T

he Israelites were at 
their lowest ebb. They 
had been enslaved. 
A decree had been issued 
that every male child was to 
be killed. Moses had been 
sent to liberate 
them, but the 
first effect of his 
intervention was 
to make matters 
worse, not bet-
ter. Their quota 
of brickmak-
ing remained 
unchanged, but now they 
also had to provide their own 
straw. 
Initially, they had believed 
Moses when he performed 
the signs God had given him 
and told them that God was 
about to rescue them. Now 

they turned against Moses and 
Aaron, accusing them: “May 
the Lord look upon you and 
judge you! You have made 
us a stench to Pharaoh and 
his officials and have put a 
sword in their hand to kill us.” 
Exodus 5:20–21
At this point Moses — 
who had been so reluctant 
to take on the mission — 
turned to God in protest and 
anguish: “O Lord, why have 
You brought trouble upon 
this people? Is this why You 
sent me? Ever since I went 
to Pharaoh to speak in Your 
name, he has brought trouble 
upon this people, and You 
have not rescued Your people 
at all.” Exodus 5:22
None of this, however, 
was accidental. The Torah 

is preparing the ground for 
one of its most monumental 
propositions: In the darkest 
night, Israel was about to have 
its greatest encounter with 
God. Hope was to be born at 
the very edge of the abyss of 
despair. There was nothing 
natural about this, nothing 
inevitable. No logic can give 
rise to hope; no law of history 
charts a path from slavery to 
redemption. 
The entire sequence of 
events was a prelude to the 
single most formative moment 
in the history of Israel: the 
intervention of God in his-
tory — the supreme Power 
intervening on behalf of the 
supremely powerless, not (as 
in every other culture) to 
endorse the status quo, but to 
overturn it.
God tells Moses: “I 
am Hashem, and I will bring 
you out from under the yoke 
of the Egyptians. I will free 
you from being slaves to 
them, and I will redeem you 
with an outstretched arm and 
with mighty acts of judg-
ment. I will take you as My 
own people, and I will be your 
God” (Exodus 6:6-7). 
The entire speech is full of 
interest, but what will con-
cern us — as it has successive 
generations of interpreters 
— is what God tells Moses 
at the outset: “I appeared 
to Abraham, to Isaac and 
to Jacob as God Almighty 
[E-l Shaddai], but by My 
name Hashem I was not 
known to them” (Exodus 6:3).
A fundamental distinction 
is being made between the 
experience the patriarchs had 
of God, and the experience 
the Israelites were about to 

have. Something new, unprec-
edented, was about to happen. 
What is it?
Clearly it had to do with 
the names by which God is 
known. The verse distinguish-
es between E-l Shaddai (“God 
Almighty”) and the four-
letter name of God which, 
because of its sanctity, Jewish 
tradition refers to simply 
as Hashem — “the name” par 
excellence.

WHAT’S NEW ABOUT 
‘HASHEM?’
As the classic Jewish com-
mentators point out, the 
verse must be read with great 
care. It does not say that the 
patriarchs “did not know” 
this name; nor does it say 
that God did not “make this 
name known” to them. The 
name Hashem appears no less 
than 165 times in the book 
of Genesis. God Himself uses 
the phrase “I am Hashem” to 
both Abraham (Genesis 15:7) 
and Jacob (28:13). What, then, 
is new about the revelation of 
God that was about to happen 
in the days of Moses that had 
never happened before?
The Sages give var-
ious explanations. A 
Midrash says that God is 
known as Elokim when He 
judges human beings, E-l 
Shaddai when He suspends 
judgment and Hashem when 
He shows mercy. Judah 
Halevi in The Kuzari, and 
Ramban in his Commentary, 
say that Hashem refers to 
God when He performs 
miracles that suspend the 
laws of nature. However, 
Rashi’s explanation is the 
simplest and most elegant: 
“It is not written here, [My 
name, Hashem] I did not 
make known to them’ but 
rather ‘[By the name, Hashem] 
I was not known to them’ — 

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

The God Who 
Acts in History

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

Burning Bush. Seventeenth- 
century painting by Sébastien 
Bourdon in the Hermitage 
Museum, Saint Petersburg

46 | JANUARY 11 • 2024