Today I replaced the gap Spanish left in my schedule with History and Literature of the Ancient Israelites. I think it's a coolest class I've ever taken in my entire life. Learning the context of scripture and the depth the Hebrew words add is amazing, not to mention the theological ideas. If it was possible to academically drool, I would.
We touched on many subjects in class today, one of which was names for God. In ancient Hebrew they did not write vowels - God is seen as breath in the creation story, both in creating the earth and man. That's the oversimplified version but unfortunately as well as I can explain it - and it was forbidden to make images of God. Because vowels are so breathy, writing them was seen as making an image of God. That's why God gave His name to the Jews as YHWH. We were discussing this in class today when the professor paused and asked if anyone was offended by us saying Yahweh; he said in the past he had had students who preferred that they not speak that holiest name of God. The ancient Israelites revered God so much that they did not speak His name, and there are those who still maintain that reverence today. I forget where it was, but I heard a pastor in church this summer read a story out of the Old Testament where a man opened the bible to read to a crowd, and as he opened it they all stood in reverence and awe of the word of God. He hadn't even read anything, he'd just opened it.
So what about us? I've never felt so much respect for the word of God that I felt compelled to stand to hear it. I've never thought so much of speaking the name of the God who is so holy and so high above me. The New Testament says that because of Jesus we can now approach God boldly, and that our relationship with him his intimate, but have we lost a healthy sense of reverence? Are we too casual, or were the Israelites extreme?
some scholars think that the name of God was too breathy to be spoken and that instead, breath itself is the name of God. the sound of human breathing is the name of our God.
ReplyDeletei find that when my heart's getting it- when i'm understanding and living in the reality of who and how great God is, that the reverence flows naturally.
i've tried to name God before and cried realizing that there was not a word or name deep enough or real or big enough to express everything He is.
and i think that maybe that's what the Israelites were getting at. that God is too big and to great to fit inside a name, inside a word. He can only be recognized and named by the breath He has breathed into us- a piece of Himself and His spirit.