The word for master that became God’s title, the word Jews say where the name is written, and a psalm that turns on the difference
Adonai: The Lord Who Is Said Instead of the Name
Lord is the most used word for God in the English Bible and the least examined. It stands for two different Hebrew words, one of them the name itself and the other a title meaning master, and the King James told them apart only by capital letters. This lesson is about the title: what it meant, how it came to be said in the name’s place, and the one verse where Jesus made the difference the whole point.
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Lesson 5 of 12 · The title said aloud
Adonai is the word for a master — a slave’s owner, a servant’s lord, a wife’s husband in the old idiom — in a form used of God alone: Lord, with the sense of the one who commands and is owed obedience. It is the word Jewish readers say aloud wherever the name is written, which is why "Lord" in English stands for both, and why the King James needed capital letters to tell a reader which. Read Lord in your Old Testament and ask which word is under it: the name, which is who God is, or this title, which is what he is to you.
Abram’s first prayer
The title’s first use is Abram’s first recorded words to God, and they are a complaint.
Abram said, “Lord Yahweh, what will you give me, since I go childless, and he who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” — Genesis 15:2 · WEB
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Lord Yahweh, what will you give me, since I go childless? Both words stand together — the title and then the name — and English has to write "Lord GOD" to show it, the second in capitals because "Lord LORD" would be absurd. Abram addresses his master and names him, and then argues with him. The title does not stop the argument; it frames who is allowed to make it.
אֲדֹנָי ʼĂdônây H136
an emphatic form of אָדוֹן; the Lord (used as a proper name of God only); (my) Lord.
An emphatic form of adon, lord, master, owner — the word a slave uses of his master, Sarah uses of Abraham, and courtiers use of the king. In this form, with this ending, it is used only of God, some four hundred and fifty times, and means the Lord as sovereign: the one who commands. Its greater importance is oral. When the name became too holy to say, this is the word that was said instead, and its vowels were written under the name’s consonants as the cue — the origin of "Jehovah," told in the second lesson.
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The Lord on a throne
Isaiah’s call uses the title where a reader might expect the name, and the choice fits the scene.
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple. — Isaiah 6:1 · WEB
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I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up. Adonai, the master, in the year the human king died: the vision begins by saying who still rules. Two verses later the seraphim use the name of the next lesson, Yahweh of Armies, and the two together — sovereign and commander — are the throne room’s whole description.
“Moses said to Yahweh, “O Lord, I am not eloquent, neither before now, nor since you have spoken to your servant; for I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue.”” Exodus 4:10 · WEB
O Lord, I am not eloquent: Moses, refusing his commission, addresses the one commissioning him by the title of a master.
“Yahweh, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens!” Psalm 8:1 · WEB
Yahweh, our Lord, how majestic is your name: the name, then the title, then the word name — the psalm knows the difference.
““A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If I am a father, then where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is the respect due me?” says Yahweh of Armies to you priests who despise my name. “You say, ‘How have we despised your name?’” Malachi 1:6 · WEB
A son honors his father, and a servant his master; if I am a master, where is the respect due me? God arguing from what the title means.
“My soul, you have said to Yahweh, “You are my Lord. Apart from you I have no good thing.”” Psalm 16:2 · WEB
You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing: the name addressed with the title, in the first person.
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My Lord, and my lord
Here the verse the New Testament built an argument on, and the argument should be marked.
Yahweh says to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool for your feet.” — Psalm 110:1 · WEB
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Yahweh says to my Lord, sit at my right hand. Two speakers, two words: the name, and then adoni, "my lord," which in the Hebrew as it is pointed is the ordinary form used of a human master, not the divine form of this lesson. Jesus quotes the verse and asks how David can call the Messiah his lord if the Messiah is David’s son (Matthew 22:43-45), and the New Testament cites the psalm more than any other. Jewish readers answer that adoni is a human title and the psalm addresses a king; Christian readers answer that the one seated at God’s right hand is more than a king, and that the psalm knew it. The difference between adoni and Adonai is a vowel, and the vowels were added a thousand years after the psalm was written. This lesson does not settle the reading. It notes that the King James’ "The LORD said unto my Lord" carries the whole distinction in a difference of capitals that most readers never see, and that the WEB’s "Yahweh says to my Lord" at least lets the two speakers be two.
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What the title asks
It asks for obedience, which is what the word means and what a name does not by itself require. To know God’s name is to know who he is; to call him Adonai is to say what he is to you, and the Old Testament does not let anyone say it idly. Malachi’s question stands under every use of the word: if I am a master, where is the respect due me?
Find a verse where your Bible prints "Lord GOD" or "the Lord GOD", and read it in the WEB, where the two words are visible. Write down which is the name and which the title, and what the sentence is doing with each.
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