So the idea here is not that hey, you're going to get into the promised land one day.
And you're going to scratch the four consonants on something,
you know, the place where God will meet you.
Now, this is in Hebrew, but I just want you to get the... I'll give you the verse references;
Exodus 34:6-7. This is the cleft of the rock episode with Moses.
It says «the Lord passed by before his face [before Moses face].
And he called "Yahweh, Yahweh".» Okay, the Lord the Lord, El,
there's our three deity names, you know, «God merciful and gracious»
and so on and so forth. «long suffering.» It's Yahweh, Yahweh, El.
The other place where this happens is Psalm 68. Where if you look at the colors,
you have hā·’êl, «God of our salvation», you have hā·’êl right here.
Okay. The God, okay, our God, and then you have El right here.
So he is the God of our salvation. «Our God is a God of deliverance.»
So isn't it kind of interesting that the only...
if you took those two, and you showed them to a Jew, it's like, "yeah, yeah, you know,
El, God, it's the same thing. You know, who cares?"
If you took them to the third one, Genesis 48,
and said, "Well, here we have the same construction, grammatically."
That's going to shock them, because one is the angel. Now this becomes important,
later on here, in a moment. When you get to Exodus 23.
So now we're in the angel of the Lord material.
Exodus 23, verses 20 to 23 is a fundamental passage for the
Godhead in the Old Testament idea; God as man.
God says to Moses, they're having a conversation «“Behold, I send an angel
before you to guard you on the way
and to bring you to the place that I have prepared.
Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice; do not rebel against him,
for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him".»
We're going to stop with verse 20, and 21.
So God says, "I'm going to send an Angel ahead of you. You better listen to him
because he won't pardon your transgressions." Which of course raises the question
of the Pharisees have later when Jesus forgive someone of their sins.
They say; "well, who can forgive sins but God only?" Precisely.
Well, here you have an angel that can do that.
Why? What makes him different? God says "my name is in him."
That sounds odd to our ear, but to a Jew this is significant. Even today.
Jews will, if you're really a serious, you will not pronounce the name of God.
What you will do is you'll use a circumlocution, a substitute.
Now, when I was in grad school, I'm in the Hebrew Studies Department at Wisconsin.
Most of our professors didn't care if we said Yahweh in class.
There was one though who did.
And he told us on the first day, he said, "Look, when we're reading text in here,
when you encounter the divine name, you have two options:
You either say Adonai, which means Lord.
Or you say Hashem, which means the name."
The name is a way of referring to God Himself,
still in the Jewish community, and back in the Hebrew Bible.
So when God says to Moses, "look, you better pay attention to this angel
and listen to him because my name is in him." It's a way of saying, I'm in him.
You're gonna see this angel leading you on the way to the promised land.
That's me in human form. I'm in him, my name is in him.
You know, we see this in a variety of passages. We can't go to them all.
If did the reading for today, in the chapters in Unseen Realm, you get all the references
where the name of the Lord is talked about interchange with God
or talked about anthropomorphize,
"coming from afar, his lips full of fury".
You know, the name of the Lord comes from afar, and he's angry.
Again, this anthropomorphic terminology of the name.
Let's go to Deuteronomy 12:4, 11. I have a few of these references in here.
We'll hit them as quickly as we can.
This Language is familiar from Deuteronomy, «You shall not worship the Lord your God
in that way.» In context the way they were doing,
making their own places of worship. «But you shall seek the place
that the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name
and make his habitation there.»
So the idea here is not that, hey, you're going to get into the promised land one day.
And you're going to scratch the four consonants on something,
you know, the place where God will meet you.
It's a reference to eventually building the temple.
And in temple descriptions, you don't have four consonants scratched on anything.
But you do have as you have the presence of God dwelling in that place.
Look at the verse, «You shall seek the place that the Lord your God will choose
out of all your tribes to put his name [to establish or set his name]
and make his habitation there.»
The name... God's saying, I'm going to put my name there
means I'm going to live there. It's going to be my habitation.
So the name is another way to refer to God. You see a lot of this in Deuteronomy.
There are other passages. Psalm 20, is the one that I'll refer to.
That's the one I was thinking of. Actually, it's the other song, let's go to Isaiah.
That's the one that's really anthropomorphic.
«Behold, the name of the Lord comes from afar, burning with his anger,
and in thick rising smoke; his lips are full of fury, and his tongue is like a devouring fire;
his breath is like an overflowing stream that reaches up to the neck.»
You know, so on and so forth. This is anthropomorphic
language applied to the name of the Lord.
Just another way of referring to God Himself. And so in Exodus 23,
when Moses is told "Look, listen to this angel. This one's special.
There's something different about this one as opposed to all other angels
and the difference is: My name, I am in Him."