Yâ or Yahweh.... who is He?

It's been five weeks since I started "investigating" and meditating on different biblical names of God. I've looked at more than 30 names, and many of those include the word Yahweh (or Jehovah in some Bible Translations.) The name Yahweh appears nearly 7000 times in the Old Testament, either as a stand-alone name or as part of a longer name. What does it mean and why is it so important?

YHWH - Yahweh or its shortened form Yâ is the name that God attributed to Himself.

After 400 years of slavery in Egypt, it would have been understandable if the people of Israel had begun to doubt the existence of their God. But He wasn't dead; He was only too aware of their suffering. The long years of oppression were no surprise to Him either. In fact, He had already told Abraham long ago (Genesis 15: 13) that his descendants would be oppressed for 400 years in a foreign country.

When the time came for the great escape, God chose and called Moses to lead the people in the great exodus from Egypt. Not convinced at first, the reluctant Moses asks God, "What will I say if people ask me the name of the God who has sent me to them?"

God replies, "I am who I am. Tell them that "I am" (Hebrew hāyâ) has sent you." (Exodus 3: 13 - 14) And so, from that declaration, Yâ or Yahweh became the most holy name of God, and the starting point for many of the other names that I've been reflecting on during these past weeks.

"I am" seems a strange and simple name, but it's also powerful. At its most basic level, it means, "I exist," and its present tense suggests timelessness. God was "I am" in the days of Moses, and He is still "I am" today. He never becomes "I was," but is constantly forever "I am."

Jesus wasn't getting His grammar mixed up when He said (in John 8: 58), "Before Abraham was, I am." By using that sacred name of God, He was telling people that He is timeless, unchanging, the pre-existent One. As He would later say in John's vision (Rev 1: 8) He is the One, "who was, and is, and is to come."

God is pre-existent and self-sufficient. No one created Him; rather He was and is the Creator of everything that exists. He needs nothing and no one; He's never lonely or bored, He never lacks anything. He is Yahweh, the all-sufficient One.

The shorter, more poetic form of His name - Yâ or Jah - appears around 50 times in the Old Testament, mainly in worship and song, so we see it often in the Psalms. Psalm 68: 4 specifically declares, "His name is Yâ."

It gives us our internationally known word Alleluia, Alleluya or Hallelujah. Whatever the language, whatever the spelling, it means, "Praise the Lord" - from the verb hālal and the name Yâ. It appears, for example, as the very first word or words in Psalm 106 and in many other psalms too.

It's also found in the names of biblical people... such as Elijah, Jeremiah, Josiah, Jehoiada... Bible names often carried great significance. Elijah's name, for example, means, "The Lord (Yâ) is God (El)" - something that he declared publicly when he challenged those who worshipped false Gods like Baal.

The people of Israel knew that Yahweh was the pre-existent, all sufficient God, who nonetheless invited them into relationship with them. So they incorporated His name into their songs, into the names of their children and their towns. They lived in awe of YHWH, the great "I am."