Did Abraham Know God by the Name Yahweh?
Among the most searching questions that arise from a careful reading of Scripture is one that emerges from an apparent tension between the Book of Genesis and the Book of Exodus. Throughout the patriarchal narratives, the divine name Yahweh (יהוה, YHWH) appears again and again. Abraham builds altars to Yahweh, calls upon the name of Yahweh, and hears Yahweh speak to him directly. Yet when God later reveals Himself to Moses at the threshold of the Exodus, He says something that seems, at first hearing, to overturn all of this: "I am Yahweh. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by My name Yahweh I was not known to them" (Exodus 6:2–3).
How can both testimonies stand
together? Did Abraham know God by the name Yahweh, or was that name unveiled
for the first time only in the days of Moses? The question is not a trifling
one, for it touches the very heart of how God makes Himself known to His
people. And the answer, when we listen patiently to the whole counsel of
Scripture, does not force us to choose between Genesis and Exodus. Rather, it
invites us into a deeper understanding of what the Bible means when it speaks
of knowing the name of God. The evidence of Genesis strongly indicates that
Abraham knew and used the name Yahweh. What was truly new in the time of Moses
was not the sound of the name upon human lips, but the fullness of what that
name would come to mean, disclosed through God's covenant faithfulness and His
mighty acts of redemption.
Yahweh in the Life of Abraham
The name Yahweh does not appear
only here and there in the story of Abraham, as though it were an incidental
intrusion. It is woven through the whole fabric of his life. Indeed, the
practice of calling upon this name reaches back even before the flood, for
already in the days of Enosh, the grandson of Adam, "men began to call
upon the name of Yahweh" (Genesis 4:26). By the time we come to Abraham,
this worship has a long history behind it.
When Abram first entered the land
of Canaan and pitched his tent between Bethel and Ai, "there he built an
altar to Yahweh and called upon the name of Yahweh" (Genesis 12:8). When
famine had driven him into Egypt and he returned to that same place, we read
once more that "there Abram called on the name of Yahweh" (Genesis
13:4). After his victory over the confederation of kings, standing before
Melchizedek, he lifted his oath to heaven with these words: "I have lifted
up my hand to Yahweh, God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth"
(Genesis 14:22). This was no unfamiliar deity to Abram; it was the God whose
name he invoked in worship, in prayer, and in solemn covenant.
More striking still, the name
proceeds from the mouth of God Himself in His speech to Abram. In the great
covenant of the pieces, God declares, "I am Yahweh who brought you out of
Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess" (Genesis 15:7).
Here God identifies Himself to Abram not merely as a nameless power but by this
very name, and He roots that name in an act of deliverance already accomplished
— the bringing of Abram out of Ur, a foreshadowing in miniature of the far
greater bringing-out that would one day deliver his descendants from Egypt.
Abraham also learned to know God
through the names that unfolded His character in the moments of Abraham's
greatest need. He heard God announce Himself as El Shaddai, God Almighty:
"I am the Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless" (Genesis
17:1). Near Beersheba, having made a covenant of peace, "he called there
on the name of Yahweh, the Everlasting God" (Genesis 21:33). And upon
Mount Moriah, when the ram was caught in the thicket and Isaac was spared,
Abraham gave the place a name that would echo down the generations:
"Yahweh-Yireh," which is to say, "Yahweh will provide"
(Genesis 22:14). Even Hagar, the servant woman cast into the wilderness,
encountered this same God and named Him from her experience of His mercy,
calling Him "the God who sees me" (Genesis 16:13). And when Abraham
sent his servant to seek a bride for Isaac, that servant prayed to
"Yahweh, God of my master Abraham" (Genesis 24:12), so thoroughly was
the name bound up with the household of faith.
These passages, taken together,
make it exceedingly difficult to conclude that Abraham did not know whatsoever
of the name Yahweh. Genesis presents him to us not as a man groping after an
unknown God, but as one who worshiped Yahweh, called upon His name, trusted His
promises, and was drawn by Him into an everlasting covenant. Why, then, does
God tell Moses that He was not known to the patriarchs by His name
Yahweh?
