I made an observation to myself once that if the name of Yehovah had never been hidden we couldn’t confuse scriptures that are specific to Yehovah with anyone else. This morning I made another observation concerning the name of our God.

I was fascinated by the fact that I could not find “Yehovah” even one time in Ecclesiastes. Instead I found Elohim, HaElohim, and even El-HaElohim, but never the actual name. I don’t know what the significance of this is, but I did find it fascinating and frankly a little perplexing. I can’t help but wonder if Solomon had so intermingled the worship of Yehovah and pagan gods in his mind that he simply used a generic title because it was easier than deciding which god/God he was talking about.

But I digress.

Today we started Esther and since I read The Israel Bible version I also read the opening commentary and found what I consider a problem. The commentator claims that Esther is “the only book of the Tanach that does not mention His holy name.” But this is not true; it is true that Esther is the only book of the Tanach in which God is never mentioned, but unless I missed something in Ecclesiastes, the commentator has made a patently false statement and yet he is able to make the statement because we have replaced God’s holy name with titles and other work arounds (Hashem being one).

I don’t want to be like King David who named the site of a battle after Baal instead of Yehovah because he used titles interchangeably to refer to the God of Israel, and I don’t want to do what I think Solomon might have been doing towards the end of his life – using a generic word to refer to Yehovah because he had mixed the worship of many gods with the worship of the One True God. I want to make absolutely sure I am worshiping the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Israel who placed His name in Jerusalem forever. That name is not Elohim, not Adonai, not Lord, not God.

His Holy Name is YEHOVAH and I will remember it and mention it for all my days.

• 
  Edie Ellingson
  November 17, 2019 at 12:35 pm  /

  Great observation, Dawn!

  I had noticed Elohim was used the most throughout Ecclesiastes but I did not recognize that His name was not used once. I typically read the NKJV because it uses LORD in all capital letters whenever His name, Yehovah, is in the text, but with the last couple of books I have used both NKJV and the Israel Bible. I did look for the name of Yehovah in the Hebrew text in the Israel bible several times but only found the titles you mentioned. It just did not register, though.

  Thanks for bringing that forward. I also have heard that Esther is the only book that does not mention Yehovah at all (nor Elohim for that matter).

  • 
    Dawn Marie McAlister
    November 18, 2019 at 7:18 am  /

    I always marvel that Mordechai doesn’t even mention God when he tells Esther that help will come to the Jews whether or not she helps. It’s one of the places where I expect the reference to be & yet it’s not.

    Yehovah is truly hidden in this book.