Misquoting Moses with Joel Baden
Oct 16, 2026 · 44 min · 8 segments
Abraham prayed to El Shaddai. Moses encountered a burning bush revealing the personal name YHWH. Solomon built a temple for a national God who allegedly lived in a cloud of thick darkness. If you line…
Joel BadenGuest
Megan CraigHost
Now, a lot of folks have speculated over the many centuries that they've had to do this sort of thing about exactly what the personal name Yahweh means.
It's not a Hebrew word that shows up anywhere else, but that hasn't stopped people from trying to decode it.
So on the one hand, I'm gonna answer the question, which is to say, if the name is Yahweh, then it means something like he causes to be, he brings into being.
Um, and, and that may sound weird considering we've spent so much time talking about names, but there's one name that lots of people talk about and think about and considered to be like the most sacred, secret, mysterious, most important name.
And Moses says, look, I'm going to go to the Israelites and I'm going to say your God chatted with me and they're going to say, what's his name? What am I supposed to tell him? And then comes the key line.
And you, if you open your Bibles, you may well find I am what I am and like in caps, right? Like we're in even like, you know, like small caps, like it's super important.
This massive revelation, right? The moment Moses says, what do I call you? And he says, I am what I am, right? Then this, you know, you can picture the, anyway.
Well, I mean, what I'll say is what that tells us is that they probably did understand the name to have something to do with the verb of being, right? Which it certainly looks like it's, it certainly looks like it comes from that root.
So if I say Yahweh is to cause to be, and he is, I am, or I will be, that's useful.
Now, a lot of folks have speculated over the many centuries that they've had to do this sort of thing about exactly what the personal name Yahweh means.
It's not a Hebrew word that shows up anywhere else, but that hasn't stopped people from trying to decode it.
So on the one hand, I'm gonna answer the question, which is to say, if the name is Yahweh, then it means something like he causes to be, he brings into being.
Um, and, and that may sound weird considering we've spent so much time talking about names, but there's one name that lots of people talk about and think about and considered to be like the most sacred, secret, mysterious, most important name.
And Moses says, look, I'm going to go to the Israelites and I'm going to say your God chatted with me and they're going to say, what's his name? What am I supposed to tell him? And then comes the key line.
And you, if you open your Bibles, you may well find I am what I am and like in caps, right? Like we're in even like, you know, like small caps, like it's super important.
This massive revelation, right? The moment Moses says, what do I call you? And he says, I am what I am, right? Then this, you know, you can picture the, anyway.
Well, I mean, what I'll say is what that tells us is that they probably did understand the name to have something to do with the verb of being, right? Which it certainly looks like it's, it certainly looks like it comes from that root.
So if I say Yahweh is to cause to be, and he is, I am, or I will be, that's useful.
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