Va'era
When God tells us at the beginning of this week's portion, I am Adonai. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, by the name El Shaddai but by my name Adonai I was not known to them. (Exodus 6:2) God is opening up a new chapter in Creation and in the revelation of God's identity and ability.
When God created the world, it was as Elohim. This is a generic word that describes a god or gods - not necessarily the God that we identify. As Elohim, our God is representing the Divine totality, God of the whole world, superceeding all those other gods that are believed in the world. Such a universal God it is, that creates the world and the whole universe in which we live.
When God was revealed to Abraham, it was with the words, I am El Shaddai, walk before me and be perfect. (Genesis 17:1) El Shaddai is often translated as God Almighty, but the word Shad in Hebrew has a very different meaning. It means the female breast and has an association with suckling, and nurturing. Rather than denote power, what God is implying in revealing this name to Abraham is that God will be the source of his sustenance, his close protector his most intimate companion.
Now God is revealed to Moses as Adonai – this Hebrew word meaning ‘my Lord’ is itself a substitute for the tetragrammaton – YHVH- the yod.heh.vav.heh. – the four letters that make up God’s name that we never pronounce. This name is something of a mystery. When Moses asked who God was in last weeks parashah, he received the enigmatic reply eheye asher eheye. ‘I will be who I will be...’ But this enigma is at the core of the name God now reveals for the four letters are an amalgam of every permutation of the verb to be. It contains the past – the perfect tense HYH heh.yod.heh. - the God who was; it contains the imperfect YHYH yod.heh.yod.heh - the God who will continue to be; and it contains the present participle HVH- heh.vav.heh – the continuous present, the God who is Being… What this means is that God’s name, and by extension God’s nature is:
'The One who was, who is and who will be with us continually.'
God is eternal existence - hence the translation in our new siddur of Eternal wherever the name of God appears.
This new revelation is particularly important at this stage in the history of Israel. God is about to rescue the people from their slavery in Egypt but in the process, they will suffer even more greatly in Egypt and will experience all the hardships of life in the desert as well as the trauma associated with change from slaves to an independent people.
None of this could happen without the constant reassuring presence of God and the promise that God will never leave them.
What we see in the gradual revealing of God's nature through the introduction of God's different names is that what we know of God is only partial, but the as time goes on and different circumstances present themselves, more becomes known and as knowledge of God grows, so does our understanding. This is what is meant by the term 'Progressive Revelation.' What we know today of the nature of God and the nature of God's world far exceeds the knowledge of these ancient Israelites and even of Moses himself. We learn from our forebears, we learn from history, we learn from experience. The great revelations that we are party to in our day would have been incomprehensible in Moses' time. The knowledge that slavery is wrong, that racism is wrong, that the treatment of women as inferior objects is wrong. All these we know now to be against the will of God.
As Reform Jews, we can celebrate the ever-expanding knowledge of scientists about the world, about the universe and about ourselves. We can wonder at the increasing complexity and diversity this new knowledge reveals and wonder even more at the God that is behind it all. What we see in our portion is a revelation for the children of Israel that still has great relevance for us. What we see in our own lives are revelations that will impact on the generations of the future.
Sybil A. Sheridan