Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ And there he blessed him.”
NL Daily Devotion for Monday, June 3, 2024
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Names, in scripture, are powerful. They carry meaning. Many of them are word plays pointing to some circumstance of the person’s birth or, in the frequent stories of God changing people’s names, some action they’ve done. This story is a prime example. Jacob, after wrestling with a stranger all night, is renamed Israel.
No name is more powerful, more beautiful, more wonderful, than God’s name. So sacred is it that the people didn’t speak it. Yahweh was too holy to pronounce. Instead the people used Adonai or some other word, which is often translated “Lord,” but that doesn’t give the full picture.
Jacob wants to know the name of the person he’s been wrestling with all night. He suspects it is an angel, or even God themselves. Knowing someone’s name, or speaking it, gives you some power over them, or at least a level of familiarity. In this story, God’s name is too sacred to share with Jacob. The stranger won’t give it, instead blessing and re-naming Jacob, and therefore reasserting that, even though he lost the wrestling match, he is the one with the power to name.
When we say “Hallowed by your name” in the Lord’s prayer, we are reasserting the power of God’s name, and holding it sacred, re-committing not to use it falsely or for evil motives, but to speak it with respect and honor.
What does it mean to me that God’s name is holy?
