Bible Understanding of a Name Part 4
Adonai
The “emphatic” name, Adonai is translated Lord in our bibles and is only used some 300 times in the Old Testament, almost always in the plural possessive. Most of these occurrances are found in Psalms, Lamentations, and the latter prophets. It is also used 215 times of men and translated, “sir,” “lord,” and “master.”
The name, Adonai, signifies ownership or mastership. Used of God, it is best understood that He is our master and therefore fully deserving of all rights as the owner and master of our lives. He has the right to our unrestricted obedience.
Genesis 15:2
2 Abram said, “O Lord (Adonai) GOD (Yahweh), what will You give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “Since You have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir.” Abram addressed God as his Master.
Certainly Abram understood what this relationship meant; perhaps better than we nowadays understand it, for those were days of slavery. Lordship meant complete possession on the one hand, and complete submission on the other.
As already seen, Abraham himself sustained the relationship of master and lord over a very considerable number of souls; therefore in addressing Jehovah as Adonai he acknowledged God’s complete possession of and perfect right to all that he was and had. . . . The purchased slave stood in a much nearer relationship to his lord than a hired servant. . . . In Israel, the hired servant who was a stranger might not eat of the Passover or the holy things of the master’s house, but the purchased slave, as belonging to his master, and so a member of the family, possessed this privilege (see Ex. 12:43-45; Lev. 22:10,11). The slave had the right of the master’s protection and help and direction.
This aspect of the meaning of Adonai is remarkably similar to the ancient Hebrew concept of go’el. Abram knew the weightiness of his own role as the go’el, or “kinsman redeemer.” This idea was commonly understood in ancient family law whereby the patriarch was responsible for the family in a wide variety of duties. For instance, the kinsman redeemer was responsible to buy back a family member who had been sold into slavery (Lev. 25:48), or to buy back a family field which had been lost (Lev. 25:25).
In addressing God as Adonai, Abram is recognizing God as his Go’el. God is his Master and Abram will look to Him as such. When Moses spoke to God in the Burning Bush, he understood that God, Adonai, held the rights even to his gifts (or lack thereof) of speech.
Exodus 4:10-14
10 Then Moses said to the LORD, “Please, Lord (Adonai), I have never been eloquent, neither recently nor in time past, nor since You have spoken to Your servant; for I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” 11 The LORD said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes him mute or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? 12 “Now then go, and I, even I, will be with your mouth, and teach you what you are to say.” 13 But he said, “Please, Lord (Adonai), now send the message by whomever You will.” 14 Then the anger of the LORD burned against Moses, and He said, “Is there not your brother Aaron the Levite? I know that he speaks fluently. And moreover, behold, he is coming out to meet you; when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart.
Moses uses the term again in Ex. 34:23 in the context the renewal of the covenant and of Yahweh’s proclamation that His name is Jealous. In this passage Moses combines 3 names for God stressing His character, His ownership, His self-sustaining, everlasting covenant relationship, and His ultimate supremacy: The Hebrew transliteration reads, “ha’adon yhwh elohe yisra el”.[32]
As noted previously, the psalmists use Adonai as a name for God. Psalm 8 begins with, “O, Yahweh, our Adonai . . .” and proceeds to recognize God’s majestic work of creation; including the sobering responsibility of man in governing the creation.
Psalm 110 uses the name Adonai to refer to the Messiah. The psalm stresses God’s ultimate and sovereign control over the events of history; master over the dealings of mankind.
1 The LORD (Yahweh) says to my Lord (Adonai): “Sit at My right hand Until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”
2 The LORD (Yahweh) will stretch forth Your strong scepter from Zion, saying, “Rule in the midst of Your enemies.”
3 Your people will volunteer freely in the day of Your power; In holy array, from the womb of the dawn, Your youth are to You as the dew.
4 The LORD (Yahweh) has sworn and will not change His mind, “You are a priest forever According to the order of Melchizedek.”
