“Seek Yahweh while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to Yahweh, and He will have compassion on him. Turn to our Elohim, for He will abundantly pardon.”
Isaiah 55: 6-7
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Rabbis have Perverted Yahweh’s Word
Once in a while when I’m talking with Jewish people in Israel about Yahweh, someone will say, “We don’t say that Name. We say ‘Adonai’ or ‘Hashem’ instead.”
I tell them, “I know you do, but His Name is Yahweh. He commanded us to declare His Name to the world. I wrote a book about it.”
Almost always, they google it right in front of me. They type in “Neil Snyder and His Name is Yahweh,” and up it comes.
Then I ask them to go to hisnameisyahweh.org. When they do, they are amazed.
Thanks to Yahweh’s guidance and preparation over the years, I have freedom in Israel to do things that most people can’t or won’t do. To Israelis, I’m not just another Tom, Dick, or Harry. I am a chaired professor from a highly-regarded American university, and I write books. One of those books is titled His Name is Yahweh. As far as most Israelis are concerned, I have a right to talk about the subjects I write about, so they give me lots of latitude. I don’t abuse the privilege, but I know it exists.
It also helps that I am not a preacher, and I don’t pretend to be one. I talk to them about facts that come straight from the Tanach.
One day, Katie and I were in a jewelry store in the Old City of Jerusalem talking with the owner and his daughter. At that time, they worked together making jewelry. He’s retired now. His daughter runs the store.
While we were talking, the daughter told me something about the Messiah, and I said, “The Messiah is Yahweh.”
She said, “No, He’s not.”
I asked her if she had a Tanach in the store, and she said, “Yes.”
I said, “Get it and read Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah) 23: 5-6.”
She did. This is what it says:
“Behold, the days are coming,” declares Yahweh, “When I will raise up for David a righteous Branch. He will reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land. In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will live securely. This is His Name by which He will be called, ‘Yahweh our Righteousness [Yahweh Tzidkenu].’”
After she read it, she said, “His Name really is Yahweh.”
Her father started laughing. He enjoyed watching and listening to our discussion. Since that day, she has sent me a card every year during the High Holy Days. It’s like a Christmas card in the U.S.
Using Yahweh’s Name in Israel is Not a Problem Most of the Time
Most of the time when I use Yahweh’s Name in Israel, no one bats an eye. Either they have not been indoctrinated by rabbis, or they have rejected the indoctrination. It doesn’t matter to me why they have rejected the lie that we are not supposed say Yahweh’s Name. To me, all that matters is that I am free to tell them what I know unencumbered by the restraints of false religious doctrine.
I even use Yahweh’s Name when I’m talking with ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem, especially around the Kotel/Western Wall. Getting to that location requires walking through the Old City of Jerusalem and what I call “the gauntlet”.
To be perfectly honest, though, I have never used Yahweh’s Name in a conversation with an ultra-Orthodox Jew in Mea She’arim. It’s an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood near the Old City. If I said “Yahweh” out loud in Mea She’arim, I would probably be stoned or physically attacked. I’m not kidding or exaggerating. That’s one of the many reasons why I avoid Mea She’arim.
For most tourists in Jerusalem, the final approach to the Kotel is a long, winding set of steps going from the Jewish Quarter of the Old City down to the plaza in front of the Kotel. “Rabbis” line the steps. As innocent tourists walk by, the “rabbis” hold out red strings that they will give you as a “blessing” if you will give them a few shekels. In effect, they are selling blessings. The red string is a tangible reminder of the blessing that tourists buy.
In the United States, we call that “begging”, and we call people who do that kind of thing “bums”. In Israel, it’s an accepted practice. Even ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem don’t object to it. I wish they would.
I have had enough of that kind of thing. When they approach me, and they always do when I’m on my way to the Kotel or to the City of David, I say, “Are you familiar with the Name Yahweh?”
They say, “Of course.”
I say, “I know what you are doing, and you know what you are doing. If we know, Yahweh knows, too. You should stop selling blessings. It’s wrong, and you know it.”
To the best of my knowledge, so far no one has followed my advice, but at least they don’t bother me anymore if they recognize me. Sadly, I have had to tell one “rabbi” that several times on the same day. He’s too busy selling blessings to pay attention to the people buying them. Shekels are all he cares about. I see him almost every day in Jerusalem. I’ll see him again the next time I go there. I can count on it, and I can also count on the fact that he won’t recognize me.
One day, I was telling Noam about that guy, and she looked at me with a quizzical expression. She wondered if I was telling her the unvarnished truth.
Noam is my Israeli daughter. She’s not my biological daughter, but in every other way, she is like a daughter to Katie and me. She lived with us in Virginia when she was in high school. We have been close to her and her family ever since.
