Misguided and Misgodded

The article YHWH: The Original Arabic Meaning of the Name has proposed that when in Exodus 3:14 Moses asked God what His name was, and God answered, "'Ehyeh 'Asher 'Ehyeh," that both Moses and God were speaking a proto-Arabic language. Moses was close to forty years in an Arabic culture in an Arabic country speaking the Arabic language, and was speaking to the Arabic God--it was an Arabic world--so yeah, okay, maybe Moses and God did hold the conversation in the Arabic language well over three thousand years ago. And in the intervening three thousand-plus years we have been told that they spoke Hebrew, God saying something along the line of "I AM THAT I AM." It has been on the Hebrew meaning of the words we have built our theology and have understood our place and purpose. And maybe we have been wrong--misguided and misgodded. We make a big thing out of the authority and power of the Great I AM and our being His manifestation, His agents in this world. What if in proto-Arabic we are supposed to be something else, something other than we are? Talk about God being patient!

"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” (emphasis mine). God was saying that He is that--love, affection, passion, and desire? That's His name, his nature? That is what we are supposed to be the image of? Maybe that is why God's first commandment was "Multiply and increase, and fill the earth and its environments, and have authority over the fish in the sea and the birds of the sky and the four-legged animals and all the creatures that crawl over the earth."* (Genesis 1:28 Alexander). We were supposed to moralize them, so the lion would lie with the lamb? Maybe. We might supposed to be the manifestation of God's holiness in love, affection, passion, and desire. Do you recall Jesus saying anything about that in His corrective visit to His people? Something along the line of "Go, and sin no more." Maybe that old JEWISH Law Moses gave on relations was on the up and up, eh? Love, affection, passion, and desire in strict HOLINESS. Impassioned benevolence, holy beneficence. Is that what we are supposed to be imagining, creating? Where did we go wrong? If the conversation was in proto-Arabaic, we know EXACTLY where.