The Name
What it means to call on the name of the Lord, and why one Hebrew word runs from Eden to the New Jerusalem
Where this started
I couldn't get past Genesis 10.
I was reading through the early chapters of Genesis and kept tripping over one phrase. "Then people began to call on the name of the LORD." "He built an altar there and called on the name of the LORD." Abraham did it. Isaac did it. It shows up in the Psalms, in the prophets, on the lips of Elijah, and then Peter and Paul pick it up and make it the definition of a saved person: "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."
I'd read past it for years. I assumed it meant something like praying hard when things get bad. This time I stopped and asked what the text was actually doing with it. And what I found is that the Hebrew word for name, shem, is one of the threads that ties the whole Bible together and lands on Jesus.
This is my attempt to lay that out so that the next time you read "call on the name of the LORD," you know what you're looking at.
1. What a name is
In Hebrew, a shem is not a label. It's who someone is, as known and present in the world. Your name is your character, your reputation, your reach. That's why Proverbs says "a good name is to be chosen rather than great riches" (22:1). Nobody's talking about the sound of the word. They're talking about the person the word carries.
When it comes to God, the Name is God as he has revealed himself. Watch what happens when Moses asks for it. God answers with a sentence, not a word: "I AM WHO I AM," and then, "this is my name forever" (Exodus 3:14-15). Later, when Moses asks to see God's glory, God says "I will proclaim before you my name, the LORD" (33:19), and what he proclaims is a list of character traits: merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity, and not clearing the guilty (34:6-7). That is the Name. The Name is not a password. It's the whole self-description of God.
So to call on the Name is to appeal to God on the basis of who he has said he is. Keep that definition in hand. Everything else builds on it.
2. Two ways to live: builders and callers
Genesis 4 through 11 sets two ways of life side by side, and it uses the word shem to do it. Here is the thread:
Genesis 4:17. Cain builds a city and names it after his son. The first thing built by force in the Bible gets a family name put on it.
Genesis 4:25-26. Eve names Seth with reference to God ("God has appointed me another child"). Seth names his son Enosh, a word that means frail, mortal man. And in the days of the man named Frail, "people began to call on the name of the LORD."
Genesis 6:4. The pre-flood strongmen are literally anshei ha-shem, "men of the name," which our Bibles translate "men of renown." Two lines, two names.
Genesis 9:26. Noah blesses "the LORD, the God of Shem." (More on this below.)
Genesis 11:4. Babel: "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower... and let us make a shem for ourselves." God scatters them.
Genesis 11:10. Immediately, with no transition: "These are the generations of Shem." The narrator lets the pun do the judging.
Genesis 12:2. God says to Abram, "I will make your shem great." The exact thing Babel grasped at is handed over as a gift.
Genesis 12:8. Abram's response: he builds an altar and calls on the shem of the LORD.
Look at how the two lines are described. Cain's line, and after the flood Ham's line, get accomplishments: cities, weapons, kingdoms. Lamech boasts. Nimrod is "a mighty hunter" whose kingdom begins with Babel. Seth's line, and after the flood Shem's line, get genealogies. Families. Lifespans. Men who walked with God. No ranking, no résumé. The only distinction the text gives them is that they were the ones calling on the Name.
That's the contrast. It isn't cities versus no cities. It's a name you make versus a Name you call on.
Notice too that the patriarchs live in tents. They build altars, not cities. Hebrews 11:9-10 reads it this way: Abraham lived in tents because "he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God." Things do get built in the life of a person who calls on the Name. But the question is always whose name ends up on them. "Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain" (Psalm 127:1).
One caution. Shem's line is not a safe pedigree. Abraham's own father served other gods (Joshua 24:2), and Cain's line produced music and metalwork that the text never condemns. The dividing line is a posture, not a bloodline. You are in one line or the other by what you do with the Name, every day.
3. The blessing that wasn't
Genesis 9:25-27 is strange when you slow down. Noah curses Canaan. He says Japheth will be enlarged and "dwell in the tents of Shem." But he doesn't bless Shem. He says, "Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem."
In Hebrew that's barukh YHWH elohei Shem, and Shem is the ordinary word for name. Read it with both ears open: "Blessed be the LORD, the God of the Name." Ham and Japheth are each told something about their own future. Shem is told nothing about himself. His God is blessed instead. Shem's entire identity in the blessing is who his God is.
That is exactly the pattern from Genesis 4:26. The line isn't distinguished by what it did. It's distinguished by the Name it's attached to. And the line of Shem is where Abraham comes from, and Israel, and eventually the Messiah.
Then the last clause: Japheth will dwell in the tents of Shem. The nations will come in and live under the Name. Paul says the same thing without the pun: Gentiles are "brought near," "fellow citizens," grafted into the root (Ephesians 2:13-19; Romans 11:17). Noah was blessing the Name, and blessing the Gentiles' entry into it, before either had a face.
4. Calling is a life, not an event
Here is where the phrase changed for me. I had always heard "call on the name of the LORD" as an incident: a bad day, a crisis, a cry. And it can be that. But that's not primarily how the Bible uses it.
