The Baptist Catechism

    A Commentary on the Shorter Catechism (1883), Alexander Whyte

    Entry 42

    The preface—Lat. præfatio, something spoken before; the introduction to a book; something the author wishes the reader to know before he commences to read. The Gospel of Luke and the Revelation of John are both introduced by prefaces. The preface to the ten commandments is a simple statement of a historical fact. The children of Israel were in bondage, and by a mighty hand and a stretched out arm Jehovah delivered them. And the preface before us but states that historical fact in a single word.

    I brought thee out—Mark the individualizing manner in which the preface is set forth, and according to which all the subsequent commandments are drawn. The Decalogue is a national covenant, but it is only so because it lies on the heart and conscience of every Israelite. “We must say, therefore, that he is desirous here to teach that most excellent lesson to those who read the sacred Scriptures, that each separate individual by himself, when he is an observer of the law and obedient to God, is of equal estimation with a whole nation, be it ever so populous, or, I might rather say, with all the nations upon earth” (Philo).

    I am the Lord thy God, . . . because God is the Lord—The English Bible neither translates nor transliterates the original Divine Name in Ex. xx. 2; it follows a questionable custom of the Jewish doctors in substituting Lord for Jehovah. Jah or Jehovah is the original: I AM. I AM THAT I AM is the translation; and Lord is simply the substitution of another name or title in room of a transliteration or translation of the original.

    Note.—Shaddai or El-Shaddai, translated God, was the name by which their Maker, and Ruler, and Guide was known to the pre-Mosaic patriarchs. Perhaps the best modern equivalent of this ancient and august name is our somewhat vague and remote epithet, the Deity. This name recognized the existence of the Divine Nature, and it described that Nature in the broadest and most general way. El-Shaddai, Almighty God, called Abraham, and pledged the fulfilment of His covenant promises on His announced and accepted name. The name El-Shaddai kept before the patriarchal mind the unity, spirituality, and omnipotence of God, and on these great truths, as a bridge on its piers, the subsequent revelations of God all reposed. And when some further but still kindred titles were added to this great name; when God successively announced Himself as the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the God of Bethel, in all these amplifications and applications of El-Shaddai the sacred writer but embodies in a memorable phrase this and that man’s lifelong experience of the divine power and helpfulness. But a new epoch in the publication of the Divine Name occurred in the time of Moses. For when God was giving His commission to His chosen servant to put himself at the head of the tribes of Israel, and when Moses raised the difficulty that the people might doubt his authority, and demand his credentials, and ask him in whose name he came, he was told to say to them, Jehovah, I AM, hath sent me unto you. The Hebrew student at once recognizes this to be in the circumstances an immense step onward in the progressive revelation of the Divine Name; and even the most unlearned may, on due consideration, see something of its great importance. El-Shaddai was God’s primitive and first published name, and Jah, Jehovah, reposed on and was an extension of that. The name Jehovah, as every one knows who has paid any attention to the composition, contents, and characteristics of the book of Genesis, was by no means an unknown name to the pre-captivity patriarchs. All commentators are agreed that the words in Exodus, “by my name Jehovah was I not known to them,” are to be understood with a certain latitude. It is not meant that no such name as Jehovah was ever heard by the forefathers of the Hebrew people in the divine announcements made to them, but the meaning is that the full import of that name had not been opened up to them. There is an economical and contemporary sense and usage, as well as an essential and permanent truth connected with the great name Jehovah, I AM. When God said I AM, He thereby said, there is no other. El-Shaddai as a name might be supposed to be borne, as a matter of fact it was borne, by the divinities of other nations, just as the idolaters of our own day call their idols gods. Egypt and Assyria insisted that El—the Almighty—was with them, if not exclusively, yet truly; and therefore now, when Israel was to be so much in contact and collision with other nations and other religions, it was necessary that the true and only God should take to Himself a name that taught and asserted His alone Godhead. The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob is now by a succession of mighty acts to prove to Israel and to all the nations that He alone Is, and that all other gods are but dumb and dead idols, the imagination of men’s darkened hearts, and the work of their impious hands. Neither Baal nor Ashtoreth, neither Jupiter nor Mercurius, could say I AM, for, in the apostle’s words, “we know that an idol is nothing in the world.” But when a Hebrew worshipper came to his God, he could believe and be sure that He is, for I AM is His very name. But this is not all. For as to the Abrahamic name, the Almighty God, the Revealing Spirit in process of time added the names and titles, God of Isaac and Jacob, and God of Bethel, so, to the Mosaic name I AM, there was immediately added, “Merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.” The thirty-fourth of Exodus is one of the very fontal passages of revelation. This great well-spring, high up in the hill of God, always recalls to the mind the saying of the wise man: “All the rivers run into the sea; into the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.” All the previous proclamations of the Divine Name were but well-springs sent up to water the earth from this as yet undiscovered sea. And from this supreme Old Testament scripture, as from a perennial and everlasting fountain, all succeeding prophets and psalmists come hither to draw. And as God’s name Jah is worthily written in our largest letters, so that parent passage might well be printed in letters of gold a finger deep, if only to arrest the unthinking reader, and make him tarry to inquire what this supreme scripture may mean, and to learn on what holy ground he here ignorantly stands: “And Jehovah passed before Moses, and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah-El, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, and forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” Like doves to their windows, like the hart to the water-brooks, so do all the prophets and psalmists in Israel turn back to this scripture till the coming of Christ. (See Westcott’s excellent note on the Divine Name in his Epistles of St. John.)

