By Joseph Shulam.
The Torah readings from the book of Exodus connect the story of the children of Israel’s exit from slavery to freedom and from a passive docile community of enslaved people to a victorious army taking the land of their inheritance, Canaan.
Our Torah portion of this Shabbat is called Vaera, and the reading is from Exodus 6:2-9:35.
From the prophets, the reading is from Ezekiel 28:25 – 29:21.
The reading from the New Testament is Luke 11:14- 22.
God announces to Moses that He revealed himself to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. However, God’s revelation to the patriarchs is limited. Here is the verse in the New King James Version:
“I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name LORD I was not known to them. I have also established My covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, in which they were strangers.“
(Exodus 6:3-4 NKJV)
The implications of these two verses are far-reaching and shocking. God is saying to Moses that His Holiest name (i.e., Jehovah – for Jews, this name ought not to be pronounced because this name is a pronouncement!) was only partially revealed to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In Genesis, God’s Holy Name appears 165 times. In the whole Bible, the Holy Name of God appears 6,663 times. The Holy name of God is in Hebrew in the rest of the Hebrew Bible.
Although the name “Jehovah” appears in Genesis 165 times, the statement of God was written many years after the events and revelations in the book of Genesis and reflects the later revelation after the events at Mount Sinai. At Sinai, in the desert, all of Israel and the non-Hebrew tribes heard God speaking from the mountain and pronouncing his Holy Names to all Israel and the foreign tribes that joined the Hebrew people.
How do you describe a progressive revelation? It is like a father with children around 3-7 years old. They don’t call their father “Sir Doctor PHD our honor Dr. George Livingstone, LDD, Professor. The children call their father “Papa”! Only when the children are older, in public, do they call their father “Sir Doctor PHD – LDD – Professor.”
In the same way, God reveals himself to those 10 generations in the book of Genesis as EL-Shaddai and as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and by His names of power that are also related to similar names that the neighboring nations called their Gods. In Genesis, we have the following names of God. Notice that most of these names don’t appear in the rest of the Bible, and “Jehovah” becomes the most important name of God:
Here are the names and titles of the God of Israel mentioned in the Book of Genesis, along with their references:
1. Elohim” אֱלֹהִים. “God” Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God (El him) created the heavens and the earth.”
2. El Elyon אֵל עֶלְיוֹן “-God Most High” Genesis 14:18-20: Melchizedek blesses Abram: “Blessed be Abram of God Most High (El Elyon), Possessor of heaven and earth.” “El-Elyon” is the name of the Canaanite pagan patron God of Jerusalem before David conquered Jerusalem and Solomon built the temple.
3. El Shaddai “אֵל שַׁדַּי-God Almighty” Genesis 17:1: “When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty (El Shaddai); walk before Me and be blameless.’” Also in Genesis 28:3; 35:11; 43:14; 48:3.
4. YHWH יהוה “The LORD” Genesis 2:4: “In the day that the LORD (YHWH) God made the earth and the heavens.” Appears consistently in Genesis (e.g., 4:26; 6:5-7; 12:1).
5. El Roi “אֵל רֳאִי—The God Who Sees Me” Genesis 16:13: Hagar calls God this name after He appears to her: “You are the God who sees me (El Roi).”
6. El Olam אֵל עוֹלָם “ The Everlasting God”. Genesis 21:33: Abraham plants a tamarisk tree in Beersheba and calls on “the name of the LORD, the Everlasting God (El Olam).”
7. Elohei HaShamayim “אֱלֹהֵי הַשָּׁמַיִם” God of Heaven – Genesis 24:7: Abraham refers to God as “the LORD, the God of heaven (Elohei HaShamayim), who took me from my father’s house.”
8. Elohei Avraham, Elohei Yitzhak, Elohei Yaakov (אֱלֹהֵי אַבְרָהָם, אֱלֹהֵי יִצְחָק, אֱלֹהֵי יַעֲקֹב) – “ The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”. Genesis 28:13: God identifies Himself to Jacob: “I am the LORD, the God of Abraham (Elohei Avraham), your father, and the God of Isaac (Elohei Yitzhak).”