The verb is qara, and it shows up in every form Hebrew has. It's a completed act ("I called on your name, O LORD, from the depths of the pit," Lamentations 3:55). It's a command ("call upon his name," Psalm 105:1). It's a future vow ("I will call on the name of the LORD," Psalm 116:13). And it's a participle that describes a class of people, the way we'd say "runners": Samuel was "among those who call on his name" (Psalm 99:6), and the church is simply "all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 1:2).
Psalm 116 shows the whole range in one place. The identical Hebrew phrase, ubeshem YHWH eqra, appears three times. In verse 4 it's translated "then I called on the name of the LORD," recalling a past crisis. In verses 13 and 17 it's "I will call on the name of the LORD," a vow of thanksgiving. Same words, and the psalmist doesn't distinguish them, because to him they aren't different acts. The one who called in the pit is the one who calls now with a cup in his hand and will keep calling until he dies. "He inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live" (v. 2).
A friend and I wondered whether there's a Hebrew tense that holds past, present, and future together, and whether calling on the Name might be in it. There isn't one for the verb. But there is something like it, and it's in the Name itself. Jewish tradition read the four letters of YHWH as a fusion of "he was," "he is," "he will be," rooted in "I AM WHO I AM." An Aramaic paraphrase of Deuteronomy 32:39 renders the Name as "I am he who is, and who was, and who will be." And when John opens Revelation with "him who is and who was and who is to come" (1:4, 8), he's rendering the Name that way.
So the perpetuity isn't in the calling. It's in the One called. The lifestyle is continuous because the Name is. You don't have to generate the constancy. You lean on it.
The best picture I have for it is turning your face. When you call on the Name, you turn your face toward God. The priestly blessing works that way: the LORD makes his face shine on you, lifts up his face toward you, and "so they shall put my name on the people of Israel" (Numbers 6:24-27). Calling on the Name is living with your face turned. Hopefully every day. And when you notice it isn't, that's the moment to turn it back.
5. The Name through Israel's story
Once you see the thread in Genesis, you see it everywhere.
The Name is carried. The third commandment says "you shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain" (Exodus 20:7). The verb is nasa, to lift or carry. Israel bears the Name. The warning is not mainly about swearing; it's about carrying God's Name emptily, being called by it and living as if you weren't. The high priest makes this visible: the names of the tribes on his shoulders and over his heart, and on his forehead a gold plate that reads "Holy to the LORD" (Exodus 28:12, 29, 36-38). The people carry the Name; the priest carries the people before the Name.
The Name dwells. Deuteronomy never says God's body will live in the temple. It says he will choose a place "to make his name dwell there" (12:5, 11). Solomon builds "a house for the name of the LORD" (1 Kings 8:20), and in his dedication prayer he asks God to hear the foreigner "who comes from a far country for your name's sake" (8:41-43). Japheth in the tents of Shem, again.
The Name is a tower. "The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe" (Proverbs 18:10). The word is migdal, the same word for Babel's tower. There are two towers in the Bible. One you build to make a name for yourself, and it gets you scattered. One is the Name, and you run into it.
The Name is trusted. "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God" (Psalm 20:7). David tells Goliath, "I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts" (1 Samuel 17:45). "Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory" (Psalm 115:1).
God makes his own Name. Babel tried to make a name and failed. But when Israel remembers the exodus, they say to God, "you made a name for yourself, as it is to this day" (Nehemiah 9:10; Isaiah 63:12, 14). Only God gets to make a name for himself. Everyone else receives one.
The Name is profaned and vindicated. Israel carries the Name into exile and profanes it among the nations by their conduct. God's answer is unsettling and freeing at once: "It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name... and I will vindicate the holiness of my great name" (Ezekiel 36:22-23). Your rescue is anchored in his reputation, not your performance.
A new Name is promised. The prophets end the Old Testament pointing forward. Foreigners and outcasts will receive "an everlasting name that shall not be cut off" (Isaiah 56:5). Zion "shall be called by a new name" (62:2). The coming king from David's line will be called "The LORD is our righteousness" (Jeremiah 23:6). Babel will be reversed: "I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call upon the name of the LORD" (Zephaniah 3:9). "The LORD will be one and his name one" (Zechariah 14:9). And "from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations" (Malachi 1:11).
Two more, which sound like riddles until you know the answer. Jacob asks the one he wrestled, "Please tell me your name," and gets, "Why is it that you ask my name?" (Genesis 32:29). The angel gives Manoah the same answer and adds, "it is wonderful" (Judges 13:18). And Proverbs asks, "What is his name, and what is his son's name? Surely you know!" (30:4).
6. The Name becomes a person
The Old Testament's question is, "What is his name, and what is his son's name?" The New Testament answers.
An angel tells Joseph, "you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). Jesus is Yeshua, "the LORD saves." His other name is Immanuel, "God with us." The Name that dwelt in a tent and then a temple now dwells in a body (John 1:14). And Isaiah had already said his name would be called "Wonderful" (9:6), the same word Manoah heard.
