In the Old Testament God revealed Himself in different ways, through His names. You may have heard such names of God as Elohim, El Shaddai or Adonai, but there is one name that stands apart: the name Jehovah, or YAHWEH, to be closer to the original. In the Old Testament this name of God is usually translated as the LORD. So what is this name, and what makes it special? The name YAHWEH first appears in the second chapter of Genesis, after God had created everything and after He had entered His rest on the seventh day. So the name YAHWEH reveals God in His rest.

God first revealed Himself to the sons of men as YAHWEH when He spoke with Moses on the mountain:

Then Moses said to God, “Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?” And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’“
—Exodus 3:13-14

Later God explained to Moses: “I am the LORD [YAHWEH]. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name LORD [YAHWEH] I was not known to them. I have also established My covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, in which they were strangers” [Exd.6:2-4]. Why did Abraham, Isaac and Jacob not know God as YAHWEH? As we have already noticed, YAHWEH reveals God in His rest. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were given promises of an eternal inheritance, but while they lived on earth they did not receive the promises: “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” [Heb.11:13].

God revealed Himself to Moses and the Israelites as YAHWEH because He was bringing them out of slavery into the promised land, the land flowing with milk and honey, the land of rest. The Israelites had nothing to do but follow the Lord by faith in order to enter the promised land. The Lord appeared to Moses in the midst of a burning thorn bush that was not consumed. In the Old Testament there are many types of Jesus and His finished work on the cross. In this case the thorn bush speaks of the crown of thorns that was on Jesus’ head, and the fire speaks of God’s wrath, which burns up all unrighteousness. It was on this very mountain that “the anger of the LORD was kindled against Moses” [Exd.4:14]. In fact, Moses was standing on the mountain of God, and the whole picture represented the cross of Jesus Christ. The letter to the Hebrews says this about the mountain of God, Sinai: “For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire…” When Jesus hung on the cross, He was in the midst of the burning thorn bush. There on the cross God’s wrath came down on Him, but God’s love, which appeared in the person of Jesus Christ, is much stronger than His wrath, so when all the wrath against all unrighteousness had been exhausted, the Son of God still hung there. God’s grace and God’s love swallowed up all of God’s wrath.

When Jesus hung on the cross, a board was fixed above Him with an inscription in three languages: “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews”. In Hebrew, one of the languages in which it was written, the inscription looks like this:

Hebrew is read from right to left. So if you take the first letters of each word, you get YOD-HE-VAV-HE, or YAHWEH. YAHWEH reveals to us the finished work of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. All of God’s work for our salvation, healing, blessing, justification, sanctification and redemption was accomplished on the cross, so we can peacefully enter His rest just as He entered it, and cease from all our works just as He ceased from His [Heb.4:10].

In the Bible there are many compound names of YAHWEH, such as YAHWEH-YIREH or YAHWEH-RAPHA, each of which reveals Jesus’ finished work on the cross. As we come to know His finished work, we will abide in even greater rest and enjoy all the blessings for which our Redeemer suffered.

Faith Sees the Lamb of God

The first compound name of YAHWEH appears in a story in which the cross of Jesus Christ is very vividly portrayed. God told Abraham to offer up his only son, Isaac, as a sacrifice. It is interesting that Abraham had two sons, one according to the flesh, Ishmael, and the other the son of promise, Isaac, but God said: “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love” [Gen.22:2] Why only and beloved? Because this is not about Abraham and his son, but about God the Father, of whom Abraham was a type in this case, and His Son Jesus Christ. God the Father gave His only and beloved Son to death on the cross, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

What can the name YAHWEH-YIREH reveal to us? The word yireh in Hebrew means to see or to look. “Then on the third day Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place afar off” [Gen.22:4]. This story reveals not only Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, but also His resurrection. Abraham lifted his eyes on the third day and saw the place. Our Lord rose on the third day. This is what Matthew writes in his Gospel: “And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many” [Mat.27:50-53].

As soon as Jesus said “It is finished” and yielded up His spirit, at that very moment the fathers who had fallen asleep, to whom the promise had been given, were raised. And after His resurrection, on the third day, they came out of the graves and went into the holy city — the New Jerusalem!! The letter to the Hebrews says about Abraham: “By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God” [Heb.11:9-10]. And the foundation of this city is Jesus Christ!

When Abraham raised the knife to slay his son, God stopped him. The Lord said to me: “Faith, of which Abraham is a type, cannot kill; faith only sees the Lamb of God.” And indeed, the next moment “Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by its horns” [Gen.22:13]. The Hebrew word for thicket is sebak, and it literally means interwoven branches of thorns. Again we see a thorn bush, as in the story of Moses, which points to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, on whose brow was a crown of thorns woven from thorny branches.

YAHWEH-YIREH: the Lord Sees the Slain Lamb

When Jesus was going to the river Jordan to be baptised by John, “John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, ‘Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’” [Jhn.1:29]. John looked at Jesus with the eyes of the Holy Spirit, with whom he had been filled from his mother’s womb [Luk.1:15]. Another John, when he was caught up in the spirit to heaven, to the throne of God, and wept because no one could take the scroll from the right hand of Him who sat on the throne and open its seals, heard the voice of one of the elders: “Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals. And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as though it had been slain…” [Rev.5:5-6] John, being in the spirit, looked with the eyes of the Holy Spirit at the Lion of the tribe of Judah, but what did he see? He saw a slain Lamb.

After Abraham had offered up the ram as a burnt offering instead of his son, he named the place he had seen three days earlier Jehovah-Jireh, or YAHWEH-YIREH. Literally the name of this place is “the Lord sees” (the NKJV translates it as The-LORD-Will-Provide). Sees what, or Whom? He sees the slain Lamb. The Lamb that was slain, offered as a sacrifice, speaks of the finished work.

Do you need salvation? The Lord sees Jesus, sacrificed for your salvation! Do you need justification? The Lord sees Jesus, sacrificed for your justification. Do you need healing? The Lord sees Jesus, sacrificed for your healing. Do you need the solution to some problem? The Lord sees Jesus, sacrificed for you, God’s beloved treasures, for the solution to this problem. The Word of God says: “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” [Rom.8:32]. If we have Jesus, we have everything, and we have the solutions to all our problems, for He is the supply of all our needs; He is our fullness, who fills all in all.