YHWH vs. AHYH: Stop Misreading the Bible

The Yod and Aleph of the Eternal: WHO IS HE, AND WHERE IS HE?

I've heard said that God's name, spelled yod-hey-vav-hey

in Hebrew, means "I AM." It doesn't. Any good Bible will

have a margin note that YHWH (Yahweh or Jehovah) means

"HE BECOMES" (emphasis mine). Thus it is not the Divine

Name given in Exodus 3: 14.

In Exodus 3: 14, God reveals that his real "name" -- his

true nature -- is AHYH, spelled aleph-hey-yod-hey (Ehyeh),

which means "I BECOME" (emphasis mine). This divine name

is also hid in an acrostic, where Ahasuerus (the Venerable

King) of Babylon asks, "WHO IS HE, AND WHERE IS HE?"

(Esther 7: 5).

Significant points to the divine nature of AHYH:

First, characteristic of God's essential nature is not

static existence but transition. God is not an 'is' or an

'am' but a 'becoming'. From one, solitary misread and

misapplied verse, Malachi 3: 6, "For I am YHWH, I change

not," wherein God says, "I am not fickle like you," has

been built the errant doctrine that God is a static,

eternally unchanging existence separate and apart from

everything that does change. Nothing could be further

from the truth. God's essential nature is the power

behind all change in all things, because it is his

becoming.

Second, it isn't "his" becoming; it is "my." Moses'

realization was that the residence of God's nature is

man: "'Ehyeh 'Asher 'Ehyeh" -- "I BECOME WHAT I BECOME"

(Exodus 3: 14). This is God's revelation: "My becoming .

. . is you." His "I" is us! Even you and I are "eth ha

'Elohim" -- "God himself, the Triune God" (Exodus 3: 12,

Bullinger's margin note). The aleph brings it home.

Yes, this scares the willies out of me. I don't speak in

arrogance but awe.

Third, almost missed here is the tense of "AHYH," which is

a verb. It suggests future, and it is often translated as

"I will be" or "I will become." The word 'will,' however,

separates us from the action implied. "I become" is present

tense. There is no future, as such, no past, either, for

that matter. We are what we were and will become, now. All

things, past and future as we perceive them, are contained

in the Word, and are thus present. We are the Word, and all

of the Word is subject to change. How else could miracles

happen if the past and future were not as malleably present

as the current moment? We change past and future -- where

we are coming from and where we are going to -- as need be.

Time is a relative, package deal in our hands.

Fourth, AHYH is the best kept secret in the world. It is

hid (sort of -- there are how many Bibles in the world?),

and yet completely apparent. Moses only found out through

Jethro, the phenomena of God's universal law. And when

Ahasuerus asks the question, "WHO IS HE, AND WHERE IS HE,"

the reference is to Haman, the enemy of the Jews (and

beyond him, to Satan). Hardly the place you would expect to

find God's divine name hidden, but there it is, AHYH,

spelled backwards and using the final letters of the words!

That is easy to miss, even if you're looking right at it.

(See Bullinger's margin notes in the Companion Bible:

Genesis 1: 2; Exodus 3: 14; and Appendix 60, p. 86 – THE

NAME OF JEHOVAH IN THE BOOK OF ESTHER: THE FIFTH ACROSTIC.)

About Haman and the Jews -- these are the two "sons" again:

Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Egypt and

Israel -- all of them are us. Haman is the natural man who

resists being supplanted by Mordecai the spiritual man. All

men are both these sons, and that is where AHYH is hid, in

the humanity of all of us. "In" means is. You can't get

much more apparent than what you see in the mirror.

Keep your references straight: "the LORD" means "my power

to change all." Said Moses, "The secret things, even the

revealed things, [belong] to us and our children for ever,

that we may do all the words of this law" (Deuteronomy 29:

29; Bullinger margin note, emphasis mine). The secret thing

-- the revealed thing -- is our power to do, and it belongs

to us and our children for ever.

Application: my dear classmate at Melodyland School of

Theology in the 1970s, Janet Gunther, somehow contracted

tuberculosis in our second or third year. Sometime into her

illness, as she sat on her sofa worshiping God in reverie,

she lost track of this world and seemed to be "there."

Suddenly a voice said to her, "You are healed." And she

was. I, unfortunately, having often shared diner with her,

had contracted tuberculosis from her and had to keep taking

medicine for the next half year.

I use Janet's experience as an example, because she knew

not one bit of this doctrine at the time -- she just did

it. And we all do likewise, but not as well as she, which

is why we have so many problems. We cannot turn off the

nature of God in us, and thus we create for ourselves the

manifestation of all our negative thoughts.

Oops. We are ruining our own lives. Janet, as a young,

emotional woman, stumbled upon pure praying: love, joy,

worship, praise, adoration, honor, gratitude -- she just

went full-over into the action she desired: with-God. At

her desired end, her past was changed and the effects of

tuberculosis, now never contracted, disappeared from her

body. "So, come and speak with Maryah (the LORD), said

Maryah, and if your sins be as crimson they shall be

whitened as snow" (Isaiah 1: 18; Victor Alexander).