Jesus talks about the Name constantly. "Hallowed be your name" is the first request of his prayer (Matthew 6:9). "I have come in my Father's name" (John 5:43). "Father, glorify your name" (12:28). And in his last prayer before the cross, three times: "I have manifested your name to the people you gave me... keep them in your name, which you have given me... I made known to them your name" (17:6, 11, 26). The Father has given the Name to the Son.
Then Philippians 2. Jesus, who was in the form of God, did not grasp at equality. He emptied himself, took the form of a servant, and humbled himself to death on a cross. "Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow... and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord" (2:9-11). That last line is Isaiah 45:23, where every knee bows to YHWH. Babel reached up to make a name and was brought down. Jesus went down, and the Name was given to him. That is the upside-down kingdom in a single passage.
This is why the apostles can take the phrase we started with and put Jesus in it. Peter at Pentecost quotes Joel: "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Acts 2:21), and then tells the crowd to be baptized "in the name of Jesus Christ." He heals a lame man and says, "his name, by faith in his name, has made this man strong" (3:16). The council asks, "By what name did you do this?" (4:7), and he answers that "there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (4:12). Paul writes that "if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord... you will be saved," and then quotes the same line from Joel (Romans 10:9-13). Christians are just "those who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 1:2). Hebrews says the Son "has inherited a more excellent name" (1:4).
The Name you were calling on in Genesis 4 has a face.
7. The Name on us
There's a passive form of our phrase, and it's just as important. God calls Israel "my people who are called by my name" (2 Chronicles 7:14). Moses promised that "all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the LORD" (Deuteronomy 28:10). James tells the church about "the honorable name that was invoked over you" (2:7), the same verb Peter and Paul use for calling on the Name, now turned around.
We call on his Name. His Name is called over us. Both directions, one relationship.
And the story ends there. In Revelation the mark of the beast is a name on the forehead (13:17), a counterfeit of the priest's gold plate. But God's people have "his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads" (14:1). Jesus promises the one who overcomes, "I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God... and my own new name" (3:12). The last thing said about the redeemed is this: "They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads" (22:4). Face turned. Name received. Forever.
Even the city gets a name. Ezekiel's vision ends with it: "the name of the city from that time on shall be, The LORD Is There" (48:35). Cain named his city after his son. Babel named its city Confusion. God's city is named after God.
A friend told me his young daughter kept insisting he was the best dad in the world, and he kept deflecting: there are lots of good dads out there. Finally she stopped him, made him look at her, and said, "You are not perfect. But you're my dad, and you're the best dad in the world for me." That's the Name called over you. It isn't a ranking. It's belonging. You are his, and he is yours, and that's what makes it right.
8. Living called
So what does this look like on a Tuesday?
Single-minded. God is not double-minded about you. He is "the same yesterday and today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). James says the double-minded man is "unstable in all his ways" (1:8), and his cure is not more effort but a purified heart (4:8). Double-mindedness starts when I'm calling on the Name in every conversation and every decision, but I'm still keeping a second ledger open in case God doesn't come through. That's building a small tower on the side. Calling on the Name means closing the ledger.
Celebrate the choice. I used to resist celebrating when I chose faith over fear, because it felt like celebrating myself. Psalm 116 corrected me. "What shall I render to the LORD for all his benefits? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD" (vv. 12-13). "I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the LORD" (v. 17). The thanksgiving is the calling. It's the Name in its "I will" tense. Celebrating that God showed up when you trusted him isn't ego, and the psalm just before it says why: "Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory" (115:1). Deuteronomy warns that the man who forgets will say "my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth" (8:17). Memorial stones, Ebenezers, cups of salvation: God's people mark the moments he came through so that next time, the doubt has nothing to grab. If you never celebrate the right choice, you'll question every one after it.
The mirror. James says the word is a mirror; the person who looks and walks away forgets what he looks like (1:23-25). Scripture reads you. The Hebrew often leaves gaps on purpose so that how you fill them shows you your own heart. Read Elijah telling Elisha "stay here," and notice whether you hear "stay put" or "stay close." The text still has an author and still says something (Elisha is clearly commended for refusing), but what you heard first tells you something about you. That's the same question as the Name. "Would God come and save me from this?" How you read that situation is how you'll read the page. Trust him and you'll see him on it. Decide he wouldn't, and you won't, because you'll never turn your face far enough to look.
Everything in the Name. "Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him" (Colossians 3:17). Not some things. Not crisis things. Everything, with thanks attached. That's the lifestyle Genesis was describing before it had the words.
9. Babel to Pentecost
The whole thread fits in two scenes.
Genesis 11. A people gather to build a tower and make a name for themselves. God comes down and scatters their languages.
Acts 2. A people gather in Jerusalem. God comes down in fire, and every nation hears in its own language. Peter stands up and says, "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." Babel run backward. Zephaniah's pure speech. Japheth in the tents of Shem.
The Bible gives you two ways to live. You can spend your life making a name, and everything you stack up will carry your name until it's scattered. Or you can spend your life calling on the Name, and find that God has written it on you, and that the city he's building has it over the gate.
Turn your face. Call on the Name. Keep calling. It's the only name that was, and is, and is to come.
