Crying Out in the Name of YHWH

Faith is a belief that motivates me to take action because I am hopeful and confident that I can achieve the result. I receive confirmations that my faith or motivated belief is true based on the results, those being chiefly (1) how the guidance I am adopting leads me to evolve into a more virtuous person, (2) how I experience greater peace, love, and kindness by adhering to the principles I am ultimately testing via practice, and (3) how this motivated belief actually brings me into real interactions, responses, knowledge of God.

I have faith in The Bible as the Word of God. I have faith in The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. Often, quite often, my fellow Christians and well as my beloved brethren of Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Atheism ask me for "proofs", a witness via archaeology and geology, evidence that the scientific community itself would rally behind...and then my brethren state that they would be more willing to believe. 

But I ask, "Then my brethren would be more willing to believe what?" I have my proof, they are the three things I noted above--increasing virtue, greater peace, love and kindness, and real and personal knowledge of God. This is the experiment that most matters to me, and I put it forward, that ought to matter to all people. I cannot wear or feel archaeology or geology, much as I do esteem them and all disciplines of science and learning, but I can live and enrich my life as I outlined above (virtue, peace/love/kindness, and the personal knowledge of God) and know the goodness of this impact on me. 

I read the following in The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ (2 Nephi 9:52-53):

Behold, my beloved brethren, remember the words of your God; pray unto him continually by day, and give thanks unto his holy name by night. Let your hearts rejoice.

And behold how great the covenants of the Lord, and how great his condescensions unto the children of men; and because of his greatness, and his grace and mercy, he has promised unto us that our seed shall not utterly be destroyed, according to the flesh, but that he would preserve them; and in future generations they shall become a righteous branch unto the house of Israel.

This is from Nephi Ben Lehi, the putative second prophet of The Book of Mormon, circa 559 B.C. His points can be organized into a list.

1. Remember the words of our God.
2. Pray unto Him by day.
3. Give thanks unto His holy name by night.
4. Rejoice in one's heart.
5. Consider the great covenants of the Lord.
6. Consider His condescensions (visits, voluntary descents to earth) unto the children of men (humanity).
7. Because of His greatness, grace and mercy God promises the ultimate preservation of our descendants even if these fall away during some subsequent time.  
8. These shall be a righteous "branch" of the House of Israel.

These points are interesting. I would like to start a closer scrutiny of these eight points starting with God's condescensions because I have found that if this matter is considered, the other points fall into a pattern that has its foundation in nothing less than the Law of Moses itself.

In Exodus 19:18 Jehovah is described as descending upon Mount Sinai in fire. In Exodus 20:1-3, God, "Elohim", speaks to Moses in direct speech (referring to Himself as "I" and Moses, His addressee, as "thou"):

And God [Elohim] spake all these words, saying, 

I am the LORD thy God [Jehovah thy Elohim], which [I] have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.

Most Christians and Jews, and I would suspect a good number of my beloved Muslim brethren, are familiar with this encounter. God descended to the earth and addressed Moses on Mount Sinai. God identified Himself as Jehovah thy God and commanded that no other god [in Hebrew "Elohim" or 'Gods'] be had before Him.

The encounter of Exodus 20 is the delivery of the Ten Commandments, the first version at least, in the Torah, (another version does follow). Less commonly studied are the subsequent descents or "condescensions" of God. For this I will cite first Exodus 33:19:

And he [Jehovah] said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.

In this exchange Jehovah tells Moses that He, Jehovah, will "proclaim" the name of Jehovah. However, that is not what the Hebrew text says. The Hebrew text is clear and declarative; it is in the translation that the message is modified somewhat. This is a more careful rendering from Hebrew:

And He said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will cry out in the name of Jehovah before thee; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.

Now, this reading gives pause. Jehovah said that He is going to "cry out in the name of Jehovah". What does that mean? Well, I put it to my readers that this expression "cry out in the name of Jehovah" means in Exodus 33:19 precisely what it always meant before this, "to turn to Jehovah, to pray to Him." Preaching could be subsumed in this, but the emphasis is on the actual addressing of Jehovah by one of His sons or daughters, and addressing by name. I refer the reader to the first usage of this expression in our received texts, which is in Genesis 4:26:

And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD.

