What's In a Name?
Beginning this week I'll be starting a series of sermons on the names of God that we can find in scripture. As we read our English translations (NRSV, NIV, ESV, etc.) this may seem to be sort of a short endeavor. After all there's just "God" and "Lord" that our Bibles use isn't there. The reality is quite different, though. The ancient Hebrews actually used many different names or titles in referring to God. To understand this consider culture and language. The language of the Old Testament is Ancient Hebrew. Hebrew is at once earthy, bizarre, picturesque, and straightforward. This is the language God used for his first communication with humanity. Hebrew is indeed bizarre in that it is read from right to left and that the individual letters look like they may have come from Mars. The language is also earthy and picturesque. A couple of examples illustrate this. The main Hebrew word for "glory" in the Old Testament is kabod . This