The Names of God in the Old Testament 6 min read Lesson 8 of 12

Yahweh Will Provide, Yahweh My Banner, Yahweh Is Peace, Yahweh Our Righteousness, Yahweh Is There, and why most of them are the names of altars, not of God

The Names at Places: Yahweh Yireh and the Altars That Remember

Sermons and songs list them as names of God: Jehovah-Jireh, Jehovah-Nissi, Jehovah-Shalom. Open the verses and you find that Abraham named a mountain, Moses named an altar, Gideon named an altar, and Ezekiel named a city. They are names people gave to places where God had met them, and that is what makes them worth a lesson.

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Lesson 8 of 12 · The names people gave to places

Five names join the name Yahweh to a word for what he did somewhere: he will provide, my banner, is peace, our righteousness, is there. All are in scripture; only one of them is, strictly, a name for God — Jeremiah’s, given to a future king. The others are the names of a mountain, two altars and a city, given by Abraham, Moses, Gideon and Ezekiel to mark the place where something happened. Calling them names of God is not wrong so much as one step off: they are what a person called the place after meeting him, which is a different and very human act, and one the Bible commends by recording it every time.

The mountain: Yahweh Will Provide

The best known of the five is Abraham’s, and it is said over a place.

Abraham called the name of that place “Yahweh Will Provide”. As it is said to this day, “On Yahweh’s mountain, it will be provided.” — Genesis 22:14 · WEB

Read the comment on The ram caught in the thicket

Abraham called the name of that place Yahweh Yireh: Yahweh will see, or will see to it, and so will provide. He had said the same verb to Isaac on the way up — God will see for himself the lamb — without knowing he was prophesying, and after the ram he named the mountain with it. The saying that follows, "on Yahweh’s mountain, it will be provided," is the narrator telling you the name was still current in his day. The name is the mountain’s. What it says about God is that the seeing of the last lesson issues in a ram.

יְהֹוָה יִרְאֶה Yᵉhôvâh yirʼeh H3070

xlit yireh corrected to yirʼeh; from יְהֹוָה and רָאָה; Jehovah will see (to it); Jehovah-Jireh, a symbolical name for Mount Moriah; Jehovah-jireh.

The lexicon lists this as a proper name: Yahweh Yireh, "Yahweh will see" or "will provide," the name of the place on Mount Moriah — from the name of God and the verb ra’ah, to see, which gave Hagar her name for God a few chapters earlier. The same pattern makes Yahweh Nissi, Yahweh Shalom, Yahweh Tsidkenu and Yahweh Shammah, each listed as a name in its own right, and each, in its verse, the name of a thing built or a place marked. The Jehovah- forms in older devotional use are the same words read with the wrong vowels, as the second lesson explained.

Two altars and a city

“Moses built an altar, and called its name “Yahweh our Banner”.” Exodus 17:15 · WEB
Moses built an altar and called its name Yahweh Nissi, Yahweh our banner: after the battle with Amalek, an altar named for the standard the army fought under.
“Then Gideon built an altar there to Yahweh, and called it “Yahweh is Peace.” To this day it is still in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.” Judges 6:24 · WEB
Gideon built an altar to Yahweh and called it Yahweh Shalom, Yahweh is peace: said by a man who had just been told "peace be to you, do not fear, you will not die" — the name of the last word he heard.
““It shall be eighteen thousand reeds in circumference; and the name of the city from that day shall be, ‘Yahweh is there.’” Ezekiel 48:35 · WEB
The name of the city from that day shall be Yahweh Shammah, Yahweh is there: the last words of Ezekiel, naming the restored Jerusalem for the one thing the exiles had lost.
“He said, “If you will diligently listen to Yahweh your God’s voice, and will do that which is right in his eyes, and will pay attention to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians; for I am Yahweh who heals you.”” Exodus 15:26 · WEB
I am Yahweh who heals you: not a place-name at all, but a sentence, which later usage turned into Yahweh Rapha; it belongs to the list by habit rather than by grammar.

An altar for a banner, an altar for a word of peace, a city for a presence. Each is a person or a prophet fixing a moment to a place so that it could be walked to again.

The one that is a name of God

Jeremiah’s is different in kind, and the difference is the point.

In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell safely. This is his name by which he will be called: Yahweh our righteousness. — Jeremiah 23:6 · WEB

Read the comment on The Righteous Branch

In his days Judah will be saved, and this is his name by which he will be called: Yahweh our righteousness. The Branch, the coming king of David’s line, will bear the name of God joined to the word of the third lesson of Twelve Words. It is not an altar. It is a title for a person, given by a prophet, and Christian readers have read it of Jesus since the beginning; Jewish readers have read it of the messianic king to come. Either way it is the one entry on the list that names someone rather than somewhere — and the someone is the king, not, in the first instance, God.

What a named place is for

The habit of naming a place after a meeting runs through Genesis — Bethel, house of God; Peniel, face of God; Beer Lahai Roi, the well of the last lesson — and it is not decoration. A named place is a memory that can be visited. Jacob went back to Bethel; Isaac lived at Hagar’s well; the narrator of Genesis 22 says the saying about the mountain was still in use. The names are not titles of God. They are the marks people left where God had been, so that they and their children could find the spot.

What the names ask

They ask for the practice, not the vocabulary. Singing Jehovah-Jireh as a title is a small thing; naming the place where you were provided for, so that you can go back to it, is what Abraham did. The five names on this list were all given by people looking back on a moment, and the lesson of the list is that they looked back.