    and God—Jehovah, not Baal, nor any of the gods of the heathen, is our God, confessed the devout Hebrew. “To take the Lord for our God is the natural part of the covenant; the supernatural part is to take Christ for our Redeemer. The former is first necessary and implied in the latter” (Baxter, in Saint’s Rest).

    and Redeemer—This great and expressive name which our Lord bears in the New Testament, was first borne by Jehovah in the house of Israel. The word literally means one who pays a ransom, and thus buys back any person or thing that has been in the possession of another. From this the word comes to mean a deliverer by conquest, as in Exodus: “I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgment.” In the captivity and post-captivity prophets the redemption promised and celebrated is that which Jehovah wrought for His people in the overthrow of Babylon. (See the marginal note on Hos. ix. 3, in which it is pointed out that in the days of that prophet Egypt had come to stand for Assyria, and Babylon, as in our day it often stands for our unregenerate estate. And thus a language was developed and a memory accumulated in the Old Testament that were divinely adapted to illustrate and describe the great redemption accomplished by our Lord.) (See Answer 20 et seq.)

    therefore we are bound to keep all his commandments. “Therefore we are bound to take Him for our God alone, and to keep all His commandments” (Larger Catechism). (See Answer 52, under reasons annexed.)

    Uses

    1. From this exposition we must see the absolute necessity for sacred learning in all competent expositors of the divine word. In studies of this kind, and especially in all studies connected with the development of revelation and the progress of Scripture, it is indispensable that the expositor be a student, and that as a student he possess some acquaintance with the sacred tongues in which the Holy Scriptures were originally written.
    2. There is no name and no assemblage of names so necessary for us to know and understand as the names of God, and yet there is no group of names in all our vocabulary that we utter so loosely, listen to so languidly, and consider so little what they discover, connote, and convey. What is His name, and what is His Son’s name, if thou canst tell?

    Questions

    1. Derive preface, and give some examples from Scripture.

    2. Explain etymologically and historically the divine names and titles on which the argument of the preface rests.

    3. Gather from the prophets and Psalms a large group of passages in which the names God and Lord occur in the same clause; explain the exact meaning, and show that the passages are historically and doctrinally true, and that they are in no case tautological or redundant. For instance, paraphrase and expand Ps. lxxxvi. 8–12.

    4. In view of all the above, explain Keil’s remark: Jonah tried to quarrel with God by praying to Jehovah.

    5. In reading the Scriptures, and especially the Old Testament, the Divine Names God and Lord may usually be understood thus: God, opposed to man; Jehovah, Lord, opposed to all false gods; Jehovah, Lord, distinguished from Messiah. Give illustrations.

    6. Also criticise Samson’s utterance:

      All the contest is now
      ’Twixt God and Dagon       (Agonistes, 461).