5 The Lord (Adonai) is at Your right hand; He will shatter kings in the day of His wrath.
6 He will judge among the nations, He will fill them with corpses, He will shatter the chief men over a broad country.
7 He will drink from the brook by the wayside; Therefore He will lift up His head.
David’s response to God after He makes His covenant with him is the response of a servant to his Adonai. He is full of the recognition that he is unworthy and that his Master is also the ever-faithful and ever-present God of covenant, Yahweh. He also recognizes the supreme transcendence of Elohim (vs. 22).
2 Samuel 7:18-22
18 Then David the king went in and sat before the LORD (Yahweh), and he said, “Who am I, O Lord (Adonai) GOD (Yahweh), and what is my house, that You have brought me this far? 19 “And yet this was insignificant in Your eyes, O Lord (Adonai) GOD (Yahweh), for You have spoken also of the house of Your servant concerning the distant future. And this is the custom of man, O Lord (Adonai) GOD (Yahweh). 20 “Again what more can David say to You? For You know Your servant, O Lord (Adonai) GOD (Yahweh)! 21 “For the sake of Your word, and according to Your own heart, You have done all this greatness to let Your servant know. 22 “For this reason You are great, O Lord (Adonai) GOD (Yahweh); for there is none like You, and there is no God (Elohim) besides You, according to all that we have heard with our ears.
Throughout Lamentations, Jeremiah uses both Adonai and Yahweh. It appears as if maybe these two names are used interchangeably and without much deliberateness in context. However, one of the principle roles of the adonai; master is the protection of, and provision for the slave as a member of his own family. Likewise, the role of Yahweh of covenant promised them everlasting nationhood, land, etc. Jeremiah writes to a nation in the desperate throws of exile; a nation that had great cause to wonder where Adonai and Yahweh have gone.
Lamentations 2:1-9
1 How the Lord (Adonai) has covered the daughter of Zion With a cloud in His anger! He has cast from heaven to earth The glory of Israel, And has not remembered His footstool in the day of His anger.
2 The Lord (Adonai) has swallowed up; He has not spared All the habitations of Jacob. In His wrath He has thrown down The strongholds of the daughter of Judah; He has brought them down to the ground; He has profaned the kingdom and its princes.
3 In fierce anger He has cut off All the strength of Israel; He has drawn back His right hand From before the enemy. And He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire
Consuming round about.
4 He has bent His bow like an enemy; He has set His right hand like an adversary And slain all that were pleasant to the eye; In the tent of the daughter of Zion
He has poured out His wrath like fire.
5 The Lord (Adonai) has become like an enemy. He has swallowed up Israel; He has swallowed up all its palaces, He has destroyed its strongholds And multiplied in the daughter of Judah Mourning and moaning.
6 And He has violently treated His tabernacle like a garden booth; He has destroyed His appointed meeting place. The LORD (Yahweh) has caused to be forgotten The appointed feast and sabbath in Zion, And He has despised king and priest In the indignation of His anger.
7 The Lord (Adoani) has rejected His altar, He has abandoned His sanctuary; He has delivered into the hand of the enemy The walls of her palaces. They have made a noise in the house of the LORD (Yahweh) As in the day of an appointed feast.
8 The LORD (Yahweh) determined to destroy The wall of the daughter of Zion. He has stretched out a line, He has not restrained His hand from destroying, And He has caused rampart and wall to lament; They have languished together.
9 Her gates have sunk into the ground, He has destroyed and broken her bars. Her king and her princes are among the nations; The law is no more. Also, her prophets find No vision from the LORD (Yahweh).
The fact that Jeremiah only uses Elohim, a couple of times in Lamentations only serves to strengthen the argument that he was quite intentional about his choice of Yahweh/Adonai. Indeed, Jeremiah’s point seems to be that God appears to have broken His covenant relationship with Israel. This would be to act against Yahweh/Adonai’s own character!
The master-slave relationship endemic in the name Adonai makes this name material to our understanding of the Scriptures. It illustrates both the rights and obligations of the master and the obedience of the slave.
Tomorrow we will look at God’s Name, El-Shaddai.