9. “Pahad Yitzhak פַּחַד יִצְחָק – -The Fear of Isaac” “Genesis 31:42, 31:53: Jacob refers to God as “the Fear of Isaac.”
10. Elohei Avi אֱלֹהֵי אָבִי – “The God of My Father”. Genesis 31:5: Jacob says to his wives: “The God of my father (Elohei Avi) has been with me.”
These names highlight various aspects of God’s nature as Creator, Sustainer, Almighty, Eternal, Provider, and Personal Covenant God. Each name or title reflects a specific attribute of God revealed through His interactions with individuals and situations in Genesis.
God has revealed Himself to His representatives and torch carriers in history as needed. As you see above, I only listed the names found in Genesis. Exodus 6 shows that we still cannot understand God’s full scope and magnitude even in the 21st century. Our God is the Creator of our universe, not only this earth but the sun, moon, and the stars above, including the Milky Way with its millions of stars.
God in Exodus 6 reveals to Moses that a new face of God’s identity is revealed that expresses the core of the existence of all things on Earth and in the Cosmos and beyond! A name of God that rules the oceans and the wind and plagues the life above the waters of the Nile and the mountains of Mount Sinai and around it. This power of God and the ability to apply it on Pharaoh, the river Nile, and the sea itself.
We all must remember this principle that even though we have the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, the scripture still does not reveal the whole of God’s power, abilities, and nature. As a child, I could not perceive or understand what my father’s work was. He came like Santa Claus, loaded with wonderful gifts for all the family, and disappeared like the Phantom of the Opera! Only many years later, when I was already married and with children after my father’s death, I understood what the job of my father was—the same with the word of the New Testament.
All serious disciples of Yeshua and Bible students must understand this text’s upshot and teaching. You can’t build a tall building of doctrine and theological axioms to divide and rule people based on a partial picture of God’s revelation. There is actually no need for systematic theology because systematic theology is anybody’s dog that will go hunting with him.
What the western mosquito trap has done in the last nearly 2000 years is divide the One Body of Christ into hundreds if not thousands of denominations and sub-denominations—and denominations inside denominations. Because systematic theology is the product of men, it cannot consider the scope of God’s immensity and the following truth!
Humanity pretends to act as if we fully know God. Many religious leaders manipulate people into giving money to their church or kissing the ring of their local pope! We are like grasshoppers in the eyes of His angels. All we should do is keep blessing each other and praying for each other to heal this sick and rotten world, hoping and praying for the return of Yeshua, our Messiah and the King of Jews. Bring Him back to Zion to restore the divine order of humanity that is captive in the hands of our flesh and unable to imagine that God is going to dwell under the roofs of our churches.
Reread Solomon’s words below, as he dedicated the temple to understand that we are God’s glory of Creation and, simultaneously, realize that God’s revelation is progressive. We await Yeshua’s return to Zion to finish the last stages. The final touch of passing before sitting on top of the mountain with Yeshua and those whom He sanctified and drinking a good cup of Arabic Coffee, hearing David play the harp, and Miriam, the sister of Moses, dancing and Solomon sharing riddles and intelligent, funny stories:
“But who is able to build Him a temple, since heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him? Who am I then, that I should build Him a temp e, except to burn sacrifice before Him?
“But will God indeed dwell with men on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens can t contain You. How much less this temple which I have built!
You alone are the LORD; You have made heaven, The heaven of heavens, with all their host,
The earth and everything on it, the seas and all that is in them, And You preserve them all. The host of heaven worships You.
“To Him who rides on the heaven of heavens, which were of old! Indeed, He sends out His voice, a mighty voice .” (2 Chronicles 2:6; 6:18; Nehemiah 9:6; Psalm 68:33 NKJV)
I promise that God willing, the rest of Moses’s story and the most interesting part of the exodus from Egypt will follow in the next Parasha from Exodus. Parasha of Bo—Go to that is the grand finale and the end of Israel’s slavery in Egypt.