In Genesis 19:29, when “God remembered Abraham,” the Hebrew word for “God” in that verse is Elohim, because this is the mighty side of God about to dispense justice on Sodom and Gomorrah for their “grievous” behaviour (18:20).
Which made YHWH, the relational side of God, wonder if he should “hide from Abraham what I am about to do” (17), because the severe justice side of God might not make sense to him. How, for instance, would Abraham take it, having to witness the massive destruction of two entire cities in the very land where he’d been told by God the blessing of all nations would begin (18)?
Add verse 19 to that too, because YHWH had chosen Abraham to “teach and direct his sons and their families to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just,” so how would blasting two cities into oblivion sound “right and just” to Abraham? And, as YHWH expected, Abraham did not react well: “How could you (YHWH), the Judge of all the earth, kill all those people when some of them might be good?”
Abraham had a point, which YHWH acknowledged by promising to spare the entire city of Sodom if there were just ten good people in it, despite reports pouring in about Sodom’s appalling descent into depravity.
So, first of all, we have God pictured by YHWH, deeply concerned for Abraham and how he’s going to react, but into this same story comes Elohim, the mighty God of justice, who wants to wipe Sodom off the map. What we’ve got in the same story, then, is two very different “sides” to God in YHWH and Elohim.
But in both these sides of God, Abraham is at the forefront of their thinking. YHWH was sensitive to Abraham’s reaction to the destruction, and Elohim remembers Abraham wanting to spare the good people (19:29). So in Genesis 18 and 19 we have God as both YHWH and Elohim, and both are concerned for Abraham. Which is quite different to the notion that the God of the Old Testament was ‘all Elohim, harsh and violent’, but the God of the New Testament was all YHWH, pictured by Jesus ‘meek and mild’.
Taking into account, then, that God revealed himself to Abraham as both YHWH and Elohim, is he doing the same for us today as Abraham’s offspring? In which case, “How is God both YHWH and Elohim today?”….(next blog)