Hallelujah.

Does that describe your life? No, I didn't think so. We

react to every bit of hate, violence, bad news, back-biting

gossip -- and every negative reaction of ours is a seed

planted into our future. We have to learn how to prune the

vine -- how to accentuate the positive toward harvest and

ignore the negative reports to their withering away.

Janet got there via adoration and worship. Was this God's

mode of praying in the six-day creation? "And God saw all

that He created, and, behold, it was truly beautiful"

(Genesis 1: 31; Victor Alexander).

We do what God does. What is truly beautiful to you?

Define it exactly in your mind and believe that this

future "end" is your present -- SEE it and enjoy it in

reverie. You don't wonder how something will come about

if it has come about already, nor do you plan how you will

get somewhere if you are already there. What you would do

if what you want were true, do in your imagination. It is

only pretend until the seed sprouts and blossoms into

manifest reality. "To each of us . . . He gave us grace

according to their measure in appreciating Christ"

(Ephesians 4: 7; Victor Alexander). Christ makes "He" . . .

Me!

"We have given you the hope for the One who Is from the

creation, the One whom we heard and saw with our eyes,

saw and felt with our hands, He who Is the manifestation

of Life; and Life became revealed, and we have seen and

we are witnessing and we are preaching to you Life to the

end of the universe, that which was with the Father and

who revealed it to us. . . . if we walk in the light, as

he is the light, we shall have fellowship with  each

another, and the blood of Eashoa (Jesus), his Son, shall

cleanse us of all our sins" (1 John 1: 1-2, 8; Victor

Alexander [v-a.com/bible]). 

Joshua "according as" Jehovah (YHWH)

Ethelbert Bullinger, in the Companion Bible, has an  interesting

note on Exodus 31:3.  In Hebrew, this verse begins and ends with

the word Jehovah (YHWH, or, the LORD). This is the figure of speech

epanadiplosis, or "encircling": the creation of emphasis by using

the same word at the beginning and the end of a sentence.

Examples given of the figure epanadiplosis are Genesis 9:3 and Psalm

27:14:

"Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as

the green herb have I given you all things" ('every' and 'all' are

the same word).

"Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen

thine heart: Wait, I say, on the LORD" ('wait' is the same word).

Try reading these sentences with the right word at the end:

" . . . I have given you every," and, " . . . on the LORD, wait."

Exodus 31:3 reads, in English: "The LORD thy God, he will go over

before thee, he will destroy these nations from before thee, and

thou shalt possess them: Joshua, he shall go over before thee, as

the LORD hath said."

That patently cannot be correct if the verse begins and ends with

the word 'Jehovah'. Bullinger also notes that the word 'as' really

means 'according as', and suggests the reader compare this

statement with statements of the same matter in Deuteronomy 2:9;

3:28; Exodus 23:20,23; 33:2; Numbers 27:15-23, which see.

I am no Hebrew scholar, but I know very well that what is written

in Hebrew can be interpreted very differently in English,

especially if the reader has a set bias. My understanding of

Genesis 1:1, for example, is radically different than most other

people's because I have learned the bias of Jewish mystics and

Aramaic scholars, whose views are also radically different than

the bias and understanding of the general Jewish population.

The above passages noted by Bullinger would make a very

interesting study.

I would question if the "hath said" at the end of Exodus 31:3

is an interpolation from the Hebrew words for "according as

Jehovah", or if it is in the text. (When translators expect

a word in the text so that the text will make sense to them,

and the word is not there, they simply put it in the translation

themselves and say that it was "implied".) If the Hebrew word

for 'said/spake' is indeed in the text, I would question if

it were actually Jehovah who was the speaker, or if it could

be Moses who spoke.

Why? Because Moses is the germ of the Gospel which can bring

us to the point of conversion, but cannot actualize conversion.

Moses stops at the border of decision. The only one who has

the power of life and can bring us into salvation is Joshua -

- Jesus. This appears to be Moses' own testimony, his Gospel.

"The LORD thy God, he will go over before thee" = "Joshua

(Jesus), he shall go over before thee -- ACCORDING AS JEHOVAH."

The emphasis is that Joshua, or Jesus, is Jehovah, this point

emphasized by the word Jehovah being the first and the last

word in the sentence.

The Gospel is good information, but it cannot save. It is

Jesus who brings us into the promised land and baptizes us

with the Holy Spirit. Yes, Moses was a Pentecostal. And the

name/nature of his people, the Hebrews, comes from the root

'aber, to cross over. Christianity goes way back. It is God's

intent that all Hebrews be Christians. 

The name/nature 'Jesus Christ', according to Victor Alexander

in his note on Mark 1:1 in the Aramaic New Testament (v-a.com),

means the Life-Giving, Living Branch, the Anointed One; or, in

proper English syntax, "The Anointed Life-Giver." Jesus is that

branch of our consciousness which is our live-wire connection

with the Father. Knowing about Life is not the same as the

experience of Life. There is no other connection/door/passage/way

to Life Eternal than the anointing in us who is Jesus Christ.

He is "according as Jehovah", because he is Jehovah.

That is my bias, anyway. Happy reading.