God is not only called God. The Old Testament calls him by a name, Yahweh, 6,828 times, and by a handful of other names, each first said by someone, somewhere. Here is where they stand, who said them first, and what most translations do to them.
The film above is drawn from the Hebrew text itself: every star is one of the 2,601 places the word Elohim H430 stands, and every point on the line is one of the 6,828 places the name H3068 stands. Nothing in it is drawn by hand.
Elohim: the God over everything
The Bible opens with Elohim, the plural word the Old Testament uses for God, and the first chapter never uses anything else: thirty-five times Elohim, and no name.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
It is a word rather than a name. The same word serves for the gods of the nations, which the King James writes "gods", small, 214 times. The psalmist says of the God it names that he counts the stars and calls each by its name (Psalms 147:4), which is why the film draws the word as a sky.
Yahweh: the name
The name enters with the garden. From Genesis 2 the God over everything is Yahweh Elohim, Yahweh God, and he forms a man, breathes into him, walks in the garden and speaks:
Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
It is a personal name, the way Abraham and Moses are names, and a God who can be named is a God who has come toward people. The Hebrew text says it 6,828 times, in thirty-six of the thirty-nine books: Jeremiah most, 726 times; Esther and Ecclesiastes never; the Song of Solomon only once, in its short form, Yah, "a very flame of Yah" (Song of Solomon 8:6).
Each time the name is given, it is given to someone, and it comes with an offer. In 125 verses the name and the word covenant stand together.
Abram, and the stars
Melchizedek, king of Salem, blesses Abram by El Elyon, God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth (Genesis 14:19); Elyon stands fifty-three times. Then Yahweh brings Abram outside:
Yahweh brought him outside, and said, “Look now toward the sky, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” He said to Abram, “So your offspring will be.”
The stars could not be counted. The name can, and that same day Yahweh made a covenant with Abram (Genesis 15:18). When Abram is ninety-nine, God names himself again, El Shaddai, God Almighty (Genesis 17:1), a name that stands forty-eight times, thirty-one of them in Job.
Hagar: the one name a human gives
One name is given by a human. Hagar, a runaway slave in the wilderness, names the God who found her:
She called the name of Yahweh who spoke to her, “You are a God who sees,” for she said, “Have I even stayed alive after seeing him?”
El Roi, the God who sees, is said once, and no one else in the Bible gives God a name. The others that look like it, Yahweh Yireh (Genesis 22:14) and Yahweh Nissi (Exodus 17:15), are the names of altars and places.
Jacob, Moses, Hannah, David
To Jacob, asleep on the ground at Bethel, the name is spoken from above the ladder (Genesis 28:13). To Moses at the bush God says his own name, I AM WHO I AM, and then: this is my name forever (Exodus 3:14, Exodus 3:15); on Sinai he passes before him and proclaims it:
Yahweh passed by before him, and proclaimed, “Yahweh! Yahweh, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth,
Hannah, childless at Shiloh, is the first person to pray by the name the prophets will make their own, Yahweh Tzevaot, Yahweh of Armies (1 Samuel 1:11). It stands 260 times, ninety-one of them in the last three books, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. To David the name is bound by covenant (Psalms 89:3), and Moses had already said what kind of God keeps it:
Know therefore that Yahweh your God himself is God, the faithful God, who keeps covenant and loving kindness to a thousand generations with those who love him and keep his commandments,
What translations do to the name
In most translated Bibles the name becomes obscure. The King James writes LORD, in capital letters, 6,511 times, and GOD 308 times. LORD is a title standing in for a name; it is not what the name means. The other names fold into the same few words: Elohim and El are both "God", Yahweh and Adonai are both "Lord", Shaddai becomes "Almighty" and Elyon "most high", so a reader cannot see that God presents himself by many names. The World English Bible, Biblion's default text, prints the name:
God said moreover to Moses, “You shall tell the children of Israel this, ‘Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and this is my memorial to all generations.
The quotations on this page are shown in your own translation, so their words may differ from the ones counted here.
The last place, and the next book
The name's last place is the Old Testament's last chapter (Malachi 4:5). Then, in the next book, a child is named Immanuel, which is, being interpreted, God with us (Matthew 1:23). From the stars to the garden, to Abraham, to Moses, to us: the same God speaks to us through the pages of the Bible.
Each name's first place, its meaning and its verses are in the study guide The Names of God in the Old Testament. Every verse the name stands in is on its Strong's page, H3068, and Elohim's on H430.