Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
Genesis 17:1
“When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless.’”
Human beings have long had a fascination with personal names, believing that a name can reveal something about the character or history of a person. Today, expecting parents will often read books on baby names or visit online resource pages to find the meaning of a name that they think might be fitting for their child. Of course, many Christians know that names serve an important purpose in biblical history to reveal an individual’s personality or to reveal something about God’s promises. For example, God changed Abram’s name to Abraham, which means “father of a people” or “father of a multitude,” because the patriarch indeed became the father of a multitude (Gen. 17:5).
Given that names in Scripture reveal truths about people, we are not surprised that God tells us His names because He wants His people to know Him. The seventeenth-century Dutch Reformed theologian Petrus van Mastricht writes: “Not only so that he may be distinguished both from the creatures and from the false gods, but also so that he may become more fully known to us, God throughout Scripture attributes a name—indeed, names—to himself.” Today we are looking at a key name related to divine omnipotence (God’s being all-powerful): El Shaddai.
The name El Shaddai first appears in Genesis 17:1, and it occurs forty-seven more times in the Old Testament, most often in the book of Job. Traditionally, the meaning of El Shaddai has been given as “God Almighty,” particularly because of how the church father Jerome translated it in the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible. Some scholars have suggested that the etymology of the name means something like “the God of the mountain,” but there is not agreement on this. The Hebrew supports a meaning related to power, and the context of Genesis 17 certainly suggests that the name speaks of the absolute might of the Lord. After all, God reveals this name to Abraham as He once again promises to do the impossible and give Abraham and Sarah a child when Sarah is no longer fertile (vv. 1–21). Fewer acts could better demonstrate the almighty power of God than to cause an infertile couple to conceive a child.
As we think on the name El Shaddai, then, we should remember God’s power to do what is impossible under ordinary circumstances. The laws and rhythms of nature may be an obstacle to us, but they are not an impediment to the God who established them.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
God’s power to do what is impossible according to the regular pattern of the natural order is a great comfort to His people. Even when there seems to be no avenue of rescue for us, the Lord can make a way and can do what we cannot. No hardship that we face is too difficult for God to overcome.
For further study
- Genesis 35:9–15
- Job 11:7
- Joel 1:15
- Revelation 1:8
The bible in a year
- 1 Samuel 4–6
- Luke 12:35–59