What's in a Name? - Isaiah 1:2

2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth;
for the Lord has spoken:
“Children have I reared and brought up,
but they have rebelled against me.

God is speaking. But before we go on with that, let's take a closer look and get more specific. The Hebrew word most translated God in the Old Testament is Elohim. This is a plural form of El a word thought to have originally meant "strong one". In a couple of places Elohim is translated "gods". In Isaiah 1:2, however, we are looking at a word which has traditionally been rendered "Lord" in English translations (as opposed to "Lord" which is usually how the Hebrew Adonai is rendered). It is called the Tetragrammaton and is made up of four Hebrew letters whose English equivalents are roughly YHWH. These have been transliterated as "Jehovah" and "Yahweh" at different times, but the actual pronunciation is believed to have been lost because Jews considered it too holy to pronounce. For an in-depth look at this see the Wikipedia page entry which is actually pretty good.

The first time this name is revealed to man is when Moses is before the burning bush. You know the story. God tells Moses to go to Egypt and tell his people that he has heard their cries to him and that he is going to free them from bondage in Egypt. Moses balks, he has no confidence. He asks, "And when I go and the people ask me what is the name of this God who has sent me to them, what shall I say?" (my paraphrase) God responds, "Tell them 'I AM THAT I AM' has sent you to them. That's the English attempt at a translation for the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, sometimes, but rarely, transliterated into English as "Jehovah" or "Yahweh." The actual correct pronunciation has been lost to antiquity.

The important thing for our purposes is to know that this is the name God chose to be known by in his covenant relationship with Israel. He is the never-changing, ever-living One. He is about to speak to those who are his by covenant adoption. He is making a case against them, not a formal court-case as in a criminal trial, but more like an indictment. It also serves as a warning and ends in a reminder to them that he is a merciful God who gives grace and forgives. In the next post we will look at the implications of his opening words.