First published on this blog in April 2017 and now continuing yesterday’s Maundy Thursday Musing:

According to Steve Maltz, author of God’s Signature, the only time the sacred, personal Name of God was spoken by the ancient Israelites was during worship in the Temple in Jerusalem, and especially on the Day of Atonement when the High Priest pronounced it ten times.

The Talmud has many warnings about using the most holy Name – it is also regarded as having special powers of healing.  Apparently knowledge of its pronunciation was lost after the fall of the Temple in AD70 prophesied by Jesus Christ.

The knock-on effect of that event, together with the Roman Church’s withdrawal in the third Century of financial support for churches in the Holy Land founded by Jesus’ own ‘kith and kin’ (‘desponyni’), was the great loss of a full understanding of the Church’s Hebraic roots. Hence the confusion and doctrinal disagreements over Jesus’ claim, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:10).

Digging deeper we encounter an astonishing revelation of that double-identity!

From translations of Hebrew, the post-Shakespeare English-speaking world referred to God’s Name as ‘Jehovah’ or ‘LORD’ (letter ‘J’ was then starting to replace ‘i’). However, Jews preferred well-known descriptive titles such as ‘Elohim’ – God, in all the fullness of His attributes; ‘El Shaddai’ – Almighty; ‘El Sabaoth’ – Lord of heavenly hosts; or Adonai’ – Lord, and more often than not the reverent term ‘Ha Shem’ (The Name) sufficed.

Scribes, or sopher, needed to take special care in praying before writing the holy name, which must be done without interruption. Were a mistake made, it must not be corrected but the whole page discarded and the page restarted. Numbering had to be carefully handled too because Hebrew characters represented both letters and numbers. So the logical way of writing 15 is to add a yod (ie 10) to a hey (ie 5) and likewise for 16 (a yod to a vav). But this never happened because, as part of the sacred name, they could accidentally be read as this name. The Holy Name is shown below, but read from right to left:

“Yod-Hey-Vav-Hay” first appears in Genesis 2:4 statement that ‘The Book of Beginnings’ is the account of, “When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens”.

This Name was first revealed when Moses encountered God in the burning bush after he’d asked Him whom should he tell the Israelites had sent him to get them out of their slavery in Egypt.

“This takes the meaning of “I will be”…(which) shares a similar three-consonant root with YHVY in Hey-Vav-Hey and Hey-Yod-Hey…and as they’re related are both ways of describing God”.  Hence my liking of describing God as “Always” and “Now”, the latter being used by Charlie Shamp too.

HOLY FATHER-SON UNION REVEALED & THE CRUCIFIXION FORETOLD

As in those preceding links, literary Hebrew developed out of pictographic forms that represent gestures and their meanings. We logically surmise both original visual and later written forms were known to and, therefore, used by the Lord in communicating with Abraham and his descendants through Issac and Jacob, and used by Moses and his scribes in compiling the first five books of the Bible.

Comparing the literary and pictorial forms of the name Moses heard and recorded as being from the Lord, we have this graphic (credit Heart To Heart):

Hebrew is read right to left, ie ‘hand-look-nail-look’, but if we read as normal left to right we find not only the Name of God describing who He is, the fullness of His character and abilities, but also its exceptional prophetic nature in it foretelling the pivotal point of His action plan for humanity: the crucifixion of His Son Jesus Christ!

BEHOLD – A NAIL – BEHOLD – A HAND 

AND THIS ‘WORD’ SHOWS TWO PERSONS!

Could this indicate that Christ was hidden in the Father when Moses encountered them at the burning bush but manifested as ‘The Angel of the Lord’ or pre-incarnate Christ ? It’s worth reading Exodus 3 carefully again and note Who is speaking to Moses…

Moreover, the pictographs graphically portray God as ‘hands up’ in connection with a nail. Putting all this together into one picture we get a typical image of Jesus on the Cross at Calvary, where long nails or spikes driven through Jesus’ wrists damage the median nerves thus making His hands bend into the ‘claw position’ – just like letter Yod!!

More:

• Steve Maltz: A Deep Insight From Hebrew – Holy Treasure of ‘The Open Door’.
• With gratitude to Pastor Rhonda’s God’s Heart Is In His Hands
• Also (with discussion) Marianne’s YHVH, Behold the Man, Behold the Nail