The Name Beyond Names
YHWH.
We know this name. We speak this name. We rarely stop to think about what this name means.
Not what it means in the academic sense – etymology, pronunciation, theological significance. We have libraries full of that. I mean: what does it mean that the God of all creation chose to give us a name? That the Incomparable One, who needs nothing from us, who owes us nothing, decided to be known?
A name is a gift. It creates the possibility of relationship. You cannot be in relationship with “the force,” with “the ground of being,” with cosmic energy. You can only be in relationship with a person who has a name.
But YHWH is not a name like other names.
We name our children to distinguish them – this David, not that David. We name our streets, our pets, our storms. Names create categories, establish identity within a class of similar things.
YHWH doesn’t work this way. There is no other instance. No category to join. No class of deities from which to distinguish himself.
The Name is not a label. It is a declaration.
I AM.
Moses understood this, standing barefoot before the burning bush. “Who shall I say sent me?” he asked. A reasonable question. The elders would want credentials. A name they could verify. References they could check.
God’s answer shattered categories: “I AM WHO I AM.”
Not “I am YHWH, son of El, from the divine council of the Canaanites.” Not “I am the god of Abraham – you may have heard of me.” Simply: I will be who I will be. Tell them I AM sent you.
This is not information to manage God. In the ancient world, knowing someone’s name often meant having power over them. Names could be invoked, manipulated, used in ritual and magic. To know a god’s name was to have a claim on that god’s attention, perhaps even control.
But YHWH’s self-naming works differently. The Name is given freely, not extracted. It creates relationship, not control. God refuses to be managed even while making himself known. This is invitation to encounter him, not information to manipulate him. The Name that refuses to be pinned down while freely giving itself. The declaration that creates space for relationship while preserving mystery.
I confess, I struggle to understand how this works. How a name can be both gift and refusal. Both revelation and veil. How knowing the Name makes God more present and more mysterious at once.
But perhaps that’s the point. The Name isn’t a formula to decode. It’s a Person to know.
Sinai – The Unapproachable Who Invites
The Name declares itself most powerfully at Sinai.
Thunder. Lightning. Smoke. The mountain trembling. The people trembling. “Let God not speak to us, lest we die.” (Exod 20:18-20) They understood something we often forget: the Holy One is not safe. Cannot be approached. Will not be managed.
Yet even as the mountain burned, even as the trumpet grew louder, even as Moses ascended into the thick darkness where God was – there, in that terror, was invitation.
“Come up to me on the mountain,” God said. Not to Moses alone. To Aaron. To Nadab and Abihu. To seventy elders of Israel. “Come up.”
And they went. They saw – what did they see? They saw God. The text says it plainly: “they saw the God of Israel.” (Exod 24:9-11) But what they describe is not his face. It’s what was under his feet. A pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness.
They saw enough. They saw from below, looking up. They saw the foundation, the footstool, the place where he stood. And it was more glorious than anything earth could offer.
Then – and this is where I stop breathing every time I read it – they ate and drank.
A meal. Before God. The elders of Israel, eating and drinking, while God was present. The unapproachable One had invited them to his table.
Later, Moses would ask for more. “Show me your glory,” he pleaded.
God’s answer? “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” (Exod 33:19-21) But then, with extravagant grace: “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back.”
The Name reveals by concealing. Invites by warning. Draws near while remaining other.
This is the Name that cannot be approached except by invitation. This is the Name that kills and makes alive. This is the Name before which we can only remove our shoes and fall on our faces – and then, impossibly, eat a meal.
Horeb – The Whisper in the Cave
Centuries later, another prophet stood at another mountain. The same mountain, perhaps – Sinai, Horeb, the mountain of God. But this time, no fire. No thunder. No trumpet blast.
Elijah was running. From Jezebel. From his own despair. “I alone am left,” he told God (1 Kings 19:9-11). The enemies were too many. The faithful too few. The battle too hard.
God told him to stand at the mouth of the cave.
Then came the wind. Great and strong, tearing the mountains apart, shattering rocks. But YHWH was not in the wind.
Then came an earthquake. The mountain shaking, just as it had for Moses. But YHWH was not in the earthquake.
Then came fire. Familiar, expected – the God who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, who descended on Sinai in flames. But YHWH was not in the fire.
Then came a sound. The text struggles to describe it. A still small voice. A gentle whisper. The sound of sheer silence.
And Elijah wrapped his face in his cloak.
The Name that spoke in thunder at Sinai now speaks in whisper at Horeb. The Name that revealed itself in fire and smoke now reveals itself in silence. The same Name. The same God. But always surprising. Always beyond our categories. Always refusing to be domesticated.
“I have reserved seven thousand in Israel,” God said. “All whose knees have not bowed to Baal.”
Seven thousand. Not one. Not alone. Seven thousand who had heard the whisper. Seven thousand who knelt at the voice that came in silence.
The Name speaks however it chooses. In thunder or whisper. In fire or silence. In trumpet blast or gentle breeze. We do not control it. We cannot predict it. We can only listen. Remove our shoes. Kneel.
Elohim – The Mighty One
The Name comes with a title. YHWH Elohim. Often translated “the LORD God,” which obscures what’s happening in the Hebrew.
Elohim is a curious word. Grammatically plural in form – “mighty ones” or “gods.” It can be used that way. The gods of the nations. The divine council. Even human judges acting with God’s authority.