Here, however, the King James translators handed us their interpretation when the actual reading was clear enough:

And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he [Seth] called his name Enos [meaning 'man, human, mortal man']: then began he [Enos] to cry out in the name of Jehovah. 

So what did it mean that Enos, and by extension a good many other people who, at the teachings of the early patriarchs and matriarchs, decided to follow God? It meant that these turned to God, prayed to Him, served Him; in short, they "cried out in the name of Jehovah".

Alright, but then what does it mean that even Jehovah "cried out in the name of Jehovah"? Well, welcome to the real Bible text: There are Two Jehovahs in The Bible! One was the Father and the other His Son. Jehovah the Father is, in the more familiar and familial New Testament form of address, "God the Father" or "Heavenly Father", whereas the second Jehovah, His Son, is antemortal Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the world. Inasmuch as the Son was and is an Angel to His Father (Exodus 32:34 "behold, mine Angel shall go before thee"), delivering and performing only the will of the Father, there was ultimately little difference in distinguishing Who exactly was speaking at any given time.

However, we do remember that God spoke in the "first" person in Exodus 20, "I am Jehovah thy God". The reader is counseled to remember that Hebrew (like Aramaic and Arabic) has never had capital letters nor "be" in the present tense. The King James translators italicized words that they added to the English translation to make the English read more grammatically correct. Hence the King James translators italicized "am", because the Hebrew actually says "I Jehovah thy God" (no forms of "be" in the present tense).

Let us briefly examine what the Lord says and does when He follows through with His promise to Moses, the promise to "cry out in the name of Jehovah" in front of Moses. Exodus 34:5:

And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD.

As you may have anticipated, I will offer the reader a more precise rendering of the Hebrew, one without obfuscation to cover for a situation the translators could not fathom, namely, why and how Jehovah would be seen praying to Jehovah.

And Jehovah descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and cried out in the name of Jehovah.

The message Jehovah delivers is in Exodus 34:6-7.

And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,

Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

Here, again, a more careful translation is warranted.

And Jehovah passed by before him [Moses], and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah Elohim is merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,

Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means excuse; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth. 

Please note: My decision to insert "is" is not fortuitous nor biased, since the subsequent verbal form of "will by no means excuse/cover" is in the third person.

So not only did Jehovah cry out (i.e. "pray") in the name of Jehovah, Jehovah also proclaimed Jehovah to be (now using the third person form of address) "merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, not excusing (literally "covering"), and eventual mercy for the descendants of the rebellious. We might make a list:

1. Jehovah cries out in the name of Jehovah (vocal prayer).
2. Jehovah proclaims Jehovah's mercy, 
3. grace, 
4. long-suffering (great patience), 
5. abundance of goodness and truth, 
6. mercy for thousands, 
7. forgiveness for iniquity-transgression-sin, 
8. not excusing (i.e. respecting agency or ability for us to choose by holding us responsible),
9. eventual mercy for descendants of the rebellious. 

I would draw attention to the list I compiled of the main points from 2 Nephi 9:52-53. The similarities are not so close as to trigger suspicion of plagiarism or borrowing, but the structural similarities are astonishing: prayer precedes the extolling of God's virtues, the principal virtues being mercy and grace, but emphasis also falls on the responsibility for our behavior, but even here, God's ultimate mercy to the descendants of the rebellious. 

I will add one comment: Such an uncanny parallel between the Biblical Hebrew text and The Book of Mormon, not the King James translation that Joseph Smith was so fond of in life, but the underlying Hebrew of The Bible, which Hebrew text Joseph Smith only began to appreciate in the years after he published The Book of Mormon, this is "textual archaeology" and to some extent (loci, locations) "geology" for me, that is textual evidence in Palestine and America, and the text is ultimately what we have in hand to scrutinize. 

Still, correspondences of this sort only encourage my faith; it is the three points I outlined earlier (growth in virtue, increase in peace-love-kindness, and greater personal knowledge of God) that have led me and lead me still to know that The Book of Mormon is actually true, it is the Word of God alongside The Holy Bible.

The reader is at great liberty to take any portion of what I have presented, including zero, as seems fit. However, I would ask that all remember one point mainly: that all citations are actually textual.