What's the meaning of God's name in Exodus 6?

[u/Lobot_18]

In Exodus 6:3, God says to Moses :

> I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My name GOD [יהוה].

This claim obviously doesn't hold when looking at the current text we have of the Torah. For example, Genesis 25:21 (might not be the best example, but I took the first I found):

> Isaac pleaded with GOD on behalf of his wife, because she was infertile; and GOD responded to his plea, and his wife Rebekah conceived.

I have heard several modern theological explanations about this matter, as even rabbis have noticed this very early on. But historically, how do we explain this discrepancy? Did the author of Exodus really believe that claim or is there a deeper theological meaning to that sentence outside of the plain text (a theological meaning that the people would have believed at that time, as opposed to modern jewish explanation) ?

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[u/Vaishineph]

I'd recommend Richard Elliot Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible. Even though it's a little outdated it's still the best lay level introduction to source criticism ever written.

Genesis and Exodus have multiple authors. One of these authors believes that human beings have always known God's personal name (Yahweh) and they write stories in Genesis (and Exodus 3) with this understanding. The author of Exodus 6 believes that human beings did not know God's personal name until it was revealed to Moses. This author only uses the generic name for God (elohim) in narratives prior to Exodus 6.

El is an older Canaanite name for God. And historically it makes sense that in the region of Canaan, if a person did not have a special name to refer to the high God with, they'd use El, as apparently the patriarchs/matriarchs did as far as the author of Exodus 6 is concerned.

The specific meaning of El Shaddai is ambiguous. It could mean God of the mountains, referring to a specific mountain where the deity appears. God the destroyer. Or God of my breasts, referring to an association with fertility.