Thousands of years ago, at the foot of a mountain in a desert land, God revealed his forever name, his covenant name. What’s more, he’s still revealing it today.

“This is my name forever”

Appearing to Moses in a bush that would not burn up, God announced:

I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey. (Ex. 3:7-8)

Then God told Moses:

So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt. (Ex. 3:10)

Stunned, Moses raised many objections and questions. Among them:

Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you,” and they ask me, “What is his name?” Then what shall I tell them? (Ex. 3:13)

Moses asked for a name. God gave him two. But we can easily miss that in our English translations.

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, 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,
    the name you shall call me
    from generation to generation.” (Ex. 3:14-15)

Two names – yet one

I AM. How simple. How profound. HE IS. Eternally, he exists. He lives. Uncreated, he had no beginning. Indestructible, he will have no end. Unchanging, he will always be as he has always been.

The LORD. This name – that we don’t even see as a name – appears more than 6,000 times in the Bible. We’ll spend the rest of this post exploring it.

I am the LORD. God did not say this phrase in this passage. But he did say it more than 150 times in the Old Testament. You’ll see it several times in the Scriptures below.

When the God named “I AM” and “the LORD” says, “I am the LORD,” it’s especially emphatic. As if he’s signing his full name – or, speaking from a burning bush. He’s signaling us to stop and pay special attention, to see what he wants to reveal.

And he wants to reveal himself to his people. Repeatedly he makes statements like these:

By this you will know that I am the LORD. (Ex. 7:17)
Then you will know that I am the LORD your God. (Ex. 16:12)

An inscrutable covenant name

Say to the Israelites, “The LORD … has sent me to you.” This is my name.

Where we read a title, “the LORD,” God revealed his name – the name no one today knows how to pronounce.

The Jews considered that name so sacred they would write only the consonants, transliterated YHVH.¹

Instead of speaking the name, they would say Adonai (the Lord) or HaShem (the Name), or sometimes they would say the four consonants, as we might say a person’s initials: Yud Heh Vav Heh (pronounced yude heh vahv heh).

Today, this inscrutable name is sometimes rendered Jehovah or Yahweh. In most English Bible translations, it’s rendered “the LORD” (all caps). But it is not a title. It is the name by which God most emphatically seeks to be known – the name that most profoundly reveals who he is.

Our Lord never does anything randomly. Whenever he uses a particular name for himself in his Word, he has a reason.

All his names reveal something of who he is. Most identify a specific aspect of his nature and his ways.

But this name God has linked in the strongest way possible to his covenant relationship with his people. And this name is unique in its ability to reveal any aspect of himself that God wants to make known.

→ When “the LORD” or “Jehovah” or any other rendering of God’s covenant name appears in Scripture, it’s like a beacon, signaling to us:

• Notice what the text that surrounds the name is telling you about your Lord.
• Let HIM shine the light of that truth into your inmost being – working in you to help you know him a little better and reflect him a little more.

So let us know, let us press on to know the LORD. (Hos. 6:3 NAS1995)

When God says his “full name”

Sent by God, Moses went to Pharaoh and announced:

“This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Let my people go …’”

Pharaoh said, “Who is the LORD, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD and I will not let Israel go.” (Ex. 5:1-2)

Pharaoh did not want to know the LORD. And he was not about to free a whole nation of slave labor. To keep the people too downtrodden to flee, he made their work crushingly hard; and their abuse, even more brutal.

Moses returned to the LORD and said … “Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble on this people, and you have not rescued your people at all.” (Ex. 5:22, 23)

In answer, God repeatedly reminded Moses of his “full name,” his forever, covenant name.

My people will know “I am the LORD”

I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself fully known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they resided as foreigners. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.

Therefore, say to the Israelites: “I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.

“Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the LORD.”

With these passionate words, what does YHVH reveal to his people about himself?

• He hears our cries, and he cares deeply about our bondage and distress.
• He comes to free us from what has enslaved us.
• He works to bring us into genuine, lasting relationship with him.
• He remembers his good promises, and keeps them.
• He gives us good gifts, including an inheritance he has stored up for us.

And that’s just skimming the surface of five mentions of YHVH, out of more than 6,000.

