YHWH placed a letter from his own name into the name of Avraham, and into the name of Sarah. He gave the behold to the covenant people. He kept the hand and the nail. The fatherhood of Avraham is not independent of YHWH. It is stamped with YHWH’s own letter.
Document 6 of 13
The name Father Abraham, Avraham Avinu (our father Abraham) in Hebrew, has been spoken in covenant communities for four thousand years. It is one of the most familiar designations in the entire testimony. The father of faith. The father of the covenant people. The one through whose seed all nations would be blessed. And in the gospel accounts Yeshua himself addressed people who claimed Avraham as their father, sometimes affirming the claim, sometimes sharply distinguishing between biological descent and true covenant relationship with the one Avraham followed.
This document asks a question that sits beneath the familiarity of the name. When YHWH changed Avram to Avraham, when he added a letter to the name, what letter did he add? Where did that letter come from? And what does its presence in the name of the father of the covenant people reveal about the relationship between Father Abraham and Father YHWH, which is the question this series has been building toward since Document 1 declared one YHWH in the echad (unified oneness) of the Sh’ma?
When YHWH changed Avram to Avraham he added a specific letter. That letter came from a specific place. Where it came from reveals everything about the nature of Avraham’s fatherhood and its relationship to the fatherhood of YHWH.
Genesis 17:5. YHWH said to Avram, your name shall no longer be called Avram but your name shall be Avraham, for I have made you av hamon goyim (father of a multitude of nations). The name change is the covenant declaration. The new name carries the covenant identity. And embedded in the transition from Avram to Avraham is a single letter added to the middle of the existing name.
The letter added is Heh. The fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In the Paleo-Hebrew pictographic script (the script Moshe used when he wrote the Torah, where every letter was a drawn image) the Heh was drawn as a man with arms raised, the picture of behold, look, reveal, pay attention, I am showing you something. The command to see. The declaration that something worth beholding is present.
And the Heh is the second and fourth letter of the divine name YHWH, Yod, Heh, Vav, Heh. Behold the hand. Behold the nail. YHWH’s name contains two Heh letters, the two beholds that frame the hand and the nail. The behold that opens the declaration and the behold that closes it. The name of YHWH is built around the two commands to look, with the hand and the nail between them.
The Heh, behold, look, I am showing you something, is the second and fourth letter of the divine name YHWH. When YHWH added a Heh to Avram’s name to make Avraham, he placed one of his own name’s letters directly into the name of the covenant father.
And simultaneously, Genesis 17:15, YHWH changed Sarai’s name to Sarah. Also by adding a Heh. The same letter. From the same name. Sarai became Sarah, the second Heh of the divine name placed into the name of the covenant mother.
Avram אברם → Avraham אברהם
Added: Heh (ה), the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, drawn in Paleo-Hebrew as a man with arms raised, behold, look, reveal
YHWH gave the first Heh of his own name, the opening behold of the declaration behold the hand, behold the nail, to Avraham. The father of the covenant people now carries in his own name the letter that commands: behold. Look. Pay attention. Something worth seeing is present.
Sarai שרי → Sarah שרה
Added: Heh (ה) — the same letter, the behold, the look, the revelation
YHWH gave the second Heh of his own name, the closing behold of the divine declaration, to Sarah.
The mother of the covenant people now carries in her own name the letter that says: look again. The behold that confirms the declaration. Together Avraham and Sarah carry both Heh letters of the divine name, the opening behold and the closing behold, distributed between the two parents of the covenant.
YHWH kept the Yod (the hand, the first letter of the divine name) and the Vav (the nail, the third letter of the divine name) for himself. He distributed the two Heh letters, the two beholds, to the covenant people through Avraham and Sarah. The hand and the nail remained in the divine name. The behold went to the covenant parents.
This is not a minor scribal variation. This is YHWH placing his own name’s letters into the names of the people through whom the covenant would be visible to the world, and doing so in a way that reveals what role the covenant people were given in the building project. The two Heh letters, behold, behold, are the letters that say look at this. The covenant people, bearing the behold of YHWH’s own name, are the ones through whom the world is called to look at what YHWH is doing. Not the hand. Not the nail. YHWH kept those. The hand that acts and the nail that connects, those belong to YHWH alone. What he gave to the covenant people is the behold. The declaration that points toward what YHWH is holding.
YHWH kept the hand and the nail. He gave the behold to the covenant people. Avraham and Sarah carry the letters that say look at this, while YHWH holds the hand and the nail they are pointing toward.
This reveals the nature of Avraham’s fatherhood with complete precision. Avraham is father in the covenant because YHWH made him father, not because Avraham generated his own fatherhood from within himself. The fatherhood of Avraham is stamped with YHWH’s own letter. It is derived from YHWH’s own name. It is the behold in YHWH’s name given a human expression, the covenant father bearing the letter that says look, so that the world can look toward the one who holds the hand and the nail.
When Yeshua said before Avraham was, I am, he was not diminishing Avraham’s fatherhood. He was identifying its source. The I am is the one whose name gave the behold to Avraham. The hand and the nail, which the divine name declared in every one of its six thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight occurrences across the covenant text, belong to the I am. Avraham carries the behold. The I am holds what the behold is pointing at. Father Abraham and Father YHWH are not competing fatherhoods. They are one fatherhood in two registers, YHWH’s ultimate fatherhood expressed through Avraham’s derivative fatherhood, with YHWH’s own letter stamped into the name of the covenant father to mark where the fatherhood came from and what it is pointing toward.
And the entire covenant history that flows through Avraham, the lineage through Yitzchak (Isaac) and Ya’akov (Jacob) and Yehudah (Judah) and David and finally into the tzelem (shadow or image) of Yeshua, is the behold in active movement. The covenant people bearing the behold letters, living out the behold in covenant history, pointing generation after generation toward the hand and the nail that YHWH kept in his own name, until the moment the Word moved in, the hand drove the nail by its own willing hand on the cross, and the behold that Avraham and Sarah had been carrying in their names since Genesis 17 was finally able to say, look. There. That. Behold the hand. Behold the nail. This is what we have been pointing toward. This is what the name of YHWH has been declaring. This is what the first word of the Torah announced before the creation began. The Father Abraham and the Father YHWH, one fatherhood, one building project, one house now open for all flesh. Forever.
YHWH gave the behold to Avraham and Sarah. He kept the hand and the nail. The covenant people carry the letters that say look, toward the one who holds what they are pointing at.
Avram → Avraham: YHWH added the first Heh (behold) of his own name.
Sarai → Sarah: YHWH added the second Heh (behold) of his own name.
YHWH kept the Yod (hand) and the Vav (nail).
He gave the behold to the covenant people.
Father Abraham carries the letter that says look.
Father YHWH holds what the behold is pointing at.
Not competing fatherhoods.
One fatherhood.
One name.
One building project.
One house.
The Gospel Revolution • Mike Williams Ministries
William Ethan Massengill • Michael Lilborn Williams • Daniel Thomas Rouse
Published by Audrey Williams