THIS inspired utterance of the Psalmist is one of many setting forth the unique character and pre-eminent dignity of the Messiah—David’s Son and David’s Lord. In order to get a glimpse of its significance, it may be necessary to offer an explanation of the Hebrew term, “Name,” as it has a meaning different from the English word, “name.” In English, “name” is the word by which a person or thing is distinguished from another person or thing without respect to the character of the person. In Hebrew, however, it is different.
“Name,” according to Prof. Davis, in a Dictionary of the Bible, “is often used in Hebrew in the sense of revealed character and essence. God swears by His great name to carry out His purpose (Jer. xliv. 26); that is, He swears by His attested power to accomplish His word. The name of God which is excellent in all the earth (Ps. viii. 1) is that impression of His being which is exhibited in Creation and redemption. The name of the God of Jacob which sets the King on high (Ps. xx. 1) is the manifested power of Israel’s God. The name of God was in the angel which led Israel through the wilderness (Ex. xxxiii. 21) because in him the revealed might and majesty of God Himself dwelt. The name of God dwelt in His sanctuary (II. Sam. vii. 13), the place where He manifested Himself. To know the ‘Name of God’ is to witness the manifestation of those attributes and apprehend that character which ‘the name’ denotes (Ex. vi. 3, with I. Kings xviii. 43; Ps. xci. 14; Isa. lii. 6; Lam. iv. 2; Jer. xvi. 21).”
Dr. Troelsta writes: “The ‘name of God’ is thus much more than ‘a name’ in our sense, and it is a fundamental error of the higher criticism, that far too little attention has been bestowed upon this point; and the terms Jehovah, El Shaddai, or Elohim, are too superficially treated as ordinary designations for the Supreme King, instead of being regarded in the revelatory aspect which the two first terms possess.
It is not unimportant to dwell here upon some of the suggestive passages which in the Pentateuch deal with ‘the Name.’ In Exod. xxiii. 21, we have words referring to the Angel whom Jehovah is sending before the face of His people to keep them in the way. In reference to the Angel, the Lord then says: ‘Take ye heed of Him, and hearken unto his voice: provoke Him not: for He will not pardon your transgressions; for my
* Psalm lxxii. 17.
Name is in Him.’ Such a mode of expression has for us no particular sense, but in the Old Testament it has indeed a clear significance. It means, by this Name, Jehovah reveals Himself. He is Jehovah for the people.
In the great Intercessory Prayer recorded in John xvii., the Lord says: ‘I manifested thy Name unto the men whom thou gavest me out of the world’; for even in this passage we are not to think the word Name as a sound as if the Lord Jesus had come to teach us a new word to designate God. It means that Christ in His whole Person, by His advent and His words in the world, by His passion and death is the revelation of God’s fatherly mercy; not merely as Prophet but also as Priest and King, He speaks these words: ‘I manifested thy Name.’ The thought involved in this is interpreted to us in other words, which we find in the prologue to John’s Gospel: ‘No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.’ This declaration means thus much more than an intellectual exposition; it is a making visible, a genuine making known.
‘I manifested thy Name’ is thus the same as ‘I brought thee, thy grace, and thy compassion, to thy people.’ Leviticus xxiv. 10-23 is of great significance. In this passage we read of a swearer, the son of an Israelite mother by an Egyptian father, who, on the occasion of a quarrel, ‘blasphemed the Name.’ It is not stated here, what later Jewish commentators have endeavoured to read into it, that he pronounced the Name aloud, and sinned by the fact of doing so, but that he blasphemed the Name. This later Jewish view had already made the Name of God into a sound, and the mere pronunciation of it was brought into association with superstitions, cryptic meanings of all sorts. But the fact that the young man blasphemed ‘the Name’ shows naturally that he blasphemed Jehovah Himself, and that he misapprehended, and scoffed at, His work and guidance.” (Troelsta’s Name of God in the Pentateuch.)
This monograph deserves a careful study by ministers and theological students. Dr. Troelsta points out that the higher critics lost their bearings in attributing to different authors those sections in the Pentateuch bearing the designations of God. The English translation of the monograph from the Dutch was published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Northumberland Avenue, London, W.C.
It will be seen from the foregoing that ‘the Name’ in the Hebrew sense is of profound significance. His name shall endure forever therefore means that Christ in the fulness of His person and work as the revelation of God will endure for ever—the same yesterday, to-day and forever.—D.B.
A dark night of long absence, a night of weary desertion may follow a Bethel visit. Jacob had not for twenty years such a time as he had at Bethel. There may be long twenty years’ travel between Bethel and Peniel. A dark night of temptations, fears, and discouragements may follow upon a sweet Bethel visit, and you may be grievously tempted to call all that you have met with a delusion; yea, to think that it was Satan that was working with thee, and not the living God.—Erskine.