Understanding Exodus 6:3 in Its Context
The pivotal words come at a
moment of crisis. Moses had gone to Pharaoh, and instead of relief, the burdens
laid upon Israel had only grown heavier. The people had turned against Moses,
and Moses in his distress had turned to God. It is precisely here that God
answers: "God spoke to Moses and said to him, 'I am Yahweh. I appeared to
Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by My name Yahweh I was
not known to them'" (Exodus 6:2–3).
Torn from its setting, this verse
can easily be made to say that the patriarchs had never so much as heard the
word Yahweh. But the verses that immediately follow gently guide us toward a
richer meaning, for God does not go on to speak about vocabulary. He goes on to
speak about covenant and about redemption. "I also established My covenant
with them," He says, and then, "I have remembered My covenant."
Upon that remembrance He builds a cascade of promises, each beginning with His
own sovereign "I will": "I will bring you out from under the
burdens of the Egyptians; I will deliver you from their bondage; I will redeem
you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments; I will take you to
Myself for a people, and I will be to you a God" (Exodus 6:6–7).
Then comes the phrase that
unlocks the whole passage: "You shall know that I am Yahweh your God, who
brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians" (Exodus 6:7). Now,
the Israelites had already heard the name Yahweh; Moses had spoken it to them,
and they were the children of the very patriarchs to whom that name had been
familiar. So when God promises, "You shall know that I am Yahweh," He
plainly cannot mean, "You will finally learn how to pronounce My
name." They knew the name already. What He means is something far deeper:
they were about to experience, in their own flesh and history, the
reality that the name declares. The knowledge in view is not the acquiring of a
word, but the encountering of a Person in the midst of His saving work.
What It Means to "Know" the Name
Everything turns on the biblical
sense of the verb "to know." The Hebrew word yadaʿ (ידע) reaches far beyond the storing of information in the mind. In
the language of Scripture, to know is to recognize, to enter into relationship,
to experience, to be bound to another by intimate encounter. It is the word
used for the deepest union between husband and wife, and it is the word used
for Israel's covenant bond with her God.
This is why the great refrain of
the Exodus is not "the Egyptians shall be told My name" but "the
Egyptians shall know that I am Yahweh, when I stretch out My hand against
Egypt" (Exodus 7:5). The Egyptians could have been informed of the name
Yahweh in a single sentence; that would have cost them nothing and changed
nothing. But God says they will know Him through the plagues, through
the outstretched hand, through the shattering of Pharaoh's pride. The knowledge
He promises is not linguistic but experiential; it is revelation through mighty
acts, wrought upon the stage of history for all to see.
The same profound sense of
knowing runs through the whole of Scripture. "Those who know Your
name," sings the psalmist, "will put their trust in You" (Psalm
9:10). Surely this cannot mean that those who can merely pronounce the four Hebrew
letters will trust Him, for many have spoken the name without faith. To know
His name here is to know the God whom the name reveals — His character, His
faithfulness, His power, His mercy, His unfailing trustworthiness. So too the
Lord promises through the prophet, "Therefore My people shall know My
name; in that day they shall know that it is I who speak" (Isaiah 52:6),
and again, "I will this once cause them to know My hand and My might, and
they shall know that My name is Yahweh" (Jeremiah 16:21). In every case,
to know the name is to know the One who bears it, made manifest through what He
does.
To know the name of God, then, is
never simply to possess a divine label. It is to know Him as He unveils Himself
through that name.
Abraham Knew Yahweh as the God of Promise
Abraham truly knew Yahweh. He
heard His voice in the night and at the door of his tent. He received His
promises and staggered not at them through unbelief but was strong in faith,
giving glory to God (Romans 4:20). He worshiped Him, walked before Him, and was
called the friend of God. He believed Yahweh, "and it was accounted to him
for righteousness" (Genesis 15:6). None of this was illusion or shadow; it
was genuine communion with the living God.
