What do LORD, GOD, Lord, God, etc., stand for in the Bible? Why are they used in place of God's name?

1. El, 'the strong or mighty one.' It is often used of God, especially in Job and the Psalms. Job 5:8; Ps. 22:1, etc.; and of the Lord Jesus in Isa. 9:6.

2. Eloah (Elah Chaldee), Elohim. The names most commonly used for God the Creator, the One with whom man has to do, the supreme Deity. Gen. 1:1-31. ... Elohim (which is plural, called the plural of majesty or excellency) is the word of most frequent occurrence.

3. Jehovah. This is a name of relationship with men, especially with Israel, taken by God in time. It is derived from havah, 'to exist,' and may be expanded into 'who is, who was, and is to come.' God thus reveals Himself in time as the ever-existing One: that is, in Himself eternally, He is always the same: cf. Heb. 1:12.

Unfortunately the name Jehovah is seldom employed in the A.V. It is generally represented by LORD (sometimes GOD) printed in small capitals. There is a contraction of Jehovah into Jah, also translated in the A.V. by LORD, except in Ps. 68:4, where Israel is exhorted to sing unto God, and "extol him by his name JAH."

4. Shaddai, 'the Almighty' ... was the name by which He was especially known to the Patriarchs, as El Shaddai, God Almighty, Ex. 6:3.

6, 7. Adon and Adonai, and the plural Adonim, are all translated 'Lord'; they occur frequently.

Its first occurrence is found in Genesis 2:4. It is translated GOD some 300 times, and LORD about 6,000 times. Its meaning is, He, that always was, that always is, that always will be, the Eternal. ... Wherever the reader finds the name of GOD printed in capital letters, or the name LORD printed likewise in capital letters in his Bible, he may in both cases know that it refers to Jehovah.

It is surely fitting that Genesis 1, that great chapter, describing the creation of the mighty universe, and how it was fashioned for man's residence, before man, the topstone of God's handiwork arrived, should use the word, Elohim, the name of the Creator God, of Trinity acting in unity. But in Genesis 2 we do not have a second story of the creation, but how everything was ordered when man arrived on the scene. How fitting surely that the name of Jehovah (God's covenant name for man's blessing) should appear, the name, Elohim, in conjunction with it.

It is clear that we have here the first intimation of the Godhead as Trinity — Father, Son and Spirit, yet One God. Hence the verb in the singular, the two words, "God (plural) created (singular)" set forth a plural unity, never known save in relation to the Being of God.

In the first chapter it is God making everything for man's comfort and blessing day after day ... God is mentioned in this section about thirty times; but in the second chapter we have not simply God (Elohim), but all through it is the Lord God (Jehovah Elohim). Why is this? Because it treats of man's relationship with God.

"Two of every sort shall come unto thee [Noah] to keep them alive," is God's (Elohim's) care of His creatures to preserve every kind alive in the earth. But when we read of His taking "of every clean beast by sevens, his male and his female," it is God as Jehovah who speaks. And why? Because He is now arranging as in relationship with man for sacrifices — types of Christ.

The Jews, from time immemorial, never pronounce the word Jehovah, or write it in any but in the Hebrew characters. Now the translators of the Septuagint were Jews, imbued with the common prejudice of their nation. In consequence the word Jehovah does not once appear in the Septuagint; it is invariably rendered by Kurios, or Lord ... This peculiarity passed into the Vulgate, where Dominus is the equivalent term for Jehovah; and, for some unexplained reason — probably on account of the influence exercised by learned Jews over the reformers — it has been almost always retained in our common English Bibles. From this circumstance, a great deal of the meaning of the Bible is sometimes neglected; and the proper name of the invisible God does not appear where it ought to be.

The word Jehovah never once occurs in the entire New Testament. There is no kind of doubt that they used the title kurios, or the LORD, just as the Septuagint translators had done — as a well-understood equivalent for Jehovah. And when this title of LORD became, in an emphatic manner, fixed upon the Redeemer, he was thereby proclaimed to be Jehovah.