The Divine Names

In the Torah, a name is not just a label that is used to identify someone. A person’s name expresses the essence of that person’s character. Thus, for instance, the first woman is named Chava (Eve in English), because she was em kol chai — the mother of all who live (Genesis 2:20); and similarly, God changed Avram’s name to Avraham to signify that he will be av hamon goyim — the father of a multitude of nations (Genesis 17:5). But not only people have names. God also has a name; or does He? If a person’s name describes his essence, does God’s name describe God’s essence? Is it at all possible to do so? And to complicate the matter further, the Torah refers to God by various names: YHVH, Elohim, Shaddai, and others. Why?

Moses Maimonides says that God cannot be ascribed any positive attributes. Therefore, when we say that God is good or just or merciful, what we mean is that if a person were to act thus, we would ascribe to him those characteristics. But God is wholly other, completely beyond our experience or perception, and we cannot categorize or define His true nature in any way.

The Kabbalistic view concurs with Maimonides but goes a step further. If a name reflects an attribute of the entity to which the name refers, how can we give God a name at all? Consequently, it must be that each of the names by which we call God actually refers to an action through which God manifests Himself in our world. But God Himself has no name!

Since the sefirot are the spiritual forces by which God acts in our world (see "The Sefirot – Part I,” posted on 30 July 2009), the “names of God” are actually not His names at all, but are identifiers of His action of the moment; they are names associated with the sefirot. Thus, Elohim, which is a word signifying power or authority that is also used in the Torah in a secular sense, refers to God acting through the sefira of Gevura, which is also known as Din (Law). The name Adonay (meaning Lord) refers to God’s action through the sefira of Malkhut (Kingship). And the highest sefira (Keter, meaning Crown) is represented by the name Eh’yeh, the name that God told Moses when Moses asked God for His name (Exodus 3:13-14).

The idea that God has no name, and that the “names of God” refer only to the actions through which God manifests himself is found in Exodus Rabba, a Biblical commentary that pre-dates the Zohar and is not generally regarded as a Kabbalistic work. Commenting on Moses asking God for His name in Exodus 3:13, Exodus Rabba declares: “Do you want to know My name? By My actions I am called. At times I am called El Shaddai, or Tzeva’ot, or Elohim, or YHVH. When I judge my creations, I am called Elohim; and when I do battle against the wicked, I am called Tzeva’ot; and when I suspend judgement for a person’s sins, I am called El Shaddai; and when I have mercy on My universe, I am called YHVH.”

It should be stressed that the sefirot are not part of God’s essence, because God’s essence cannot be characterized or subdivided. (Again see "The Sefirot – Part I.”) The sefirot are just agents of God’s will. They are receptacles of God’s divine light; and, just as a liquid seen in different colored vessels will appear in the shape and color of its vessel, or the light shining from lanterns of different colored glass will take the color of the glass through which it shines, so do God’s actions in our world manifest themselves differently depending on which sefira is the primary agent of God’s will. The sefirot are inanimate vessels, powerless until they are infused with the light and the life that God projects into them. But, just as Man became a living being when God breathed into him the breath of life, so too does God project His light into the sefirot, animating them and making them His agents to perform His will.

© Copyright 2017 by Ben Roshgolin. All rights reserved.

References:

For the view of Maimonides on God’s lack of positive attributes, see The Guide for the Perplexed I:52 and I:57. Note that Maimonides also says, in I:58, that although positive attributes cannot be attributed to God, He can be described using negative attributes (He is not mortal, He is not evil, etc.)

For an exposition of the idea that God has no name and that the names by which we refer to Him are actually names of the sefirot, see Tikkunei Zohar 17a-b, and Zohar III:225a (Raya Mehemna).

For a discussion of the sefirot as vessels for the divine emanation, having no power at all until God spreads his light upon them, see Zohar II:42b-43a (Raya Mehemna), Zohar III:225a (Raya Mehemna), and Rabbi Moses Cordovero’s Pardes Rimmonim 4:4.