The Sacred Name YHVH

Part 4

Salvation in The Name

So, What “Name” Are We Talking About with This Issue of Salvation?

Salvation in the Name?

According to Sacred Name groups unless one uses the Hebrew name and only the Hebrew name for God that person will be eternally damned.

They base this upon the Scripture, “All Those who call upon the Name of the Lord will be saved.” Joel 2:32 cf Acts 2:16-21.

Then What About Abraham, Isaac & Jacob?

Are they Damned because they Didn’t Know the Sacred Name?

Did they NOT have a relationship with God because they did NOT know the

Sacred Name?

FOR Up Until the Time of Moshe

NO ONE KNEW the Sacred Name as revealed in Exodus 3!

Not EVEN Abraham!

Exodus 62 God spoke to Moshe; he said to him, “I am ADONAI. 3 I appeared to Avraham, Yitz’chak and Ya‘akov as El Shaddai, although I did not make myself known to them by my name, Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh [ADONAI]. 4 Also with them I established my covenant to give them the land of Kena‘an, the land where they wandered about and lived as foreigners.

The P'shat of the parsha means just that - the P'shat being the plain and simple meaning of a Scripture passage.

What About the Apparent Contradiction?

"Well then how could Abraham (Genesis 12:8) call upon the Name Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh if he didn't know the Name?"

Genesis 12:7, 87 ADONAI appeared to Avram and said, "To your descendants I will give this land." So he built an altar there to ADONAI, who had appeared to him. 8 He left that place, went to the hill east of Beit-El and pitched his tent. With Beit-El to the west and 'Ai to the east, he built an altar there and called on the name of ADONAI.

The earliest Scriptural use of the YHVH is in Genesis 2:4, so does that mean that in Genesis 4:26 when men began to call upon the Name of the Lord that they actually used the Name YHVH?

Doesn’t that Violate the P’shat of

Exodus 6:2-3?

OR

Does could it mean that Moses, knowing Who (now past tense to Moses) they were calling upon, AND under the inspiration wrote in the Name YHVH to show that they were calling upon the true God, versus the false ones?

Let Me Give You One Such Example

Genesis 10:5 From these the islands of the nations were divided [past tense] into their lands, each according to its language, according to their families, in their nations. 20 These were the descendants of Ham, according to their families and languages, in their lands and in their nations. 31 These were the descendants of Shem, according to their families and languages, in their lands and in their nations.

BUT Languages do NOT Come into Being Until the Next Chapter of

Genesis!

Genesis 111 The whole earth used the same language, the same words.

Genesis 11

1 The whole earth used the same language, the same words. 2 It came about that as they traveled from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shin‘ar and lived there. 3 They said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them in the fire.” So they had bricks for building-stone and clay for mortar.

4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city with a tower that has its top reaching up into heaven, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered all over the earth.” 5 Adonai came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 Adonai said, “Look, the people are united, they all have a single language, and see what they’re starting to do! At this rate, nothing they set out to accomplish will be impossible for them!

7 Come, let’s go down and confuse their language, so that they won’t understand each other’s speech.” 8 So from there Adonai scattered them all over the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 For this reason it is called Bavel [confusion] — because there Adonai confused the language of the whole earth, and from there Adonai scattered them all over the earth.

OR

Perhaps they, “calling upon the Name of the Lord,” means that they KNEW the pronunciation of the Name, but did NOT KNOW the full Character of the Lord, as revealed in the Name to Moses?

OR

Most likely, “Calling Upon the Name of the Lord” is an Hebraic

Idiom!

Biblical Hebrew is rich in Hebrew idioms, metaphors, Anthropomorphisms and other figures of speech.

I Have Taught on This Before

Deuteronomy 29 KJV

18 Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood; 19 And it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying , I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst:

Does this Hebraic Idiom Make Sense to Us? Why Not???

1. Comes from another world-view.2. Comes from another language.3. Even if we were dealing from the

same language – comes from another time (anachronism).

