Names of the Jewish and Christian God

The original scriptures of the Old Testament were written in Hebrew and the New Testament was Greek. Many of us do not realize that when the King James translation came along we lost a lot of the meaning that originally was meant to be. An example of this is that we do not realize is that God has many names. If you were to pick up a Torah which is the first five books of our Bible, you would see that God is addressed by His different names. Below I am going to give you some examples of these names and there meanings.

One of the names of God is YHWH. The Jewish people will place YHWH before other words to describe God. An example of this is in Genesis 22:13-14 it talks about God as being YHWH-Yireh. We would pronounce this as Jehovah-jireh. This name means God is our provider. He will take care of us and He provides all that we need. In Exodus 15:26 He is called YHWH-Rapha which means that He is the one that heals us. In Judges 6:24 He is called YHWH-Shalom. This means that He is the God of peace.

Another name of God is Adonai. Adonai means LORD who is God. It is used as a substitution for YHWH. The Jewish people would use this name because they felt that the name of God was too sacred to say. They felt that they were being more respectful to God to use the name Adonai. In Psalm 110:1 we get to see these two names used in the same verse. It tells us that YHWH (father God) said to Adonai (Jesus) to sit at His right hand. It is agreed upon by both Jewish scholars and Christian scholars that this is the interpretation of this scripture.

Elohim is another name for God. We first see this name in Genesis 1:1. It is not exactly known what this name means but the name seems to denote power and strength. It is usually given to those who are deity. This name is to show the majesty and power of God. Another place that we see this name in scripture is in Exodus 21:6 and Psalm 8:5.

A fourth name for God is Shaddai. This name means Almighty. In the Old Testament there was a man named Abraham. Abraham called God by this name. We can see this in the book of Genesis chapter 28:3, and chapter 35:11. The root form of this word is interpreted as destroy or overpower. It is to show that God is all powerful. He overpowers everything. He is also the provider of everything.

There are still so many names of God that I did not even mention. Each name tells us a little bit more about who He is. They also give us some insight into His personality. A study of God's name could take us weeks to do. One website that I would recommend going to if you would like to study this on your own is from wikipedia. It is called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_God_in_Judaism