Our parasha opens with God appearing to Moses and revealing a new aspect of Godself. “I am YHVH, I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My name YHVH.” This new name, usually translated as “the Lord,” also called the tetragrammaton, meaning the four-lettered name of God, is filled with mystery and importance to us – it’s the name of our God! We don’t pronounce it and don’t even know how to pronounce it. In ancient times it was only pronounced one day a year, on Yom Kippur, by the high priest in the holy of holies in the Temple in Jerusalem. The translation “the Lord” seems to miss the essence of the name because if we did try to pronounce it, which we don’t, the sound would sound something like the sound of breathing. Sometimes, instead of trying to translate this name of God, people simply say HaShem, meaning, the name, to refer to God.
So, here in our parasha, when God says, “I am Hashem, but I did not make Myself known before as Hashem,” something new about God is being revealed to Moses here at the beginning of the exodus. Interestingly, as Rashi points out, God actually does reveal this name before in Genesis, but what God says here is “I did not make Myself known,” meaning: God’s name has been heard before, but something new about what this name means is now being revealed. What might that be?
QUESTION: Here we are at the beginning of the exodus: With that context in mind, what is the new aspect of God that is being made known here through this four-lettered name, YHVH? What might these letters mean? And what does this name teach us about the essence of the God of the Torah?
ANSWER: Let’s look at the context in which God is making this name known and understood. First, we’ve got Moses, who is reluctant to speak to Pharaoh and lead this exodus because of his impeded speech, because he is aral sfatayim, literally, of uncircumcised lips. Moses’ speech is obstructed, blocked, perhaps he stutters, somehow he is stuck.
Secondly, we’ve got B’nei Israel, the Israelites, who won’t listen to Moses anyway. Why? The Torah says, “mikotzer ruach u’mayavodah kasha” – from a constriction of spirit and from cruel bondage. Their spirits are crushed from slavey, and so they are stuck, too. They can’t even hear the possibility that God will free them.
Thirdly, Pharaoh is stuck in his stubborn, hard-hearted ways. He won’t listen and won’t change his mind, even with numerous plagues striking him and his people. Everything about Egypt, which in Hebrew is Mitzrayim, meaning narrow or constricted, is about being stuck in a tight, closed, blocked place – Moses’ speech, the spirit of the Israelites, and the mind of Pharaoh – all are closed and stuck.
And it’s in this context that we understand what God’s four-lettered name means. We may have heard the name before, but now, we understand its essence. YHVH contains not only the sound of the breath, but also the word “to be” in its present and future forms. It conveys the sense of “what is” and “what will be” or “what could be.” In other words, the God that is being revealed here is the Force that pulls “what is” towards “what could be,” (to use Michael Lerner’s definition, Jewish Renewal, p. 65) it’s the Force of change and transformation and redemption, it’s the spiritual pull that transforms that stuckness of Moses, the Israelites, and Pharaoh into unlimited possibility and freedom.
There’s a verse in our liturgy that says “min hameytzar karati Yah, anani bamerchavya – from a constricted place I called out to God, God answered me with expansiveness.” That’s the meaning of God’s name that is being made known to us here. And at Sinai, when God reveals the 10 Commandments, the first one is: I am YHVH, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage. We now understand what God wants us to know about God’s name. God’s name is defined by that power that brings us out of our slavery, out of our stuck or closed state where change isn’t possible, and opens us to an expansive place of freedom and possibility. That’s the essence of God that is being made known to Israel in our parasha and so too may it be made known to us.
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