If We Were Going to Try and Make Sense of It – What Do We Have to

Do???

1. Place it back into its original language.2. Place that language back into its proper

time.3. Place the idiom back into the world-

view of its recipients.

So, Deuteronomy 29 CJB18 So let there not be among you a man, woman, family or tribe whose heart turns away today from ADONAI our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Let there not be among you a root bearing such bitter poison and wormwood. 19 If there is such a person, when he hears the words of this curse, he will bless himself secretly, saying to himself, 'I will be all right, even though I will stubbornly keep doing whatever I feel like doing; so that I, although "dry," [sinful,] will be added to the "watered" [righteous].'

Another Biblical Hebraic Idiom

Ezekiel 8:17“Is it too light a thing for the house of Judah to commit the abominations that they commit here, that they should fill the land with violence and provoke me still further to anger? Behold, they put the branch to their nose.”

As the verses before this talk about how the Hebrews are mixing neighboring religions with true worship (mourning for Tammuz, idols in the temple courtyard, sun worship):

1. This is an act of syncretism--the mixing of elements from several religions.2. They don't mean it.

We Can Say the Same with Matthew 619 "Do not store up for yourselves wealth here on earth, where moths and rust destroy, and burglars break in and steal. 20 Instead, store up for yourselves wealth in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and burglars do not break in or steal. 21 For where your wealth is, there your heart will be also. 22 `The eye is the lamp of the body.' So if you have a `good eye' [that is, if you are generous] your whole body will be full of light; 23 but if you have an `evil eye' [if you are stingy] your whole body will be full of darkness.

A Figure of Speech

A figure of speech is the use of a word or a phrase, which transcends its literal interpretation. It can be a special repetition, arrangement or omission of words with literal meaning, or a phrase with a specialized meaning not based on the literal meaning of the words in it.

In English we also have Idioms

Lots of Idioms!Here’s a small sample:

pick your brainssay grace

I'm not kiddingLook who's talking!

stir intotrain of thought

wide of the markmean no offense

go a long wayleave word for

rocket intoas old as the hills

call onspeak the same language

light ongo postal

a load off my mindsink to such depthsget an even break

conform withname in lightsput on an act

There’s SO MUCH MORE!Finally, when I was young there was an American English idiom, "Stop in the name of the law!"

It is hardly used anymore, but the meaning of that idiom was not that the NAME of the LAW would stop the criminal, but that the AUTHORITY of the LAW would - if the criminal knew what was good for him or her.

If one takes idioms, metaphors and anthropomorphisms as literalisms, then we will have a definite misunderstanding of the Scripture!

Here is where we have to be very careful in our biblical hermeneutic. We must be careful not to eisegete, rather we must exegete.

Also Good Hermeneutics - Don’t Anachronize

Definition: To refer to, or put into, a wrong time - biblical passages in the light of our present day thinking is dangerous and BAD Hermeneutic, in that we are superimposing our own present-day concepts upon ancient ones, as if they were the same thing.

Well, They are Not

And it betrays a lack of biblical scholarship.

So, when the Bible says that men or that when Abraham "called upon the Name of the Lord" it does not mean that they actually knew or literally pronounced the Name (Exodus 3)!

Hebraically & Biblically

It meant that they stirred themselves to take hold of Him.

A repeated grammatical structure sets two thoughts as parallel: And there is none

a. that calleth upon thy name, a. that stirreth up himself to take hold of

thee: for thou

b. hast hid thy face from us, and b. hast consumed us, because of our iniquities

In Isaiah 64:7:

With this beautiful use of synonymous parallelism God emphasizes that to call upon the Name of the LORD means to stir oneself up to take hold of Him.

According to the P’shat of the Passage:

Abraham DIDN’T Know God’s Name (YHVH)!

Yet, God made a COVENANT with him!

In Fact: God Says of AbrahamIsaiah 41:8

"But you, Israel, My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, Descendant of Abraham My friend…”