Va'era — Progressive Revelation and the God Who Never Breaks His Word

The Shock of Exodus 6

The Torah portion of Va'era opens with one of the most surprising statements in the entire Bible. In the book of Genesis, we find the Tetragrammaton — the four letters that comprise the name of God, "yodh," "he," "waw," and "he" — 165 times. Yet now, at the moment when Moses is about to tell Pharaoh "Let my people go," God makes this stunning declaration:

So all those 165 appearances of the Tetragrammaton in Genesis, and yet the patriarchs didn't know God by that name? This is a text that tells us something earth-shaking — that revelation is progressive. God revealed His identity and His plan for humanity progressively. That is, bit by bit, inch by inch. Yeshua himself states this very clearly:

From a Personal God to a National God

Before Moses, the children of Israel were worshiping a God of power — a personal God to the fathers of the nation, a God who had a relationship with the children of Abraham. God was a God of a people, not a place, and He did not reside in a house (temple) made by man's hands. God went with the people, He went with the individuals. Like in the case of Jacob going north to Haran, and stopping to sleep in Bethel — God revealed Himself to Jacob in the dream, as his personal guide and protector.

The first time that we see and hear of God being a national God is in the giving of the Torah in Mount Sinai. There is a major change happening here. The change is from a personal God, that goes with the family, to a God of time, a God who reveals Himself in time and through time. The Word "I am" or "to be" is a time word. From this moment on, the God of Israel is dealing with a nation, and has national demands of the people and of their leaders. Moses does not represent his family or his tribe. Moses is a national representative of God and His people. The God that Moses serves is a God of history. History is a sequential set of connected events on a timeline.

This is precisely the importance of this revelation and the significance of prophecy. Prophecy can only have a meaning if it is a proclamation of the one who controls time and events.

What we know today about God and the way He works among men was not known in previous generations. Therefore, the apostle Paul said:

God Does Not Break His Promises

The seven "I will" promises of Exodus 6 are followed by the most important truth in the whole Bible: God does not lie, and He does not break His promises. If you take a small chapter of Jewish history and separate it from the larger context, it might look like God is not keeping His promises. Seventy years in Babylon. Two thousand years in exile in the Christian world. But while God promised exile, and He also promised restoration. He promised it through Isaiah, through Jeremiah, through Ezekiel.

This fate has been the fate of every Jewish leader and nation. The world needs to look to history and see that God's promises to Abraham are valid today as they were in the days of Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, ancient Rome, and Byzantium, Germany's Hitler — and the leaders of Iran have been next in line to experience the same fate as all their predecessors who hate and promote hate against God's chosen people.

Please don't forget God's promises to our father Abraham. This is the paradigm of history in relationship to all of God's children. May the good trust in the Lord and those who are evil realize that they are in need of repentance and change to fall in line with God's eternal program for the redemption of the whole human race.