A Name Chosen in Heaven

Part One set out the one sign, the sign of Jonah, and the way Scripture counts the days it measures. The parts after this one will count it out, from the supper as the thirteenth of Nisan began to first light on the sixteenth, the day of the first sheaf, when He rose on one of the sabbatons.

The sign tells us when. Before we count the days, this part asks who. The One who was in the heart of the earth those three days and three nights bore a name, and that name was not chosen by chance. It was chosen in heaven, and it was announced with its meaning before He was born.

A Name Given With Its Meaning

Most children are named by their parents. A father and mother may pick a name because they like its sound, or to honor a grandparent, and only later, if ever, ask what it means. The name of Mary’s Son came in the opposite order. Joseph had not yet taken Mary as his wife when an angel came to him in a dream.

Matthew 1:20-21 But while he was deliberating these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying: "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for what has been begotten in her is from the hagio(holy) pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit). And she will bear a Son, and you shall call His name Yeshua, for He will save His people from their sins."

Look at how the sentence is built. First comes the instruction: “you shall call His name Yeshua.” Then, without a pause, comes the reason: “for He will save His people from their sins.” The little word “for” (gar γάρ gar in the Greek) joins the two. The angel does not give a name and then, as a separate matter, add a promise about the Child’s work. He gives the name because of the work. The name itself says what the Child will do.

The Greek even adds a separate word for “He” (autos) at the head of that clause, as Greek does when it wants the person to stand out: He Himself will save. Name and mission meet in a single word. Why the name Yeshua should carry the meaning “He will save” only becomes clear when we look at the Hebrew name letter by letter, and that is the work of the next chapter. Here we stay with what the angel said.

An Echo of the Psalm

The angel’s words echo the end of Psalm 130.

Psalm 130:7-8 Hope, Israel, in the LORD, for with the LORD is lovingkindness, and abundant with Him is redemption. And He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

The psalm says who will do this: “Hope, Israel, in the LORD, … And He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.” It is the LORD who redeems His people from their iniquities. Now the angel says of the Child in Mary’s womb, “He will save His people from their sins.” What the psalm says the LORD Himself will do, the angel says this Child will do. That is not a reading laid on top of the verses; it is what the two verses say when they are set side by side.

The Same Name Told to Mary

Joseph was not the only one to hear it. Before that, the angel Gabriel had come to Mary herself.

Luke 1:31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call His name Yeshua.

To the man in a dream and to the woman awake, heaven gave one name. Neither of them was asked to choose it. Both were told it.

The name was spoken in Hebrew, Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ). The Gospels were written in Greek, where the name is spelled Iesous. Through Latin it later came into English as “Jesus,” which is why the YLV, wherever the name appears, prints it as “Yeshua.” In this book we use the name as the angel spoke it.

Two Words Behind One Name

Before we open the letters of the name, there is one fact that makes everything ahead easier to follow. In the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the sound behind “Yeshua” is found in two different words, and they are spelled differently.

The first is the word English Bibles translate as “salvation.” It ends with the Hebrew letter heh, so in this book we write it yeshuah, with an h at the end. The second is a man’s name. It has no final heh, and it is exactly the form of the name the angel gave. In Ezra and Nehemiah it is borne by several men, among them the high priest who came back from Babylon and helped to rebuild the house of God.

None of this is new. The dictionaries and commentaries agree that the personal name Yeshua (H3442) is the same form as the name in the Gospels, that the noun yeshuah (H3444) means “salvation,” and that both forms occur in the Old Testament.

What this study adds is a way of reading the two together. Before He came in the flesh, the One who was with God in the beginning is the yeshuah of the Old Testament, the salvation of which Isaiah says, “Behold, God is my salvation (yeshuah).” When He took flesh, He took the human name Yeshua, without the heh. One Person stands behind both words. We will see in the chapters ahead why this study reads it so, and where it parts from the standard lexicons. For now it is enough to keep the two words apart in our minds, because Scripture keeps them apart in its spelling.

What the Angel Did Not Leave to Chance

It is worth stopping on how much the angel’s words hold. A name could have been given for any reason. This one was given “for He will save His people from their sins.” The reason the angel gives is salvation, and salvation of a particular kind: “from their sins.”

That sets the course for this part of the book. Every chapter in this part comes back, by one road or another, to the meaning the angel unfolded in Matthew 1:21. We will look at the letters of the name, at a name in Genesis and a name in Saul’s family, at the name Joshua, at Isaiah’s song, at a single letter at the end of a word, and at the Word who was in the beginning. Each of them is a way of hearing what the angel said to Joseph.

The angel said that the name means “He will save.” But the name is only four Hebrew letters long. Where in those four letters is the One who saves, and where is the saving? To answer that, we read the name the way Hebrew is read, from right to left, one letter at a time.