The Shedu God ð’€ð’†˜
A shadow of things to come.
The name El Shaddai is mysterious and few understand its origins. God told Moses it was the term about Himself He used to describe Himself to Abraham. Abraham was of Akkadian semitic origins living originally in Ur in what is now modern day Iraq. So Akkadian rather than Hebrew would have been Abraham’s birth tongue and Hebrew was very similar to Akkadian. So what did El Shaddai mean to Abraham? Well a shedu is a fabulous creature in Akkadian lore with the head of a human and the body of an ox and wings - like a Sphynx but ox replacing lion. So it had all-round strength. Hence it represented God being Almighty. El was a syllable added to names or representations of highest heavenly beings - meaning God as we know it today. So when Hebrew was translated into Greek centuries later, when nobody outside the Middle East knew what a shadu was, they took the meaning of Mighty in all kinds of ways which today we say as Almighty to translate this word. So today we have it as God Almighty or Almighty God.
Now the new name God gave Moses to use was Yahweh meaning “yet to come”, “becoming”, “will come to pass”, “will be”. What God truly is was yet to be revealed. Watch this space, God was effectively telling Pharoah, You will see what I am. Be afraid; be very afraid. And what Pharoah saw of God in the plagues shook him to the core and forced him to relinquish his vice-like control of Israel. To Israel they would see their God too and every year celebrate Him in the Passover feast for the joy of hope that what God forever will be could give them. To some a terrible doom and to others an eternal Salvation.
