A broken tulip

Names are powerful. So much so that some people go to great lengths to never disclose their true name—because that would place power over your very self into the hands of another. In the book of Revelation, as Christ speaks to the church in Pergamum, he promises that those who are victorious against lies will receive from him a white stone, with their name written on it, a name only the receiver knows.

By what name do you know God?

There is a little link, a small one you may have missed, between embittered Job and another bitter woman in the story. Their stories are drawn together by the name they call God: Shaddai.

And the second story may tease some light into the question of suffering, inheritance, and names.

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No one today knows what the old name of Shaddai means. Scholars say it could come from the Hebrew word shad, for breasts, and imply a nurturing and compassionate God. Scholars also say it could come from the Assyrian word shadu, meaning mountain. A name of strength and justice and authority. There are many other educated guesses made, including meanings of destroyer and even, ‘my demon’. One that draws on another Hebrew root to suggest that it means, “my rain-maker.”

That last one is an intriguing suggestion because of where we find Naomi, at the start of her story. There is famine in the land. A man of Bethlehem travels to the land of Moab, with his wife Naomi and their two sons (the sons carry disturbing names—Mahlon, ‘sickly person’, and Kilion, ‘frail’).

The man, Elimelech (‘my God is king’) dies, as do his two sons. Naomi is bereft. She sets back towards her home country, sending her two widowed daughters-in-law to their own respective homes. She calls on the name of her God, Adonai, to return to the women the same chesed—steadfast, loyal love—that the two have shown towards her.

I don’t know. Maybe Naomi didn’t comprehend the power of her own prayer. Maybe she didn’t reckon with the tenacity of chesed. We know how the story goes, how it ends.

She did not. When her daughters-in-law weep, insisting they will go with her, Naomi’s bitterness begins to surface: “Go back, my daughters. Why do you want to go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb who could become your husbands? Go back, my daughters; go your way; for I’m too old to have a husband. Even if I were to say, ‘I still have hope’; even if I had a husband tonight and bore sons; would you wait for them until they grew up? Would you refuse to marry, just for them? No, my daughters. On your behalf I feel very bitter that the hand of Adonai has gone out against me.”

Bitter. Job swears by this same bitterness, “As surely as God lives, who has denied me justice,
   Shaddai, who has made my life bitter...I will never admit you are in the right;
    till I die, I will not deny my integrity.”

Naomi shares this word, bitter, because she sees the hand of Adonai going out against her—this is war language in the Pentateuch.

But Naomi does not yet know the nature of the loyal love she named in the women. Ruth clings to her, and calls the curses of Adonai upon herself if she allows anything but death to separate them.

And Naomi, the story tells us, stays silent.

The two walk together, all the way back to Bethlehem.

When they arrive, the women call out to each other. “Could it be? Is this Naomi?”

She answers, and we see that the bitterness is no longer on behalf of her daughters. It has become her, consumed her. Her name has changed, and God’s name will change as well. “Don’t call me Naomi,” she answered them; “call me Mara, because Shaddai has made my life very bitter. I went out full, and Adonai has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? Adonai has testified against me, Shaddai has afflicted me.”

There is something very important about the name Shaddai, which I have not yet told you. Here it is: we may not know what Shaddai means, but we know where it is used. It may surprise you, but this name is used only a few times in the lives of the patriarchs—Abraham and Jacob. It is used once in Ezekiel. It appears here. And it is used thirty times in the book of Job.

And when Naomi speaks of affliction here, it means to judge unfairly—echoing again the words of Job, who claims that God has withheld justice from him.

So. We have another Job in the person of Naomi. Job says, “Shaddai, who has made my life bitter” and Naomi says, “Shaddai has made my life very bitter.” She is emptied and made desolate by Shaddai. Take her words (empty, testified against, afflicted) and trace them through the book of Job. See how many threads spin here. We know that God responded to Job’s bitter complaint by appearing to him. Will he do the same for Naomi?