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gives to Moses his commission, and com mits to him His Memorial Name, ‘‘Yahveh, He who will be,” the coming One, the desired One, the God of your Fathers. The story of the Exodus is the story of the triumphs of Yahveh over the magicians and gods of Egypt. Deliver ance, deliverance! “I am Yahveh, who brought you up out of Egypt.” Jehovah and Christ Identified “We now find a continued series of statements concerning the Divinity and the Humanity of this coming Deliverer, so interchanging the personalities of the two as to identify, beyond possibility of sepa ration or essential distinction, the two sets of prophecies as relating to one per son. “And He came. The long-expected Deliverer, the Sovereign, came suddenly to His Temple,—yet heralded by angels and proclaimed by His messenger . . . . He who had aforetime sent His prophets with ‘Thus saith Yahveh,’-^Himself now brings the message of deliverance from sin. “Yahveh in the person of Christ speaks on earth.” The great aim of the New Testament writers appears to be to identify Christ, the Messiah, with the Yahveh of the Old Testament. “Thus they affirm: “That Isaiah saw the glory of Christ and spoke of Him. “In Isaiah it is the glory of Yahveh. “That Christ was the leader of Israel in the wilderness. “In the narrative of these wanderings, they were led by Yahveh. “That Moses preferred the reproach of Christ to the treasures of Egypt. “In Exodus, it is Yahveh for whom he endures all things. “That at the giving of the Law the voice of Christ shook the earth. “In Exodus it is the voice of Yahveh. “That the spirit of Christ spake by the prophets. “The prophets themselves refer their utterances to the spirit of Yahveh.” The names of deity in the Old Testa ment are descriptive of the relationships of deity and are used with precise mean- ings. ■ . . “Thus Elohim, by derivation and use, is a term expressive of power, and repre sents the object of awe and reverence, standing at the head of the universe. “ ‘Adonai,’ ‘Sovereign,’ expresses a relation of dominion. “Yahveh represents a relation of deliverance and affection.” ALPHA AND OMEGA Much history lies between the Old Testament and the New. Israel has tasted the bitterness of bondage to many world powers. The language of one of these was at the time of Christ spoken by the people of Palestine. It is Greek. The term in this language which is the precise equivalent of Yahveh is Ho Erkom’ enos, the Coming One. John the Bap- tizer sends to Jesus and asks, “Art Thou ‘Ho Erkom’ enos,’ or look we for an other?” In the Revelation, He proclaims his own name and person, “I am Alpha and Omega—the Beginning and the End,—the First and the Last,—He who is and who was, and [Ho Erkom’ enos] who is to come; the Almighty [Heb. El Thaddai].”
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vah’ enfolds the whole doctrine of God in his relation to man, comprehends the work of redemption, contains the law and the Gospel, reaches back in its extended significance to the gates of Eden, and forward to the final coming of the Redeemer.” Since the translation of 1611, there have been great advances in the understanding of the,Hebrew. It is now understood that the proper pointing of the consonants that form the word “Jehovah” would re quire that it be written Yahveh, and the true significance of this word is, I will be, rather than I am. What makes the translation important is that the Almighty identifies Himself with the promised Deliverer who is to come. In Genesis 4 :1, Eve says: “I have gotten [kanah] a man from the Lord.” But the particle eth which is here trans lated “from” is nowhere else given this meaning. In Gen. 1 :1, it is twice repeated (before “heaven” and before “earth”), and both times marks the direct object of the verb “creati” (boro). Luther in his later editions translates thus, “den man, den herrn” (the man, the Lord) ; or, to follow the Hebrew more exactly, “a man, even Yahveh.” Eve had heard the promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head, and she fondly thought that this seed had now come. How sadly she was disappointed may appear from the name she gave to Abel, which is said to mean, vanity, emptiness, disappointment. Still another son is born to Eve, and to him is given the name Seth. It is in the time of Enos, the son of Seth, that men began to invoke the name of Jehovah. The facts as given in these first four chapters of Genesis are these: The Deliverer was expected im mediately to appear. Cain was supposed to be, and was called Yahveh, The Deliverer. The hope of a human Deliverer was given up, God was invoked as Yahveh, the De liverer. By Noah’s time the worship of Yahveh had become established, for his first act on leaving the Ark was to build an altar to Jehovah. But if this is true, how can it be true, as stated in Exodus 6:3, that by this name Yahveh he was not known to the patriarchs ? A glance at the Hebrew will show that here the meaning of the word is “com prehended” or “understood,” rather than “known.” Such is the use of the word in Isa. 6 :9, “Seeing they shall see and not perceive." In the promises of the Abrahamic cove nant the Coming One is to appear in the “nation” of which he is to be the Founder. In the prophecies of Jacob, the Coming One should appear in the tribe of Judah. The long eclipse of the sojourn in Egypt now occurs, but again at the burn ing bush the Deliverer appears as He
The Plan Here is a plan whereby ministers and Christian Workers will be assisted in selecting the books they buy. We are p l a c i n g at your service the Bible Institute with its faculty and other departments. From this great corps of workers, a committee qualified for the task will select a book each month that is of outstanding importance to the Chris tian worker. The book selected will be given a careful review, describing the nature and contents. To those who will send in a new sub subscription to T he K ing ' s B usiness with their order for one of these books, a discount of SO cents may be deducted. For example, the price of the book is $1.25; T he K ing ' s B usiness is $1.25, total $2.50. Send us $2.00 and we will send you the book and enter the sub scription for a year. —o— Yahveh Christ, or, The Memorial Name B y A lexander M ac W horter , Y ale U niversity B y P rofessor H oward A. K ellogg The book named as the subject of this notice was published in 1857. From time to time the great importance of the con clusions reached by Prof. MacWhorter has been emphasized, by others. The au thor of the book was one of the rare, reverent, scholarly teachers who im pressed their character and consecrated culture upon the New England of our grandfathers. That we may the better understand this notice, let us have before us a summary taken from the preface:— “The name ‘Jehovah’ is the grand cen tral fact upon which the discussion turns. “It will be shown that this name, having been deprived of its true vowels through a superstition of the Jews, is not Jehovah, but Yahveh; that it is not properly ren dered ‘I am,’ but He who will be; that it is the Great Messianic name of the Old Testament, and there represents the same Divine Person who afterward appeared in the world’s history under the name of Christ" In his introductory letter, Nathaniel W. Taylor, also of Yale University, says: “Just views of the moral government of God over the world since the Apostasy in Eden,—a government of Law and Grace, administered by Him who is the Seed promised to our first parents,—the Jehovah angel of the Patriarchs, the Messiah of the Jews, the Redeemer of the world, the King on the holy hill of Zion, and the Lamb in the midst of the throne, —not only harmonize with, but almost seem to require, the import which the writer of this critique gives to the Hebrew word Yahveh.” THE MEMORIAL NAME In his first chapter, Prof. Mac Whorter says that in spite of vast indifference to this subject, “the memorial name ‘Jeho
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