God Has Two Names?

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[First posted in 2012 with this introduction:

According to Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, yes, God has “two” names but clarifies what he means.  As it turns out, God has ONE NAME, which Rabbi Sacks, abiding by Jewish tradition, does not name but rather substitutes “Hashem” or “the Name”; the other “name” is actually a title in Canaanite, like the generic “God.” 

In a discussion of things to notice about the TORAH, the first thing Rabbi Sacks explains is that “the basic structure of Jewish thought is the movement from universal to the particular.”  In connection with that, he shows how the Creator proceeds in making Himself known to all mankind:

• first to particular individuals such as the first couple
• and their second generation,
• then Noah
• and Abraham through whom He forms a particular line
• with Isaac and Jacob and his 12 sons and their tribal descendants;
• then at the appointed time, more personally to Moses
• and the liberated Israelite slaves He chose to represent Him through His unique Sinai revelation.

This is a part of his book that we listed under MUST READ, if not MUST OWN:  Future Tense:  Jews, Judaism, and Israel in the Twenty-First Century, downloadable as ebook or kindle book from amazon.com; this excerpt has been reformatted for posting.–Admin1.]

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. . . .  God has two names.  In fact, he has many, but throughout the Hebrew Bible, two predominate:

• the four-letter name which, following Jewish custom, we will call Hashem (‘the name’),
• and the name Elokim.

Why two names and what is the difference between them?

To Judaism’s early sages,

• Elokim represents God as justice.
• Hashem is God as compassion and mercy.

However, Judah Halevi, in his classic work The Kuzari, offered a quite different analysis.

• The word El is a Canaanite term meaning ‘a god’.  In general in the ancient world, natural forces were often seen as gods, so there was a sun god, a god of the ocean, a god of thunder and rain, and so on.
• Since Judaism is a monotheism, it sees none of these forces as an independent power.  Instead, God created all the forces operative in the universe, and that is what the term Elokim signifies.
  • It means the force of forces,
  • the cause of causes,
  • the totality of all powers.
  • Elokim is thus a plural, generic noun meaning ‘powers’.
• Hashem, according to Halevi, is a word of a different grammatical type.  
  
  • It is not a noun but a proper name.

Hashem and Elokim stand to one another as do ‘Elizabeth’ and ‘Queen of England’, or ‘Barack Obama’ and ‘President of the United States’.

A proper name exists only where we speak of individuals, not classes or types of things.  The primary bearers of proper names are persons, human beings.  In general, we use a proper name, rather than a title or description as a form of intimacy.  It would be lèse-majesté to address the Queen of England as ‘Elizabeth’.  Though it would no longer condemn you to imprisonment in the Tower of London, it just isn’t done.  Only those we know well do we call by name.  So the name Hashem implies closeness of relationship.

If we now look at the distribution of the two names within the Mosaic books, especially Genesis, we make an unexpected discovery.  Even after God’s choice of, and covenant with, Abraham, the Torah takes it for granted that those outside of the covenant may also encounter God.  He reveals himself to them and speaks to them.  They may even speak to him.  They exhibit no surprise.  They speak of God, not of Baal, Chemosh, Ra or any of the other deities of the Ancient Near East.  In almost all cases, the word used is Elokim.  Elokim is, as it were, common ground between the patriarchal family and its neighbors.

So, for example, when Abraham is forced by famine to go to the land of the Philistines, he fears that he may be killed for the sake of his wife Sarah, and says that she is his sister.  She is duly taken into the harem of the king, Abimelech.  God (Elokim) then appears to Abimelech at night in a dream and warns him that she is in fact married to Abraham.  A dialogue about justice that ensues between God and the pagan king, who protests his innocence—not unlike the encounter between Abraham and God over the fate of Sodom.

Similarly, when Abraham negotiates to buy a plot of land in which to bury Sarah, the Hittites call him ‘a prince of God [Elokim] in our midst’.  When Joseph is brought up from prison to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams, he says, ‘God [Elokim] will give Pharaoh the answer he desires,’ evidently assuming that Pharaoh will understand the word.  Indeed Pharaoh himself uses it:  

Pharaoh asked [his officials], ‘Can we find anyone like this man, one in whom is the spirit of God [Elokim]? The Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘Since God [Elohkim] has made all this known to you, there is no one so discerning and wise as you.’ (Gen. 41:39)

This is a long way from what we were taught as children:  that Abraham grew up among idolaters, that he was a breaker of idols, and that his monotheism was sharply at odds with the culture of his day.  To the contrary, Genesis contains no explicit polemic against idols (other than Laban’s fetishes).  Abraham and Joseph speak about God, but so do Abimelech, Pharaoh, Laban and the Hittites.

Likewise the phrase ‘fear of God [Elokim]’ seems to represent a kind of universal morality that can be assumed to be understood by everyone.  So when Abimelech challenges Abraham as to why he said that Sarah was his sister, not his wife, Abraham replies,

‘I said to myself, there is no fear of God [Elokim] in this place . . . ‘ (Gen. 20:11). 

When Joseph refuses the advances of Potiphar’s wife, he says to her, 

‘How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God [Elokim]? (Gen. 39:9). 

The assumption is that the wife of an Egyptian official will understand both the phrase and the idea it expresses.

More dramatically, early in the book of Exodus we encounter the first recorded act of civil disobedience:  the refusal of the midwives to obey Pharaoh’s command to kill every male Hebrew child. The text says that they —

‘feared God [Elokim]  and did not do what the king of Egypt had told him to do’ (Exod. 1:17). 

This is particularly interesting since, by a subtle ambiguity, the phrase describing them may mean either ‘the Hebrew midwives’ or ‘the midwives to the Hebrews’, leaving it unresolved as to whether they were Hebrew or Egyptian.  The phrase yirat Elokim seems to refer to a universal moral sense, a ‘natural law’, presumed to be present in everyone unless corrupted.

The word Hashem is quite different.  It almost invariably signals a closeness of relationship, and is used far more of the covenantal family.  

So, for example, whereas Joseph’s pharaoh understands and uses the word Elokim, the pharaoh to whom Moses speaks defiantly:  

‘Who is the Lord [Hashem], that I should obey him and let Israel go?  I do not know the Lord [Hashem] and I will not let Israel go.’ (Exod. 5:2)

Consistent with this distinction, the covenant with Noah (Gen. 9:8-17) uses the word Elokim throughout.  

In the key communications of God with Abraham—

• the command to leave his family (12;1),
• the promise of the land (12:7) 
• and of children (15:4-6),
• and the covenant (15:18; 17:1)

—the name Hashem is used.  

The general contrast in Genesis is therefore not between monotheism and polytheism, or even between true worship and idolatry.  It is between Elokim and Hashem, God as he appears to people in general, and the intimacy of his encounters with those he loves in particular.

So we have yet another duality.  

• Elokim is universal, 
• Hashem is particular.  

An Egyptian, a Philistine, a Hittite, someone who stands outside the covenant, can understand Elokim as the cause of causes, the supreme power.  But Hashem, God’s proper name, the name by which he is called in intimate person-to-person relationship: that is not universal.  It bespeaks closeness, singularity.  This is the God of revelation and self-disclosure, the God of love who will one day say,

‘My child, my firstborn, Israel’ (Exod. 4:22).