So, how did we end up with the word “Lord?”
According to a recent video from The Bible Project, it all dates back to the book of Exodus, with some biblical twists and turns that help put quite a bit of theology — and the nature of God — into perspective.
“We are going to look at … ‘LORD,’ written in all capital letters. This is the personal name of Israel’s God,” a voiceover explains. “We first learned the meaning of this name in the story of Moses and the burning bush in the book of Exodus chapter 3. God appears to Moses and He commissions him to liberate the Israelites from slavery.”
It is during that exchange that Moses wonders what he should tell the Hebrews if they ask the name of the God who has sent him, to which God responds, “Tell them EHYEH has sent me to you.” The word EHYEH, in Hebrew, means, “I will be.”
And that’s where things get a bit more interesting, as that name means that God is essentially saying he “is the one who is and who will be,” with The Bible Project further putting that concept into words.
“God’s existence doesn’t depend on anyone or anything else,” the video proclaims. “This God simply is.”
The Lord then told Moses to go back and tell the people that Yahweh, the god of their ancestors, had sent him. Yahewh means “He will be,” with the word appearing more than 6,500 times in the Old Testament.
There’s a lot more to the story, including the Israelites’ quest to honor God so deeply that they stopped saying Yahweh altogether and, instead, started using the Hebrew word for “Lord,” which is “Adonai.”