Others will also know “I am the LORD”

Later, God said to Moses more than once:

The Egyptians will know that I am the LORD. (Ex. 7:5; 14:4, 18)

God can and does reveal himself to people who are not his. He shows them that he alone is God. He shows them his faithfulness to his people. And he makes the way for those who aren’t his people to be his people.²

When he must, YHVH reveals himself as the God who judges and calls to account. He judges those who are his people and those who are not. Seeking to know him, we see how slow to anger he is. Only after appealing to his rebellious people for generations did God cry:

I will not look on you with pity; I will not spare you. I will surely repay you for your conduct and for the detestable practices among you. Then you will know that I am the LORD. (Ezek. 7:4)

When he does impose severe consequences, his anger is righteous; his grief, great; his judgments, just. Even then, God continues to show people who he is, and to call whoever will to (re)turn to him.

Always, he delights in making his goodness known to and through those who delight in him, who faithfully follow him:

The trees will yield their fruit and the ground will yield its crops; the people will be secure in their land. They will know that I am the Lord, when I break the bars of their yoke and rescue them from the hands of those who enslaved them. (Ezek. 34:27)

Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes. (Ezek. 36:23)

A new covenant name

In the first chapter of the New Testament, God introduces a new covenant name that reveals and fulfills the old.

Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. (Matt. 1:20-21)

The name we know as Jesus transliterates the Hebrew term, Yehoshua. It means “YHVH is salvation” or “YHVH saves.” Jesus’ first followers called him Yeshua. In other languages, he is Isa, Eesus, Yesu, etc.

During his ministry, Jesus also identified himself by his other covenant name, I AM. He told the religious leaders:

You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I AM, you will indeed die in your sins.

When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I AM and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me.

Very truly I tell you, … before Abraham was born, I AM!” (John 8:23-24, 28, 58).

Thus, the LORD of the Old Testament made himself known even more fully in the New. He made the way to free people of every tribe and tongue and nation and to bring us to himself.

We become his people as we believe in him and enter the new covenant in his blood.

How we know the LORD by name

YHVH. We can only guess at how to pronounce the covenant name by which God identified himself to Moses. What’s more, we may never have seen “the LORD” as a name, nor learned how God has placed it in Scripture so as to reveal himself.

Jesus. We may be very familiar with the new covenant name – and confidently call on Jesus, and identify ourselves with him – yet not truly know God the Son.

Paul berated the Corinthian church for that very thing when he wrote, “If someone comes along and preaches another Jesus … you are all too willing to listen” (2 Cor. 11:4 ISV).

Knowing our Lord by name does not depend on rightly pronouncing the right scriptural word. It depends on knowing in our inmost being the One to whom the name points.

This Lord has determined to present himself so clearly that anyone from anywhere can know the truth of who he is:³

And so I will show my greatness and my holiness, and I will make myself known in the sight of many nations. Then they will know that I am the LORD. (Ezek. 38:23)

Yet always, there is so very much more that he wants us to see.

Therefore I will reveal my name to my people … Then at last they will recognize that it is I, yes, I, who speaks to them. (Isa. 52:6 TLB)

When God reveals his covenant name, he shows us himself.

And time and again, he invites us to leave that “safe” and barren place where we think we know all about him – and to know, to press on to know, the Lord.

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The original version of this post was published October 10, 2011. In May 2021, I revised and expanded “God of the covenant Name.” Still learning 15 years after I first tackled this subject, I’ve renovated a bit more, retitled and reposted.

See also

• If God loves fiercely, how do we draw near?
• Intercessor! One who stands in the gap
• I AM the treasure you seek
• Embracing the blessing of the Lord
  
  
• The LORD is with you, mighty warrior
• Jesus taught us to pray for God
• Recovering and treasuring the forgotten prayer

Footnotes

1. Or JHVH, or YHWH. In most English versions of the Old Testament, the word Lord, written not in all caps, translates a different Hebrew word, Adonai, a title for God that actually does mean “Lord.” ↩︎
2. Indeed, Isaiah 19:19-25 promises a day when the Egyptians will know and worship the LORD. What’s more, all of us “were God’s enemies” before “we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son” (Rom. 5:10). ↩︎
3. See also the flip side of this truth in Romans 1:18-22. ↩︎