The LORD said to my Lord....The Sacred Letters

The Sacred Letters

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: with two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:

Holy, holy holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory."

Isaiah 6:1-3


Isaiah's King had just died. But now Isaiah sees the real King -- the Ultimate King -- the One who will sits forever on the throne. He is the Lord. And He will never die.

Occasionally I read different items about how God's name is used in Scripture -- you know...like sometimes it is LORD and sometimes Lord ... well, R. C. Sproul explains it so well.

First notice how the "Lord" is written in verse 1. With a capital "L" and lower case "ord." Then in verse 3 it is LORD, with all capital letters.

Sproul, in his book, The Holiness of God, explains it this way:

This is not an error in printing or mere inconsistency....Most English translations of the Bible follow the same device....The reason for this difference is that two different Hebrew words are used in the original text, but both are rendered in English by the word Lord.

When the word Lord occurs in lowercase letters, the translator is indicating that the word adonai is found in the Hebrew Bible. Adonai means sovereign one. It is not the name of God. It is a title for God, indeed the supreme title given for God in the Old Testament.

When LORD appears in all capitals it indicates that Yahweh is used.

Yahweh is the sacred name for God, the name by which he revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush.

This is the unspeakable name, the ineffable [too overwhelming to be expressed in words or to be described in words]name, the holy name that is guarded from profanity in Israel.

Normally it occurs only with the use of its four consonants--yhwh.

It is therefore referred to as the sacred tetragrammaton, the unspeakable four letters.

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Psalm 8:1)

What the Jew was saying was "O Yahweh, our Adonai, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

LORD is the name of God, Lord is his title.

We speak of President George Washington. President is his title. George Washington is his name.

If the highest office in our land is the office of President, so the highest office and title in Israel was the office of Sovereign. The title adonia was reserved for God. And it was the title given for Jesus in the New Testament.

When Christ is called Lord, He is invested with the New Testament equivalent of the Old Testament adonai. Jesus is called the King of kings and Lord of lords, gaining a title that beforehand was reserved only for God the Father, the supreme Sovereign of heaven and earth.

These different uses of LORD and Lord indicate the care with which people communicated God's holy nature.

When the manuscripts were being copied in ancient times, the scribe took special care with God's name. When he came to the unspeakable four consonants, he would replace the stylus or pen he was using with a brand new one -- write the four letters, and then throw away his writing tool, so that it would never be used again.
Then he would pick up the one he had been using and resume his task.

Note: Another example. If George Washington was God, we would write President George Washington as this: Lord LORD.

P.S. Remember this from elementary school? "When George the Third was England's King, our George was first in everyting..