El Olam – The Everlasting God, אֵ ל עֺולָ ם
Forever. Eternal. Without beginning or end. Do those ideas bring you peace, or do they fill you with dread? Maybe a little bit of both?
ETERNITY
The word carries a certain gravity, doesn’t it? Like you have to say it with some reverb in the background. E-T-E-R-N-I-T-Y.
You are an eternal being.
The first use of “olam” comes in Genesis 3:22. It’s terrifying.
Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever (olam).”
When man sinned, he became the walking dead. Spiritually, he was a dead man. Had he eaten from the Tree of Life in his sinful state, he would have been dead forever.
But El Olam had a plan to defeat death. He gave us a glimpse of the promise of redemption immediately after the Fall. It was a long game, but it had the promise of happily ever after. As a writer of romance, it’s my favorite kind of story.
And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel. Genesis 3:15
In the Old Testament, ETERNITY – Sheol, Paradise, Abraham’s bosom, the abode of the dead – was a murky concept. Nevertheless, those who put their trust in El Olam didn’t know how they would be saved, but they knew who would make it happen.
King David expressed it beautifully.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of Yahweh for ever. Psalm 23:6
The framework for this study comes from Ann Spangler’s Praying the Names of God for 52 Weeks – join me!
