YHWH El Emeth

Names of God -Part 19

LORD God of truth or LORD God is faithful

YHWH is the actual name of God, revealed to Moses. In English, it is usually spelt Yahweh or Jehovah, in many Bible translations it is written as LORD (in all capitals or small capitals).

El means God.

YHWH El Emeth is found in Psalm 31:5 and elsewhere where it is translated God of truth in the Authorized Version, and faithful God in most modern translations, although this requires translating the feminine noun Emeth as an adjective.

Here is Psalm 31:5 in the ESV Anglicized.

Into your hand I commit my spirit;
you have redeemed me, O LORD, faithful God.

God is truth, or maybe God is true. God is faithful, God cannot lie. God can be trusted. These are absolute qualities of an absolute God. But that is no good when speaking into a post-modern society which is moving into a post-everything society. Society is already post-truth as can be seen in recent elections in both the UK and USA where campaigns have been geared towards getting an emotional response to fears, real and imagined, rather than an intellectual agreement with things as they are and how that relates to policies for the next term.

This name points to Jesus in two ways:

Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life,” being the truth is part of his nature as God incarnate.

Rabbinic literature says that emeth (אמת) contains the first middle and last letters oh the Hebrew alphabet. This ties in with Jesus revealed as Alpha and Omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, in the first Chapter of Revelation.

But we can live out the truth of God in a way that is relational. We can tell our story of how God has been faithful in our lives, about how the truth of God and about God is real in our lives. We also have to listen to the stories of others, for a relationship with God must be shown in relation to others.

What is your story about God being faithful?

John Lennon said, “God is a concept by which we measure our fears.” Let us show the world that God is more than a concept, God is close to us and God is faithful.

We learn God’s faithfulness by committing ourselves to God. The Psalmist said, “Into your hand I commit my spirit,” which Jesus echoed from the cross. Commitment is the way of Jesus. Walking in commitment to Jesus is how we live our stories of God’s faithfulness.

Let us tell the world our God stories.