And God spoke to Moses, and said to him, I am Jehovah.
Israel's load had just got heavier. Moses had complained that God had done nothing to rescue His people. The answer he gets is not an explanation. It is a name.
The demand made to Pharaoh had made life harder, not easier.
But the first effect of this move was to increase the slavery and misery of the people... Even the faith of Moses shook under the strain. He turned to God with a complaint that sounded like a reproach... How often this happens. When God begins to deal with a soul in grace, the enemy stirs at once and works harder. So for a time, at least, things get worse instead of better.
Instead of defending His methods, God gives Moses His own name and character to rest on.
It is not only in what He does that He would have the heart find comfort, but in Himself — in His very name and character. This is full, divine, everlasting blessing. The heart may find its sweet relief in God Himself. It may run into the strong tower His name provides. It may find in His character a perfect answer to all its need. When it does, it is lifted far above the level of created things.
In the ESV, "the LORD" stands for the name Jehovah. Scripture itself gives its sense.
Jehovah is the name whose inspired translation is given in Exodus 3 — "I am." Revelation opens it out to its full meaning as, "him who is and who was and who is to come." So, unchanging in His own existence, He follows the changes of created life, holding up the creature with the strength of eternity.
So what is new here? Commentators point to the footing God now puts His people on.
The names themselves were familiar enough before. But God had not given the name by His own authority as a title of relationship to count on. That happened when He revealed Himself first as El-Shaddai to the fathers of Israel, and then as Jehovah to their sons. By it the true pilgrim fathers were assured of His unfailing protection, weak as they were, among the corrupt nations they were to displace. And through Moses the sons were to know Him as their unchanging Governor.
Elohim, Jehovah and El-Shaddai are not rival gods.
Here we have Elohim, Jehovah and El-Shaddai, all spoken of as different names of the one supreme God. Then the Lord declares, exactly as Genesis has it, that to the fathers He had revealed Himself as El-Shaddai.
God reveals Himself to fit what His people are going through.
In Exodus 6 the Lord publishes His Name. It is a Name suited to the condition Israel was then in. They were groaning in Egypt. Slave drivers and brick-kilns were oppressing them. The Lord lets them learn Him in faithfulness, grace and strength, exactly suited to such a condition... They were oppressed, and He was a Redeemer — that was all — that was the Name He was publishing, because that was the Name they needed.
The name is not left as an idea. It carries a chain of promises.
So, tied to His name "Jehovah," He makes three statements about what He has done: (1) "I also established my covenant"; (2) "I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel"; (3) "I have remembered my covenant" (vv. 3-5). Then come seven "I wills." Because He is Jehovah, He says, (1) "I will bring you out"; (2) "I will deliver you"; (3) "I will redeem you"; (4) "I will take you to be my people"; (5) "I will be your God"; (6) "I will bring you in"; (7) "I will give it (the land) to you" (vv. 6-8). He ends as He began: "I am the LORD."
Dennett argues that this name belongs to Israel, and that Christians are brought nearer still.
He truly was Jehovah among Israel, and as such He forgave their sins and healed their diseases (Ps. 103:3). But He is never Jehovah for Christians. He has been pleased to bring them into a closer relationship; as indeed He revealed to Mary, and to His disciples through her, when He said, "Go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." (John 20:17)
- Timing. God gives the name when things have grown worse, not better. The enemy often stirs just as God begins to act.
- Content. The name means "I am" — the One who is, was, and is to come, unchanging while everything else changes.
- Relationship. The fathers knew Him as El-Shaddai, their protector as they wandered. The nation now receives Jehovah, a covenant name to count on.
- Fitness. God publishes the name His people need. Oppressed slaves get a Redeemer.
- Result. Three things He has done and seven things He will do all hang on this one name.
And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as the Almighty God; but by my name Jehovah I was not made known to them.
Pharaoh had just made Israel's work heavier, and Moses was discouraged. God answered him with a name, and it raises an obvious question: had Abraham never heard it?
Most English Bibles print that name as "the LORD"; the writers quoted here use the older form, Jehovah. Was the word itself new to Moses? One writer answers by pointing to what happened when Christ came and made the Father known.
Carefully remember that this does not mean the word "Jehovah" was unknown. As a word it appears often in Genesis, which shows it was in use from the beginning. What then is the true meaning? That God now takes this name as the revealed character in which He was going to act openly for the children of Israel. Notice an illustration of what is meant here: when our Lord came, Scripture says He declared the Father. How absurd it would be to conclude that the word "Father" had never been known before! … In Genesis 22, when Isaac was released from the sentence of death, Abraham calls the place "Jehovah-Jireh." So the word must have been well enough known.
The patriarchs knew God as El Shaddai, "God Almighty". What do those two words mean?
The word El is said to mean strength, or unlimited power. Some think Shaddai means the same thing; others prefer to translate it all-sufficient, or self-sufficient. Either way, the two words together carry divine attributes, since unlimited power and all-sufficiency are found only in God.
That name matched the life Abraham was called to live:
God revealed Himself to Abraham as "the Almighty" (El Shaddai). Abraham was called to be a pilgrim, with none but God to look to, so God reveals Himself to him as the "All Powerful One."
So if Abraham already used the word, what was still missing? The answer lies in what the name itself says about God.
Abraham did not know God by that name. The real meaning of the name Jehovah never dawned on him, because the circumstances that called for such a revelation had not arisen. But now the moment had come to unfold it. The Almighty One stood forth, pledged to Israel, as the I AM — the self-existent and therefore unchanging One, always true and faithful to His word. Israel's history proved this again and again. At the end of the Old Testament God said, "For I the LORD [that is, Jehovah] do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed."
