Hashem . . . Boy, does that sound familiar!
Hashem means The Name. Noah named his son Name. Doesn’t that sound like a Far Side Cartoon?
Mrs. Noah, hands on hips, glares at Noah. “You wrote “Name” on his birth certificate?”
Noah shrugs and lifts his hands in apology. “The instructions said, ‘Write name here.'”
So why would Noah name his son Name?
I’m reminded of Chuck Missler’s study on the names in the genealogy of Adam to Noah found in Genesis 5. Here’s the conclusion. Strung together in a sentence, the names mean, “Man is appointed mortal sorrow, but the Blessed God shall come down, teaching that his death shall bring the despairing comfort and rest.” Boom. God’s plan presented in the first ten men in the line of Jesus.
So what comes next? Shem – Name. That name lives on. Abraham comes through Shem’s line. Today, we speak of the Semites. They’re descendants of Shem. Antisemitic means hostile toward Jews. (Which is a bit misleading since many peoples descended from Shem, but that’s a rabbit trail I won’t take today.)
Back to God’s plan presented in Genesis 5 – the one about the Blessed God coming down – who’s that? And all God’s Sunday School children say, “Jesus!”
And what’s name eleven? The kids shout, “Jesus!”
One of them, the know-itty-all, says, “No, it’s Shem.”
And who does Hashem stand for? “Jesus!”
Susie Know-itty-all says, “Well, yes, and the Father.”
And what do Yeshua and YHWH both mean? We looked at that back on February 8th – Salvation.
It’s like some cosmic, interconnected web of meaning all pointing to God’s plan.
Man is appointed mortal sorrow, but the Blessed God shall come down, teaching that his death shall bring the despairing comfort and rest. How? By salvation in the name of Jesus.
Photo credit – Geralt on Pixabay
Feature Photo credit – The Ark Encounter
