The Names of God: El-Shaddai
The Name
In Genesis 17, the covenant community is in crisis. Abram had been called by the Lord out of darkness and into light. He had been given incredible promises, including offspring (Gen. 12:1-3).
God had reiterated his promise: “Your very own son shall be your heir” (Gen. 15:4). But Abram, 86 years old and still childless, had doubted God’s ability to keep his word. He took to himself the responsibility of fulfilling God’s plan by sleeping with Hagar, his wife’s servant (Gen. 16:1-3).
It is at this point that God graciously appears to wayward Abram and reveals a new name: “I am El-Shaddai.” (Gen. 17:1). El is the Hebrew word for God, and Shaddai is likely derived from a word meaning “to overpower.” Vos explains: “God is called ‘El-Shaddai’ because through the supernaturalism of his procedure He, as it were, overpowers nature.”[1] Abram’s age and Sara’s barrenness would be no hindrance to the power of God-Almighty.
In context, the meaning is clear: God is telling Abram, “I am God-Almighty. I am able to keep my word.” God would be able to give a son without the faithless intervention of the father of the faithful.
God’s revelation of himself as El-Shaddai, then, is his definitive statement that what he has said he will accomplish, he is able to accomplish. And if God-Almighty chooses to give gracious gifts through a supernatural fulfilment, it will be so that he gets the glory: Bavinck writes: “God subjects all the forces of nature, and makes them subservient to grace.”[2]
The Name Calls for faith
Initially, as we have seen, the name was revealed to Abram as an admonition to greater faith in God’s ability to keep his promises. His word to us through this name is the same. When we are tempted to doubt God’s promises, and sinfully take matters into our own hands, God says to us through his word: “I am El-Shaddai.”
We can be confident in God’s promises. We can be sure that he’ll provide for our needs (Matt. 6:25-34), build his church (Matt. 16:18), bring us safely to heaven (John 14:3), and keep every other promise which finds its ‘Yes’ in Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 1:20), because his name is El-Shaddai.
Charles Hodge writes about the confident faith we can have in response to the Almighty nature of our God: “‘The Lord God omnipotent reigneth’…is the …truth which [the Scriptures] everywhere present as the ground of confidence to [God’s] people.”[3]
The Name Calls for Obedience
When God reveals himself as El-Shaddai, he says to Abram: “walk before me and be blameless,” and “you shall keep my covenant” (Gen. 17:1, 9).
The God who reveals himself as almighty has authority and sovereignty to command his servant. In this passage, God demonstrates this by renaming Abram: “No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham” (Gen. 17:5). To name something is to have authority over it (Gen. 1:19). El-Shaddai has authority to name and authority to command.
And in the gospel, when the Lord, who has all authority and power, puts his name and his sign on his people, and calls them to obedient service (Matt. 28:18-20), it is because he is El-Shaddai.
The Name Calls for Worship
The name El-Shaddai was a fresh pledge from God to bring to Abram a promised, miraculously-given son.
Just as Isaac’s birth was an act of El-Shaddai, so the birth of Christ was an act of the Almighty (Lk. 1:35). And on this side of the cross and empty tomb, we have been given greater revelation about the almighty power of God to keep his promises, since it was the “immeasurable greatness of [God’s] power…that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead.” (Eph. 1:19-20).
On that first Lord’s Day morning, when the power of death was made subservient to the power of life, and nature was made subservient to grace, God proved his name again: he is El-Shaddai. He is worthy of his people’s faith, obedience, and worship.
Our response to the name and works of El-Shaddai should be that of the church triumphant: worshipful praise. “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory” (Rev. 19:6-7).
[1] Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), 96.
[2] Herman Bavinck, The Wonderful Works of God, trans. Henry Zylstra (Glenside, PA: Westminster Seminary Press, 2019), 120.
[3] Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952), 1:407.
