Placing the Name

Sandra Richter gave a very stimulating paper on the use of the phrase “place my name there” in Deuteronomy. Her main concern was to argue that the “place where my name dwells” in Dt 12 is fulfilled within Dt in chapter 27, with the ceremony of covenant-renewal at Mount Ebal. She suggested that Ebal looms much larger in biblical history than many have believed.

The most interesting part of the paper for me, however, was Richter’s interpretation of the phrase “place my name there.” Frequently, this is seen as a move toward a more “transcendent” view of Yahweh; He cannot be contained in heaven and earth, and so he cannot dwell in a temple directly. He must instead dwell in his “name,” a quasi-hypostatic reality that is yet distinct from Yahweh. I have pushed this phrase in a Trinitarian direction in the past. (Barth does too, BTW.)

Richter argued, however, that the phrase is well-known in ANE texts, and refers to the erection of a “display monument” marking a victory and a claim to the land where the monument is erected. Originally, “placing the name” meant inscribing the name of a deity on a stele to mark out a particular place as a place claimed by the deity; stele of this sort are frequently found in connection with altars at cultic sites. Eventually the phrase came to refer to the inscription of a stele, whether it was a name or not. In Dt 27, the stele erected at Gerazim and Ebal are not inscribed with the name YHWH, but with the Torah. Finally, the phrase comes to mean simply the erection of a display monument as a whole; the “name” comes to mean the monument itself.

Richter’s doctoral dissertation is on this subject, and includes some discussion of 1 Kings 8’s use of the phrase. I haven’t seen the dissertation yet, so what follows is merely my speculative and hot-brained extrapolation from Richter’s thesis. If by the time of Solomon the “name” referred to the monument as a whole, the temple itself seems to be the monument in view. Yahweh chooses a “place to set My name there” (an alliterative and assonant phrase in Heb), and the name is the temple itself. This is His claim to ownership of the land, of victory over the enemies in the land, and therefore presupposes the rest or peace that Solomon says is the prerequisite for the building of the temple. It is also a sign that Yahweh has bequeathed the land as a covenant grant to His people. Finally, the Trinitarian dimension may still work, but at a different level. If the “name” is the monumental architecture of the temple, then an identification of the “name” with the coming Messiah is still possible. The temple itself is the name, and this anticipates NT talk both about Jesus as temple and Jesus as the Word of the Father. This also helps to explain the “mediatorial” role that the temple plays in Kings; prayer is made “toward this house,” and the house serves as an interchange between Israel on earth and Yahweh in heaven.