And yet the shape of Abraham's
knowledge was bound up almost entirely with promise. The great matters between
him and God lay still in the future: descendants as numberless as the stars and
the sand, a land not yet possessed, a nation not yet born, a blessing not yet
poured out upon all the families of the earth. Abraham believed the promises,
but he did not live to see their national fulfillment. He died in faith,
"not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off"
(Hebrews 11:13). He did not witness the plagues of Egypt. He did not see the
blood struck upon the doorposts on the night of the Passover. He did not walk
through the divided waters of the Red Sea, nor stand trembling before the
smoking mountain of Sinai, nor behold the day when Yahweh publicly took an
enslaved people and made them His own nation before the eyes of the world.
Abraham knew Yahweh who promises.
The generation of Moses would come to know Yahweh who fulfills — the God
who remembers His covenant, who redeems with an outstretched arm, who acts
openly in history to accomplish what He had spoken centuries before. This is
the distinction that Exodus 6:3 sets before us. The patriarchs had known God
chiefly under the aspect of El Shaddai, God Almighty, the all-sufficient One
who guards and blesses a wandering household and makes it fruitful. Now that
same God was about to be known under the aspect of His name Yahweh in its full
covenantal power, as the faithful Redeemer of a whole people.
From Covenant Promise to Covenant Fulfillment
The weight of Exodus 6 falls not
merely upon the name but upon the deeds that the name was about to perform.
Notice how the passage moves forward on the strength of God's own actions: I
will bring you out; I will deliver you; I will redeem you; I will take you as
My people; I will be your God. And only then, resting upon this foundation
of accomplished redemption, comes the promise, "You shall know that I am
Yahweh your God."
The meaning packed within the
name was about to be unfolded before Israel and before the nations, not in
words alone but in the events of history. The patriarchs had known Yahweh as
the covenant-making God, the God who gives His word and binds Himself by
oath. Israel was about to know Yahweh as the covenant-keeping and
covenant-redeeming God, the God who brings His ancient word to pass in
fire and blood and deliverance.
This does not in the least imply
that Abraham's knowledge of God was deficient or false. It means only that the
revelation of God is progressive, unfolding by stages across the generations.
God reveals Himself truly at every stage, so that no one who knew Him then knew
a lesser or different God. Yet each later act discloses more fully what the
earlier promises had held in reserve. The seed sown in Abraham's day came to
its harvest in the days of Moses, and the God who had said "I will"
to Abraham now said "I am doing it" to Israel.
Considering the Other Interpretation
Honesty requires us to
acknowledge that some readers understand Exodus 6:3 more strictly, taking it to
mean that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not in fact know the name Yahweh at
all, and that the name entered Israel's worship only through Moses. On this
reading, Genesis uses the name Yahweh in an anticipatory way: the inspired
narrator, writing after the name had become Israel's own, identifies the God
who appeared to the patriarchs by the name his readers already revered.
Such retrospective naming is a
familiar feature of historical narrative, and we should not dismiss it lightly.
A writer may well describe an earlier person or place by a name that only came
into use later, so that his readers will recognize what he means. If the name
Yahweh appeared in Genesis only in the narrator's own descriptions, this
interpretation would rest on firm ground.
But Genesis presents a difficulty
that this reading cannot easily overcome, for the name does not remain in the
narrator's mouth alone. It stands within the accounts of worship, upon the lips
of Abraham himself as he calls on the name of Yahweh, and — most weighty of all
— within the direct speech of God. It is God who says to Abram, "I am
Yahweh who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans" (Genesis 15:7). To
reduce all of this to mere later editing strains against the plain texture of
the text. Therefore, while the retrospective interpretation deserves a
respectful hearing, the fuller weight of biblical evidence leans toward the
other explanation: Abraham knew the name, but the full covenant-redemptive
significance of that name had not yet been displayed upon the stage of history.
The Name Reveals the Person
Behind this whole discussion lies
a truth that governs the way Scripture speaks of God from beginning to end. A
name, in the biblical world, is never a bare label attached to a thing from the
outside. It expresses identity, character, authority, presence, reputation. To
act "in the name" of someone is to act with his authority; to profane
a name is to dishonor the person; to call upon a name is to appeal to the very
being of the one who bears it. When God proclaims His name before Moses on Sinai,
He does not spell out letters; He unveils His nature: "Yahweh, Yahweh, a
God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and
faithfulness, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression
and sin" (Exodus 34:6–7). The name and the character are one.
