On the Name of Jesus
Jesus – Yeshua
The name Jesus is our way of calling the man the disciples called Yeshua.
the name Yeshua
Yeshua is an Aramaic name. Aramaic was the language Jesus and the disciples spoke.
Two elements in the name Jesus
The Name of Jesus contains two elements: ye and shua.
ye-, yah
Ye (Aramaic) is a form of the word yah, which is short for YHVH the covenant name that Israel calls God. It is God’s personal Name, represented by a word of four Hebrew letters and regarded by Jews as too sacred to say out loud.
The name YHVH, usually translated into English as “the LORD”, resonates with the whole history of Israel as being the people God chose, close enough to God for God to have given her his personal Name.
The name yah identifies God as the God of the Bible, and invokes the history of Israel’s long term intimate relationship with him, as recorded in Scripture.
So in Aramaic the very Name of Jesus proclaims salvation through the God of Israel.
-shua
The derivation of -shua
The -shua part of the name Yeshua derives from a Hebrew root which conveys the idea of ‘opening wide’, ‘broad, spacious’. The idea being that salvation is about opening out, opening wide, being made completely open to each other and to God, and enjoying breadth and spaciousness.
It is being open without any fig leaf, or skin gained by the shedding of blood.
Conclusion: the meaning of the Name of Jesus
The very Name of Jesus, in its original form, resonates with the sense “The LORD, the God of Israel, saves you by opening you out into a spacious place”.
It proclaims that God is the God of the Bible.
It advises that the events of salvation are typified by the stories of Israel.
It pictures that salvation as an ‘opening out’ to God and other people, and enjoying wide horizons.