Let's take a look at the meaning of YHWH Elohim.įirst, YHWH is a proper noun, the personal name of Israel's deity. He specializes in Hebrew language and is author of the book Beginning Biblical Hebrew (Eisenbrauns, 2003). in Semitic Languages from the Catholic University of America. Maclellan Professor of Old Testament and Academic Dean at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando. So what does your name mean? If you don’t know, look it up online this week.If Elohim refers to multiple 'gods,' then Yhwh Elohim really means Lord of Gods.the one of many, right?Īnswered by Mark D. Because we are His children and He loves each and every one of us more than anything. Or Jehovah Nissi, 'the Lord is my banner”.Īnd my favorite, “Father”. In Hebrew we have El-Shaddai, meaning God Almighty.Īnd Elohim, showing the 3 persons of the trinity in one name and also that He is Lord of lords.Īnd Jehovah Jireh, meaning 'God will provide'. King of kings and Lord of lords and Ancient of Days Some other names that we see describing God’s character are: And we see this name a lot throughout the Old Testament as well. And when you see the name LORD in all caps in the Bible, that’s this word, Yahweh.īut the Jewish people wanted to show their respect for the sacred name Yahweh so over time they changed the name throughout the Hebrew Bible to the name Adonai, which in Hebrew means Lord, not all caps. And Moses asks Him, “who should I say sent me?” And God said, tell them my name is “Yahweh” in Hebrew, which is translated as “I Am who I am”, so he said, “tell them that “I Am” sent you”. One day God shows up to Moses in the form of a burning bush and tells him about all of these miracles He’s going to perform through Moses. There’s this story in Exodus 3 where Moses is out in the wilderness for 40 years, he actually ran away from Egypt and was hiding out there. We’ll start with Yahweh because that’s the personal name of God and appears 6,500 times in the Old Testament. We see name after name explaining His different characteristics and nature throughout the Old Testament and then once you hit the New Testament we get to know Him even more through the life of Jesus.īut what do all of these names like YHWH, Adonai, El Shaddai, Jehovah Jireh, really mean? They believe that a name transforms a person’s identity, which is why so many names in the Old Testament describe the character of the person.Īnd the same goes for God.

In Jewish tradition, a name is much more than a name as we see it today.

Yhwh definition in hebrew