Is the Name Really Important?

THAT is a question many raise in a discussion of God’s name. “God is God,” they say. “So why do we need a name?”

The Illustrated Bible Dictionary, published in 1980 by Tyndale House Publishers, makes this comment about the significance of a name in Bible times: “A study of the word ‘name’ in the OT [Old Testament] reveals how much it means in Hebrew. The name is no mere label, but is significant of the real personality of him to whom it belongs. It may derive from the circumstances of his birth (Gn. 5:29), or reflect his character (Gn. 27:36), and when a person puts his ‘name’ upon a thing or another person the latter comes under his influence and protection.”

Then, regarding God’s name, the Dictionary states: “Yahweh, therefore, in contrast with Elohim [God], is a proper noun, the name of a Person, though that Person is divine. As such, it has its own ideological setting; it presents God as a Person, and so brings him into relationship with other, human, personalities . . . , and he speaks to the Patriarchs as one friend to another.”

So the only way anyone can come near to God and have a personal relationship with him is by knowing him by his name, Yahweh, or Jehovah, and by learning to use that name respectfully in worshiping him. (John 17:26) Indeed, such ones will ‘come under his influence and protection,’ for Jehovah himself said, “I shall protect him because he has come to know my name.”​—Psalm 91:14.