can English (but not British-English) word "God", just like the Hebrew word for God sounds like the English word "ale", the British-English word "God" sounds like American-English "goad", the Russian word for God sounds like the British-English word "bog", the German word for God sounds like the English word "goat", etc. Human languages are full of such interesting but meaningless coincidences.
The development that prompts this little lesson in Hebrew and linguistics today is a silliness attack among some within the Holy Name movement. I am not criticizing the majority of the people who accept some version of the Holy Name theology. For the most part, I think, they are sincere people who love God, and are not afraid to break tradition and think for themselves. Much as I may disagree with their opinions, I agree with them. There is, however, a "lunatic fringe" among them, a few power-hungry teachers who feel they have something to gain by turning that movement into an out-and-out cult. Those wicked leaders attack the Bible because it uses other titles for God in addition His Holy four-letter Name. They also attack Jews and Christians who don't follow them (and line their pocket$). They accuse us of being followers of "Baal Gad". Thus they show their real attitude towards the Lord God. It concerns me that some (very few, but one would be too many) Messianics give attention to these attacks on God's Word, without considering either the implications of what it would be not to have a reliable message from God, and without considering the common-sense realities of human languages and thought.
Jeremiah 31:31-32reads, "'The time is coming,' declares the LORD, 'when I will make a new covenant with the Family of Israel and with the Family of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke My covenant, and I ba'alti them,' declares the LORD."
It's interesting how the translations handle that verb form ba'alti near the end of verse 32. Just looking at the translations I have in my personal library, old and new KJV, old and new RSV, old and new American Standard, Darby (English and French versions), Biblia de las Americas in Spanish, old and new Webster, NIV, Green, NAB, TEV, TLB, and the old and new versions of the standard Spanish RV translation see 'was a husband to'; Leeser, Young, Jerome, three Italian versions, four German versions, two French versions, the Spanish RVA, and the 1993 World translation into Russian understand it as 'was a lord over'; the standard Russian translation proceeds with 'continued to lead'; CEV gets 'was God to' and the standard German translation wrestles 'must subdue' from that verb form. We can compare these various hypotheses with how the Holy Spirit Himself translates it in Hebrews 8:9. There He uses the Greek word that means 'rejected'. It is also worth noting that the translations made closer to Jeremiah's own time and culture, the Peshitto and the Septuagint, also understand the verb in that sense. And in modern times, the Bible in Basic English (a relatively unknown translation) alone of the 33 post-Vulgate translations I've consulted and mentioned in this footnote, has accepted the Holy Spirit's word for the correct sense of the verb here. The problem is not a hard one linguistically. It's just that, for the most part, I'm sorry to say, Christianity, even the best of Christian scholarship, has not done very well at following the Lord.
"And on that day,"is the Lord's oracle, "You'll call Me Ishi. You won't call Me Ba'ali any more, because I will take away the idolatrous name of Ba'al from your mouth and your memory." (Hosea 2:18-19). This text seems to include a promise about the Hebrew language which has not yet been fulfilled. Ba'al is still a common noun in modern Hebrew. More importantly, although Baal is no longer worshipped and there is of course no longer a confusion of the Lord with Baal, as there was in Israel in Hosea's time, most of our people don't yet perceive themselves as part of the Lo