This Is My Name for Ever

What Your Bible Says

Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Yahuah God of your fathers … hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.

Exodus 3:15 KJV

Where this page reads Yahuah, the King James prints “Lord” in small capital letters. The reader is told the Name is forever, and in the same breath is handed a title in its place.

What the Hebrew Says

The Hebrew writes the Name itself, four letters: yod, hey, vav, hey. It stands in the Hebrew Scriptures about 6,800 times, far more often than Elohim or any other word for the Creator.

Yahuah gave it as His memorial to every generation. He did not give it as a secret to be hidden.

What the Greek Says

The Lord God of our fathers … has sent me to you: this is my name for ever.

Exodus 3:15, Septuagint

In the standard Greek copies the Name is gone. In its place stands Kyrios, the Greek word for lord or master. A husband could be called kyrios. So could a slave owner, a governor, or a pagan god.

What Changed

A personal name became a title. Thousands of times over, the one word that told Israel who their Elohim was became a word that could belong to anyone.

The Name was not lost in the Hebrew. It was covered in the Greek, and from the Greek it passed into Latin as Dominus and into English as Lord.

Which One Is Right?

The Hebrew text writes the Name all through, from Genesis to Malachi.

The oldest Greek copies did not always say Kyrios. A Greek scroll of Deuteronomy, found in Egypt and copied before Messiah, writes the Name in Hebrew letters right in the middle of the Greek.

The later Greek copies, the great books copied in the centuries after the cross, put Kyrios everywhere. That is the form most Bibles inherited.

Purpose of the Change

The effect is that the Creator lost His Name in the reader’s Bible. A title can be shared. Once “Lord” could mean the Father or the Son without telling them apart, the door opened for teachers to make the two one Elohim.