But when Elohim refers to YHWH – when it names the God of Israel – something different happens. The verbs become singular. The adjectives become singular. The grammar insists: this is not “mighty ones plural.” This is THE Mighty One.
“In the beginning, Elohim created.” (Gen 1:1) The verb is singular. Bara – he created. Not “they created.” One divine act. One Creator. One source of all that is.
This matters more than we might realize. Because the declaration of the Name – I AM – comes with the declaration of singular agency. YHWH alone creates. YHWH alone sustains. YHWH alone is worthy of worship.
There is no “divine committee” creating together. No council of gods deliberating and executing. When YHWH speaks creation into being, he speaks alone. “Let there be light” – and there was light. His word. His power. His will.
Later, in Genesis 1, we hear “Let us make man in our image.” The grammar shifts to plural for a moment. Perhaps the divine council is in view – “Let us deliberate about this unique creature.” But when the creating happens? “So God created man in his own image” – singular verb, singular action, singular Creator.
The title Elohim, attached to the Name YHWH, declares: THE Mighty One. Not mighty ones among many. Not the greatest of the gods. The Mighty One who has no peer, no rival, no equal.
This is the God who says I AM. The God who needs no other category. The God who is beyond all categories.
The Name Given and Shared
And then – impossibly, scandalously, gloriously – the Name includes another.
Jesus of Nazareth, standing in the temple courts, argued with the religious leaders about Abraham. “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day,” Jesus said (John 8:56-59).
They scoffed. “You are not yet fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham?”
Jesus answered with two words that should have been blasphemy: “Before Abraham was, I AM.”
Not “I existed.” Not “I was there.” I AM. The Name. The declaration. The words that Moses heard at the burning bush.
They picked up stones to stone him. They understood exactly what he claimed.
Paul would later write about this mystery: “God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow… and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” (Phil 2:9-11)
The name above every name. The Name. YHWH. And at this name – Jesus’ name, which has become inseparable from THE Name – every knee bows. Every tongue confesses. The worship that belongs to YHWH alone is given to Jesus.
This is not a creature being elevated to divine status. This is not God manifesting himself through a human agent. This is something more profound and more mysterious: the Name that declared “I AM” at the burning bush now includes another who says “I AM.”
John saw it in his vision on Patmos: “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Rev 1:7-9) And later: Jesus saying “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (Rev 22:13-15)
The Name shared. Not divided, not diminished, not distributed to multiple beings. The early Christians, all of them Jews who prayed the Shema daily – “Hear O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one” – found themselves worshiping Jesus. Praying to Jesus. Baptizing in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. They didn’t abandon Jewish monotheism. They encountered the Name in a way that expanded their understanding of what YHWH’s oneness could mean.
I’ve written elsewhere about how the church came to articulate this mystery – how Father, Son, and Spirit share the one Name while remaining distinct. That’s a longer conversation. Here, I simply want to note: the Name Jesus claimed is the same Name Moses heard at the burning bush. The Name that created alone created through the Word who was with God and was God. The I AM who cannot be approached except by invitation now invites us through Jesus.
The Name remains one. The Name includes more than one. This is mystery, not contradiction. This is the Name refusing our categories while revealing itself more fully than we could have imagined.
Living Before the Name
So what do we do with this Name?
We cannot manage it. Cannot decode it like a puzzle. Cannot reduce it to etymology or grammar or systematic theology.
We can only do what Moses did: remove our shoes, for the ground we stand on is holy.
We can only do what the elders did: accept the invitation to draw near, knowing we are unworthy.
We can only do what Elijah did: wrap our faces and listen for the whisper in the silence.
We can only do what the disciples did: worship the one who speaks the Name.
The Name is gift. The Name is mystery. The Name is invitation. The Name is terror and comfort, judgment and grace, transcendence and intimacy all at once.
YHWH. The Name beyond names. The Name that refuses categories while creating relationship. The Name that conceals while revealing. The Name that includes Father, Son, and Spirit in a unity we cannot fully comprehend but can only worship.
This is not a label to apply. This is not a formula to master. This is a Person to know. A God to encounter. A Name before which we can only fall on our faces and whisper: Holy. Holy. Holy.
And then, by extravagant grace, to hear the invitation: “Come up. Stand near me. Eat and drink before me. See my glory. Know my Name.”
I AM WHO I AM.
And we are invited into relationship with this incomprehensible, glorious, holy Name.
Works Consulted for this Text
Primary Sources:
- The Holy Bible (various translations referenced for nuance)
Secondary Sources:
Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008.
Bauckham, Richard. God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.
Brueggemann, Walter. Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997.
Childs, Brevard S. The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary. Old Testament Library. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1974.
Fretheim, Terence E. Exodus. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991.
Heiser, Michael S. The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015.
Hurtado, Larry W. Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.
Levenson, Jon D. Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible. Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985.
Wright, N.T. Paul and the Faithfulness of God. Christian Origins and the Question of God, vol. 4. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013.
Notes:
- These are the major scholarly works that informed the theological framework of this piece
- Additional scholarly works referenced in our discussion but not directly influencing the final draft: Collins (Genesis commentary), Walton (Ancient Near Eastern Thought), Ellingworth (Hebrews commentary), Attridge (Hebrews commentary), Cross (Canaanite Religion), Witherington (Hebrews commentary)