Names of God

One of the things I like about reading in Genesis is how often God reveals Himself with a different name. In ancient cultures, and maybe some still today, names were important because they spoke to the character of the person.

In Genesis 1:1 the name is God. By Genesis 2:4 He is LORD God. The Hebrew for LORD is the proper name, or the unspeakable name, that we translate Yahweh or Jehovah. Then in Genesis 14:18, Melchizedek is identified as  "priest of God Most High." A little further along in the story, Hagar says, "You are a God who sees me" (Genesis 16:13) when she was in the desert running away from Sarai and God came to speak to her. The well at that place was named "the well of the Living One who sees me."

When God talks to Abram to give him the covenant of circumcision, God says, "I am God Almighty." (Genesis 17:1) After Isaac is born and Abraham makes a treaty with Abimelech, we are told Abraham "called there on the name of the LORD, the Everlasting God." (Genesis 21:33)

These are the obvious names of God - but 6 of them over the course of time. As God reveals Himself to us we also have many names for Him but we usually think of them as actions, not names. Faithful, true, merciful, gracious, provider, healer, comforter and more. God is all that He is. He can not be anything else. So to know Him as Faithful is to recognize Him by that name. To acknowledge Him as Healer takes us to a deeper understanding of the healing only He can bring to us.

There are times when I wish we had more descriptive words in our language to speak to who God is so that we could better distinguish between the Living One and all the other gods of the world.