Seth also had a son, and he named him Enosh. At that time people began to call on the name of the LORD. – Genesis 4:26

Today's Scripture Reading (June 22, 2021): Genesis 4

Author Robert Brault said that "having perfected our disguise, we spend our lives searching for someone we don't fool." As a child, we dress up and pretend to be a princess or a superhero. I remember running around the house with a bath towel as a cape pretending to be Batman or some other caped vigilante. And as we grow older, the disguises change, but they never come off. And all the while, we look for the one with whom we can be honest, who sees us as we are and is never tricked by the disguise.

I call that person God, although different people have different names for the one who sees through our disguises. But our reality is that we have been searching for the one who sees through our disguises for a long time, even if we can't articulate for whom we are looking. Deep in the heart of the human race is a desire to find the one we can't fool. And it has always been that way.

Genesis says that it was with the generation of Enosh that people began to "call on the name of the Lord" for the first time. It is an interesting turn of a phrase. We have no idea what "name" they might have been "calling on." The name that Genesis uses here is Yahweh, but that might be revisionist history. Yahweh is the sacred name of the God of Israel, but Israel won't exist for thousands of years. The name Yahweh might even be the result of Moses's interaction with God in the wilderness. When Moses asks God for his name, the response he received was -

I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I am has sent me to you.'"

God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, 'The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.'

"This is my name forever,
            the name you shall call me
            from generation to generation (Exodus 3:14-15).

"I am who I am" is literally "haya haya" (haw-yaw haw-yaw) which might have been transformed into "Yahweh." But another way of looking at the name of God is that "I am who I am" is essentially God saying I am the God who exists. You can chase after all of the false Gods that your mind can invent, but in the end, I am the one who exists, who is real. That is also the essential meaning of Yahweh, which means "the existing One."

Does it matter what the name might have been that Enosh's generation called God? Probably not. Enosh's age participated in the first revival as they sought the one who could see beyond their disguises. They worshipped "the existing one," the God of Adam and Eve, regardless of what they called him.     

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Genesis 5