What is yhwh in the bible

And he is the only one in existence who can be described this way. The rest of us need quite a lot to go right in order to keep existing! The most powerful human on earth is still at the mercy of his health and fortune. A great example of this is Psalm The author talks in the first 6 verses about Elohim another name for God and his relationship with the material world.

Then, in verse 7, he shifts and starts to write about Yahweh and his relationship with those who know him and who are in covenant with him. This is a God who was so love-motivated to know us and to be in relationship with us that he came to earth as a human and took the punishment we deserved. It is probably a core part of your belief system.

But those of us who have the least qualms with a God who exists can start to forget the beauty and significance of the fact that God is here. Yahweh is here, interacting with our world, among us. And he does that out of love. God is under no obligation to remain close to us, working in our lives and writing a love story between himself and the world. And yet, he chooses to do so. In fact, he chooses to build his very kingdom among believers:. But our God does not conform to any of this.

He remains constant through it all. Yahweh has always been who he is, from the beginning of time; he has always been the standard for absolute perfection and holiness. We have the binary choice to either choose Him and conform to him — or not. There is no third option where we can have a slightly different version of him. We need to keep a white-knuckled grip on the truth of the unchanging God. The most common theologies are ones that make God into our own personal servant — the ones that will get us our best life now; perfect peace and no problems.

But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you" Psalm He relates to us more deeply than we can ever imagine, but he is not like us. His ways are higher than our own, and he is set apart from everything and everyone else in existence in holiness, strength, and power.

Yahweh is the covenant-keeping name. God will never stop wanting us, and he will never cease in his pursuit of us. He is the ultimate covenant-keeper, the one who keeps his promises and does what he said he will do. We can trust God as much as we want and it will never be too much.

He will always measure up. Only a mysterious God would ask us to know him as the God who is who he is. We worship a God of mystery, yet a God who is closer than our very breath.

Yahweh is a paradox, one we will never reach the end of when it comes to our understanding of him. There is simply too much of him to know fully in one lifetime! That should be our daily goal — to move one step closer to knowing the God who is. The richness and fullness of perfect love await anyone seeking to know the one who would do anything to have us.

In the list, Yehwa is the name of a land. Just as one nomadic group lived in a land called Seir, another lived in a land called Yehwa. But in antiquity, a name could sometimes be both a toponym and a theonym. Eventually, it also became the name of their empire. Another example would be the Greek goddess of wisdom, Athena, who began as the patron goddess of Athens.

Biblical evidence suggests that YHWH comes from the southeast, either from the hills of Edom or even further south in Midian or beyond. This is particularly clear in three very ancient biblical poems:.

Each of these poems opens with the image of YHWH coming from his home in the south. This conception fits with what the story of Moses and the burning bush, where Moses goes to the Mountain of God while tending the flocks of his Midianite father-in-law. Moses is wandering in Midianite territory, though not in Arabia but in the vicinity of modern-day Petra, biblical Kadesh Reqem in Aramaic , where we have evidence of a Qurrayah-culture group living not far from Edom.

In , Shelomo Dov Goitein , a scholar of both Jewish and Arabic studies, [16] suggested that the name derives from the Arabic root h. One of the laws, which forbids Israel to worship other gods, reads:.

Moreover, according to Goitein, this exclusivity demanded by YHWH goes back to his appearance as a god among nomadic, Arabian tribes. In fact, many biblical passages that we read nowadays as monotheistic are really monolatrous.

A classic example is in the Decalogue itself:. The text does not say that no other gods exist, only that they should not be worshipped in addition to YHWH, because YHWH is an impassioned God who would naturally become jealous and agitated at such behavior. YHWH is just such an impassioned husband to his espoused people and just as vengeful if his people are disloyal.

Iconoclasm also characterized the Qurayyah culture Midianites , as seen from the excavations at Timna. Because of the extreme aridity of the area, pieces of the tent survived and were discovered by the excavators.

Unlike the Egyptian Hathor Temple, the Midianite worship area had no images, whether painted or carved, reflecting their aniconism. When the Egyptians left this area, the Midianites took control of the entire area including the Hathor Temple. More problematically, Moses not only finds his wife among the Midianites, but finds his God there as well.

One further piece of evidence for Midianite aniconism comes from the Kenites. In Judges , we are told that the Kenites settled in the Arad Valley, and scholars have long suggested that the city of Horvat Uza is biblical Kina, since the stream in its vicinity is called Wadi-el-Keni, i.

Excavations of the Iron II monarchic period city there show that whereas the neighboring Israelite! In Jeremiah we hear that this group—the Rechabites, a Kenite subclan—lived a nomadic tent-dwelling life, without building houses or planting fields, and eschewed wine consumption. This lifestyle is reminiscent of what we see in later times with yet another Arabic tribe, the Nabateans, who were also aniconic.

Even if the exact relationship between Midianites, Kenites, and Rechabites remains hazy—except that the latter two small groups became part of Israel and the former large group did not—all of these groups were part of an aniconic, YHWH worshipping tradition, which was adopted and reshaped by the Israelites in an early period. Please support us. Tabes Louvain , The point is that the Midianites are from the same area as the Arabian tribes and were likely part of this Arab or proto-Arab group.

Unlike in the word shaswe , it cannot be a phonetic complement since phonetic complements are paired to the second consonant of a biliteral sign, or to both consonants, but not to just the first.

In theory it could be another consonant yielding Yehwaw. Before teaching at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and then at Princeton, he wrote on the Bible and was even in charge of Bible education in mandatory Palestine. Dever , ed. Seymour Gitin, George E. Wright, and J. Gilda Bartolini and Maria G. Briga Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, , He holds a Ph. I would like to receive new essays When published Before Shabbat. Torah Portion. This Week's Torah Portion. Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy.

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