The chapter of Judaism Reclaimed relating to parashat Va’eira examines the phenomenon and use of the various names of God from the perspective of Jewish tradition. The parashah opens by contrasting the names through which God revealed Himself to Moshe with those used previously in His revelations to the Avot (the Tetragrammaton as opposed to El Shaddai).
Names are commonly used by people as a means of identification, to distinguish between things which are easily confused with each other. This could create the impression that the various names of God in the Torah refer to a multiplicity of gods. The concept of a name in the Torah, however, can be seen to represent a more profound concept. The Torah’s first naming ceremony sees Adam presented with the entire animal kingdom and proceed to issue a name to each species. Ramban teaches that far from labelling the animals for the sake of convenience, Adam was declaring their defining features. In doing so, he also recognized the distinction between mankind and the animals (as the Torah observes: “he found no one to help him who corresponded to him”). The naming of people in Tanach is consistent with this principle, with primary characters generally bearing descriptive appellations. This is particularly the case with the Avot, the twelve sons of Yaakov, and Moshe; Avraham, Sarah, and Yaakov even undergo a change of name to reflect a new dimension of their religious calling. In reference to “Naval,” it is written explicitly that his character matched his name. This parashah’s conversation between God and Moshe, in which God describes how He relates to people by using different names, demonstrates that God’s names too are to be understood in this descriptive manner.
While names of God cannot depict His true essence—a concept which is understood to lie beyond the scope of human comprehension—they can convey the ways in which God allows humans to perceive and relate to Him. In his Kuzari, Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi details the implications of the most common names of God. “Elokim” represents God as revealing Himself to man through the many powerful forces of nature, hence that noun’s plural form. Whereas pagan nations thought of these apparently disparate forces of nature as operating independently and therefore being worthy of worship in their own right, the Jews have been shown that these forces are united in their subordination to God: “You were shown [at Sinai], in order to know, that God is the source and Master of all the forces of nature”—“El Elyon,” or as Yitro says, “gadol…mikol HaElohim.” The four-letter “Tetragrammaton,” by contrast, refers to a “personal” God, who guides people and relates to them providentially. An earlier chapter of Judaism Reclaimed traces the use of these two divine names through the book of Bereishit, focusing on how they reflect and impact on the particular dynamics of the various narratives.
Elokim and the Tetragrammaton, the two principal and complementary names of God, are both found in the opening verse of parashat Va’eira. In response to Moshe’s complaints that the fortunes of the Jewish People had only deteriorated as a result of his divinely-instructed intervention, Elokim tells Moshe “Ani Hashem [I am Tetragrammaton].” Rabbi S. R. Hirsch explains that this sentence contains all that Moshe needs to know: the years of God’s concealment within the forces of nature as Elokim were about to give way to His revelation through the attribute of personal hashgachah and the intervention of the Tetragrammaton in order to rescue the Jews from slavery.
The subsequent verse describes how God had previously related to the Avot through the name El Shaddai rather than the Tetragrammaton. Ramban and Rabbeinu Bachye write that El Shaddai refers to the less dramatic way in which God related personally to the Avot, by manipulating rather than overruling the natural order of the world. The Exodus from Egypt, however, represented a watershed moment in history in which God exhibited His mastery and control over all aspects of Creation. The suspension, on behalf of the Jewish People, of many laws of nature over the next forty years would be recounted faithfully through generations of Jews, allowing the nation to relate forever to its personal and all-powerful God, the God who introduced himself as “Ani Hashem.”
Ultimately, God’s essence is understood to be unified and unchanging, with His different names referring only to how humans perceive and relate to Him in a complex and imperfect world. The prophet Zechariah promises that “bayom hahu”—in the Messianic era where profound knowledge of God will be widespread and prophecy commonplace “God and His name will be One”. This is the promise that all mankind will be able to comprehend how these apparently different Divine attributes and modes of revelation coalesce and derive from a single, unified source.
The chapter of Judaism Reclaimed expands this discussion to examine the names of God used in the earlier passage of the Burning Bush, before contrasting the approaches of Rambam and mystics to the notion that God’s name as used in amulets and mezuzot contains protective powers.
First posted on Facebook 22 January 2020, here.
