The title is true but incomplete. The name is the declaration that the title replaced. And the declaration is the one that points to the Son.
Bereshit Without YHWH
YHWH Without Bereshit
The removal created a fracture in the covenant announcement that the text was designed to carry whole.
Bereshit without YHWH is an event declaration without an identity declaration. The cross without the name of the one on it. The Son of God destroyed by his own hand, but the name that says whose hand, whose nail, who this is, removed.
The first word declares the event. The name was supposed to accompany every step of the covenant story saying: and this is who. Every prophet, every psalm, every priestly blessing, every covenant statement in which YHWH’s name appeared was supposed to be reminding the reader: the hand and the nail. The one Bereshit declared is the one this name is showing you.
YHWH without Bereshit is an identity declaration without a narrative home. The name says behold the hand, behold the nail, but if the first word of the Torah has not been read in its Paleo-Hebrew pictographic depth, the reader does not know what event the name is pointing toward. The name points. Bereshit provides what it points at. Together they are complete.
This is what the series has been restoring. Not one declaration or the other. Both of them. The first word and the name. The event and the identity. What will happen and who YHWH is. Spoken together they are the full announcement that the covenant text was built to carry, and that the tradition, through the removal of the name and the reclassification of the pictographic readings, prevented from being heard as the single complete declaration it is.
The Name That Was Supposed to Be Spoken
Moshe said at the burning bush: this is my name forever, and this is my memorial to all generations. YHWH. The hand. The nail. Behold and behold. My name forever. My memorial, zikaron, my reminder, what keeps me remembered, to all generations.
The name was YHWH’s own declaration of how he wished to be remembered. Not as Lord. Not as the Almighty. Not as God Most High. As YHWH, the one whose name shows the hand and the nail and commands the reader twice to behold.
The memorial was removed. The reminder was replaced with a title. And the generations that should have been reading the hand and the nail in every occurrence of the divine name throughout the covenant text read the LORD instead, and did not see what the name was declaring about the Son, about the cross, about who YHWH is at the level of his own self-naming.
Yeshua came and said: I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. He did not say I have told them your title. He said I have manifested, phaneroo, made visible, brought into the light, your name. He made visible what the name declared. The hand. The nail. The behold. The identity that the name had been showing since Moshe first drew its four Paleo-Hebrew letters in the wilderness.
He manifested the name by being the one the name declared. The hand pierced. The nail driven. The behold of both, look at this, look, completed in the one who said before Avraham was, I am. The I am of the burning bush. The same name. The same hand. The same nail. Manifested at last in the body of the Son who was declared in the first word before the creation began.
The Complete Announcement Restored
Bereshit. The Son of God destroyed by his own hand on the cross, so that the house can be established, the covenant fulfilled, all flesh brought into the dwelling of YHWH with his people.
YHWH. Behold the hand. Behold the nail. This is who I am. This is my memorial to all generations. When you see the hand and the nail, you are seeing me.
Together: the Son of God, whose hand is YHWH’s hand, whose nail is YHWH’s nail, whose cross is the Tav that ends the first word and the mark that seals the covenant, destroyed by his own willing hand on the cross. So the house the first letter declared can be open. So the covenant the outer letters frame can hold what it holds. So YHWH can dwell with all flesh and the name that was supposed to be spoken in every generation can be seen for what it has always been declaring.
The first word and the name. Bereshit and YHWH. The declaration and the name that carries it. Written before anything was made. Silenced by the tradition that was supposed to proclaim them. Restored now, letter by letter, picture by picture, declaration by declaration, to the voice they were always meant to carry.
The first word declares the event. The name declares the identity. Together they are one announcement that was never meant to be separated.
Bereshit: The Son of God destroyed by his own hand on the cross.
YHWH: Behold the hand. Behold the nail.
One says what will happen.
The other says who YHWH is when it does.
They removed the name six thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight times.
They could not remove the first word.
Both are restored. The announcement is whole.
The Gospel Revolution • Mike Williams Ministries
William Ethan Massengill • Michael Lilborn Williams • Daniel Thomas Rouse
Published by Audrey Williams