Chapter 5 ended in failure and despair. That collapse was not an accident of timing.
He had seemingly shut them up into Pharaoh's hand, and by this produced in them a conviction of the hopelessness of their condition. This is always His method. He never presents Himself as a Saviour until men know that they are guilty and ruined. The Lord Jesus said, "I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." As soon as men are willing to admit that they are lost, the Saviour stands before their souls.
The message God then sends to Israel is built on that name.
First it gives the name He has taken, Jehovah — "I am Jehovah." Then it declares redemption: they will be set free and redeemed, they will be brought into relationship with Himself, they will be His people, and He will be their God… Everything is made to depend on what He is, and the whole message ends by repeating the announcement, "I am Jehovah." He is both the Yes and the Amen, the Alpha and Omega, of their redemption. All that He is guarantees both the start and the finish of the redemption of His people.
Each name fits the people who received it — and the line runs on to us.
The wandering fathers needed an almighty friend. The nation was about to enter a history of more change than any other people has known. It was called to be the witness of an unchanging God — Him who is, and who was, and who is to come. Was there a fresh and equally striking revelation of His love to the Church? Yes, we have it in the Father's name, declared by Him who said, "Go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God."
- Known, not new. The word Jehovah appears all through Genesis. What was new was God taking it as the name of His public dealings with Israel.
- Almighty for pilgrims. El Shaddai means strength and all-sufficiency. It fitted Abraham, who had nothing to lean on but God.
- Jehovah for a nation. Jehovah means the self-existent, unchanging One. That is why the children of Jacob are not consumed, and why their whole rescue rests on what He is.
- Revealed at the end of hope. The name came when Israel and Moses were in despair. God never presents Himself as Saviour until people know they are lost.
- Names fitting need, ending in Father. Wanderers needed an almighty friend. A changing nation needed an unchanging God. To us, the same God is declared as Father.
And I established also my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, in which they were sojourners.
Before God tells Moses what He will do, He points back to what He has already committed Himself to. One writer notes that the covenant is not simply remembered as a memory but treated as the legal basis on which God now moves.
He has now entered into a formal relationship with the children of Israel. So He recalls the covenant, with its terms, which He had established with their fathers (v. 4; compare Genesis 17:7-8). Then He states plainly that it is because of His covenant — for He is faithful — that He has heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in slavery (v. 5). It is on this foundation that He will deliver: on what He is for them as Jehovah in the covenant He made with their fathers.
The covenant here came long before the law, and one writer shows why that order matters.
In verse 4 He mentions the covenant of promise, under which He was going to act. Under it He would deliver them from Egypt and bring them into the land He had purposed for them. Their redemption from Egypt and their settlement in Canaan — the land of their pilgrimage, where they had been only strangers — all of it came under that covenant. And God made that covenant 430 years before the covenant of the law. Galatians 3:17 tells us this, and also that the law could not cancel the promise He had made. Of course it could not, for Jehovah had made it, though Abraham did not know all that this great name meant. God is true to what He is in Himself, no matter what we may know Him to be.
The verse before this one sets it up. God Almighty was the name the fathers knew. Jehovah is the name for what comes next, and the two names fit two different situations.
He had put Himself in relation with the fathers under the name of God Almighty. That was what they needed, and this was His glory during their pilgrimage. Now He takes a name in relationship with His people, a name that implies constant relationship with them. In that name, established with Him who is the same yesterday, today and forever, He carries out in faithfulness what He began in grace and promise.
Another writer names what each generation gained from these two names: protection for the wanderers, government for the nation.
The name assured the true pilgrim fathers of His unfailing protection, weak as they might be, among the corrupt nations they were destined to replace. The sons, through Moses, were to know Him as their unchanging Governor. He made them a people belonging to Himself through all ages, He that was and is and is to come.
The verse calls Canaan both the land God promised them and the land where they lived as strangers. Abraham's one purchase there shows how real that was.
It is quite wrong to say that God did afterwards give Abraham a possession in Canaan — the piece of land he bought from Ephron as a burial place, Genesis 23:17. The gift of God is absolute and still to come. For who that owned this land, or any other, would think of buying his own possession? There he lays his dead in land so plainly not his own that he has to buy it for the purpose. The purchase is the pledge to faith that he will have the land another day.
Nothing in the verse rests on Israel's condition or performance. God binds Himself, and the name He takes is the measure of what follows.
"JEHOVAH" is the title which He takes as the Deliverer of His people, on the ground of His covenant of pure and sovereign grace. He reveals Himself as the great self-existing Source of redeeming love. He establishes His counsels, fulfils His promises, and delivers His chosen people from every enemy and every evil.
Israel did later live in the land. But one writer says that this never matched the terms of the promise.
We now see one point clearly, and it is of the greatest importance. The people have never yet held the land, or the blessings promised to the fathers, on the unconditional terms promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God has still to fulfil and carry out those promises in grace.
- Covenant first. God's rescue does not start with Israel's cry. It starts with the covenant He had already made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That is the foundation He acts on.
- Covenant older than law. God gave that promise 430 years before the law, and the law could not cancel it.
- Covenant carried by a name. God Almighty was the name for pilgrims who had only His power to lean on. Jehovah is the name for a people who need Him constant and unchanging.
- Covenant held by strangers. Canaan was theirs by promise while they owned nothing in it — Abraham had to buy a grave in the land God had given him.
- Covenant still open. Israel has never held the land on the unconditional terms God gave, so that promise still waits for grace to make it good.