God Is Love: It Isn't That God HAS Love; It's That God IS Love

"Do not worship another God, because the Lord's name (nature) is Devoted. For He is the God of Devotion" (Exodus 34:14 Alexander).

Could even the Jews have had it wrong for over three thousand years? That the name Moses gave them for God was never Hebrew or Aramaic, but Proto-Arabic?

From The Torah.com:

An Arabic Name

If YHWH’s origins are in the Nomad-land of Yehwa among the Midianites, then the meaning of the name should be from the Arabic language family rather than the Hebrew language family. This further calls into question the etymology in Exodus 3 of the Tetragrammaton from ה.ו.י, “to be,” since, unlike Hebrew and Aramaic, Proto-Arabic does not have the root ה.ו.י for the word “to be.”

The Jealous God

In 1956, Shelomo Dov Goitein (1900-1985), a scholar of both Jewish and Arabic studies, suggested that the name derives from the Arabic root h.w.y (هوى), and the word hawaya (هوايا), which means “love, affection, passion, desire.” He connected this suggestion with the passage in Exodus 34, in a set of laws known by scholars as the Ritual Decalogue. One of the laws, which forbids Israel to worship other gods, reads:

שמות לד:יד כִּי לֹא תִשְׁתַּחֲוֶה לְאֵל אַחֵר כִּי יְ-הוָה קַנָּא שְׁמוֹ אֵל קַנָּא הוּא. Exodus 34:14 - "For you must not worship any other god, because YHWH, whose name is Impassioned, is an impassioned God."

Goitein suggests that “YHWH, whose name is Impassioned” refers to the deity’s personal name YHWH, which means “the Impassioned One,” and that this name derives from that (proto)Arabic term for passion. This reflects the idea that YHWH’s bond with his worshipers is one of passionate love, and YHWH is upset if the worshipers “cheat” by worshipping other gods. In other words, the worshippers’ relationship with YHWH must be exclusive. Moreover, according to Goitein, this exclusivity demanded by YHWH goes back to his appearance as a god among nomadic, Arabian tribes. (Bold emphases mine)

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So we are speaking of a monolatrous (see the article), impassioned religion - ages older than Judaism - which was devoted to The Impassioned God. And it, God's love, has been running right through Judaism and Christianity as if oblivious to the fact that we have got its name all wrong. It hasn't been hidden: if we can't read, that's our problem.

We read about God's agape love, that love is of God, chesed - election love, the more excellent way, that love is the fulfillment of the Law, "For God so loved the world," that Jesus died for the whole world. That God deserves our love is one thing; that God is our love is quite another. We are to diligently seek Him by loving, by being channels of His passion.

Speaking of reading, Moses' father-in-law Reuel means "God-looked-upon." Jethro means "His overflowing super-abundance." Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knew God as Eil (the) Shaddai, the All-providing Breasts, but not as the Impassioned One. And grammatically YHWH Elohim means "His Love (or Passion) is the Universal God."

(Edit added 3-9-2023: per Victor Alexander, Elohim means "Over the Flames." I was going to say right now that "Flames" could be the stars of the universe, ourselves, or the spirits of God within us. But I suddenly wonder if they could be His loves, i.e., those whom He loves, those for whom He is blazingly impassioned.)