I have spent a lot of time around Noam under all sorts of conditions from early in the morning before sunrise until late at night. I have spent enough time around her to be able to interpret her expressions pretty accurately. She can do the same to Katie and me. No one outside my immediate family knows me better than Noam. That is obvious to me and to Noam’s family in Israel.
Noam lives in Tel Aviv. A few days after I told her about that particular “rabbi”, she came to Jerusalem to go to the City of David with Katie and me. It’s across the street from Dung Gate near the Kotel. She walked through the gauntlet with us. “Rabbis” try to sell blessings to women, but they aren’t too aggressive with them. They literally paw at me or stand in front of me to slow me down.
When Noam saw what they were doing to get my attention, I could see fire in her eyes. She was really angry. If looks could kill, they would have been dead. Any doubts she had about what I had told her earlier were eliminated.
Perverting the Truth
Forbidding Jewish people from saying “Yahweh” despite the fact that Yahweh commanded us to declare His Name to the world is a perversion of the truth. That happened following the Greek occupation of the Promised Land in the mid-2nd century BC.
In the Bible, it’s clear that the Messiah is a king/high priest who restores Yahweh’s order. It’s also clear that He is Yahweh. He is referred to in the Bible by many names. He’s called “the Son of David” most of the time, but He is also called “Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty Elohim, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9: 6) He is called by other names as well.
It’s also clear in the Bible that the Messiah is a suffering servant who dies as the atoning sacrifice for His people’s sins. Isaiah 53 is the best example of this, but it’s not the only example.
In the 500s BC during the Babylonian Captivity, rabbis developed what would come to be known as Judaism. They were trying to make sense of the 2 roles played by the Messiah, but they didn’t understand that He plays the role of suffering servant and king/high priest at 2 different times.
Zechariah 12: 10 refers to the “piercing” of the Messiah at the time of His death. The Hebrew word that’s translated as “pierced” in that verse is “daqar” (daw-kar). It means “to stab” or “to thrust through”. This is what the Babylonian Talmud says about Zechariah 12: 10:
“What is the cause of the mourning? It is well according to him who explains that the cause is the slaying of Messiah, the son of Joseph, since that well agrees with the Scriptural verse, ‘And they shall look upon me because they have thrust Him through, and they shall mourn for Him as one mourneth for his only son.’” (Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 52a)
Many Jewish sages[1] and rabbis over the millennia have had difficulty with the notion that the Messiah Son of David had to suffer for His people. They understood that the Bible describes a suffering Messiah, but they could not accept the fact that He was the same Messiah referred to as the Son of David. Therefore, they called Him by another name — the Messiah son of Joseph — even though the only Messiah referred to in the Bible by Name is the Messiah Son of David.
According to Raphael Patai, a Jewish Bible scholar,
“When the death of the Messiah became an established tenet in Talmudic times,[2] this was felt to be irreconcilable with the belief in the Messiah as the Redeemer who would usher in the blissful millennium of the Messianic age. The dilemma was solved by splitting the person of the Messiah in two: one of them, called Messiah ben Joseph…would fall victim….The other, Messiah ben David, will come after him…and will lead Israel to ultimate victory, the triumph, and the Messianic era of bliss.”[3]
This is the Truth
There is and can be only one Messiah. His Name is Yahweh. He is the Messiah Son of David; He is the suffering Messiah described in Isaiah 53; and He is the victorious King Messiah described throughout the Old Testament and the Tanach. Anything said or done to deny those facts is a perversion of Yahweh’s word.
The rabbis of the Messiah’s day were expecting Him at that time, but they expected the King Messiah who would overthrow the Roman occupiers. Instead, He came as a humble servant to die as the atoning sacrifice for His people’s sins. Thus, they rejected Him, because He didn’t live up to their expectations. But they didn’t stop there. They told Jewish people that anyone who believed what He said believed a lie.
In the mid-2nd century AD, Rabbi Akiva went even further. He said that any Jewish person who believes the Messiah isn’t even Jewish. In Orthodox Judaism today, that way of thinking still holds. Thankfully, most Jews reject Orthodox Judaism.
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“I am the good shepherd. I know My sheep and My sheep know me — just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father — and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to My voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. The reason My Father loves Me is that I lay down My life — only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from My Father.”
John 10: 14-18
See “His Name is Yahweh”.
[1] A sage is a wise person. The word does not suggest or imply rank, title, or position, although many people consider sages to be wiser and more perceptive than ordinary people.
[2] “Talmudic times” refers to an era between the Babylonian Captivity that began in 597 BC and about 400 AD. During Talmudic times, Jewish sages wrote about virtually every area of life, religion, custom, folklore, and law. Their writings in Hebrew and Aramaic contain approximately 2,500,000 words that are published as books called the Talmud, and they are studied today. The Babylonian Talmud is the best known and most authoritative of all the Talmud writings.
[3] Patai, Raphael. The Messiah Texts, Wayne State University Press: Detroit, 1979, pp. 166-167.