This is why God can say through
the psalmist, "I will protect him, because he knows My name" (Psalm
91:14). To know the name is to cling to the God who reveals Himself by it. And
it is why the whole movement of biblical revelation can be described as the
ever-fuller making-known of the divine name — not the adding of new syllables,
but the deepening disclosure of who God is.
The Progressive Unfolding of Yahweh
God did not pour out the whole of
His self-revelation in a single moment. He unfolded it patiently, through His
words and His works, across the long span of sacred history. Abraham knew
Yahweh as the God of promise and the Almighty who guards His own. Moses came to
know Yahweh through a still greater unveiling of His covenant faithfulness and
His redeeming power at the burning bush, where God declared His name from the
fire: "I AM WHO I AM. . . . Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of
Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My
name forever" (Exodus 3:14–15). Here God binds the name Yahweh to His own
eternal, self-existent Being, the One who simply is, dependent on
nothing, faithful through all generations, for "I am Yahweh, I do not
change" (Malachi 3:6).
Israel came to know Yahweh
through the Exodus, the covenant at Sinai, the giving of the Law, the pillar of
cloud and fire, and His abiding presence in their midst. The prophets came to
know Him more deeply still, in His holiness and His justice, His severity and
His tender mercy, His purpose to save. And the whole of this unfolding
revelation reaches its fullness at last in the eternal Word, our Lord Jesus
Christ, in whom the God who spoke to Abraham speaks His final and complete word
to the world. When the Lord Jesus stood among the Jews and said, "Before
Abraham was, I AM" (John 8:58), He took upon His own lips the very name
revealed at the burning bush, declaring Himself to be the same Yahweh who had
walked with Abraham and delivered Israel.
So it was that Christ could pray
to the Father, "I have manifested Your name to the people whom You gave Me
out of the world" (John 17:6). He was not teaching His disciples a word
they had never heard, for Israel had cherished the name of God for many
centuries. He was manifesting the Father's name by revealing the Father
Himself, so that He could say, "Whoever has seen Me has seen the
Father" (John 14:9). Once again, to manifest the name is to make known the
Person who bears it.
The movement of Scripture, then,
is not merely from an unknown name to a revealed one. It is something far more
profound: from a name known, to that name ever more deeply revealed,
historically manifested in mighty acts, and at last personally experienced by
those whom God draws to Himself.
Conclusion
Did Abraham know God by the name
Yahweh? The witness of Genesis strongly indicates that he did. Abraham called
upon the name of Yahweh; he worshiped Yahweh; he spoke of Yahweh and swore by
Him; and God Himself said to Abraham, "I am Yahweh." Exodus 6:3 need
not, and on the fuller evidence should not, be taken to mean that Abraham had
never heard or used the name. It means rather that Abraham had not known Yahweh
through the great historical manifestation that was now, in the days of Moses,
about to unfold.
Abraham knew Yahweh the Promiser.
Moses and the generation of the Exodus would come to know Yahweh the Redeemer —
the God who remembered His covenant, humbled Pharaoh, shattered the yoke of
bondage, and took a slave people to Himself as His own treasured possession.
The difference lay not in learning at last what God's name was, but in coming
to know, far more fully, the God who bears that name.
This distinction should guide us
whenever we ponder the divine name in Scripture. The revelation of the name
Yahweh is never merely a matter of four Hebrew letters or of how they are to be
pronounced. The name points us beyond itself to the living God — the One who
discloses His character through His words, demonstrates His faithfulness
through His works, brings His covenant promises to their appointed fulfillment,
and makes Himself known to His people through the whole course of their history
and, at the last, in the face of His Son. To know the name of Yahweh,
therefore, is in the end nothing less than to know Yahweh Himself.
Hegumen Abraam Sleman
For a fuller treatment of this subject, more information
can be found in my book, The Holy Name of God: A Biblical Perspective,
which traces the revelation, meaning, and reverence of the name Yahweh
throughout Scripture. It is available on Amazon in paperback, hardcover, and
Kindle editions: https://a.co/d/0hlhkqCe
#HolyNameOfGod #Yahweh #NameOfGod
#BibleStudy #CopticOrthodox
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