Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life

Bible Reading Plans

• Plan One: New Testament Only
• Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
• Plan Three: New Testament + History
• Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3

Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.

Extras

Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute

Overflow

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(Today’s Reading)

YHWH in the Old Testament

(Essay Installment 12)

Afterword

In yesterday’s conclusion to “YHWH in the Old Testament,” I pointed out that references to the Lord (including Jesus and Christ) were more numerous than references to God (and Father) in both testaments! Everyone knows that Lord in the New Testament refers to Jesus. What more people need to know is that Lord in the Old Testament refers to Jesus, too.

You may have noticed that in these installments of “YHWH in the Old Testament” I have made little effort to explicitly show that I was “finding Jesus in the Old Testament” (FJOT) by finding Him in YHWH. The closest I came was the time I spent in “Essay Installment 4” describing how Moses gave Hoshea the name Joshua, which eventually ended up meaning that the name of Jesus has YHWH embedded in it.

In regard to that, you may have also noticed that yesterday’s short conclusion was a hint that YHWH must have been the way Jesus spent His preexistence before His earthly life. For how could there fail to be a connection between the most prominent name in the Old Testament and the most prominent name in the New Testament? That Jesus was YHWH before He was Jesus is, for sure, the point I want to make, and there is plenty of evidence I want to give you when I make the full case. For now, I just wanted to point out what the number counts alone suggest.

Going into this series “YHWH in the Old Testament,” my plan was to make the point about Jesus being YHWH when I got to “YHWH in the New Testament.” I may still do it that way, but I’m currently weighing other options. The question in my mind is “What is the most logical and concise way to lay out the case?”

If I were only writing for you, the question would not be so difficult for me. But I’m writing for your family and friends as well – people not as familiar with me or my writing. And people who may be reading these words as part of a complete book one day and not in day-by-day installments like today.

For almost two thousand years, most people have thought that the Old Testament is about God the Father and the New Testament is about God the Son. To tell them that both testaments are about the same person is going to require a lot of biblical evidence. I am eager to provide it. There is, in fact, so much biblical evidence that it can be overwhelming to a reader unless it is thoughtfully arranged.

When I wrote The Biblical Case for Everyone Going to Heaven and The Biblical Case for the Second Coming as Accomplished Fact, I had the same concern in mind. The main difference between those books and this one is that I’m trying to write this one “live” in front of an audience. When I compile these installments into an essay and/or a book, I may re-order it by making the point of YHWH = Jesus right up front. We’ll see. In the meantime, keep finding Jesus in the Old Testament as well as in the New.

Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life

Bible Reading Plans

• Plan One: New Testament Only
• Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
• Plan Three: New Testament + History
• Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3

Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.

Extras

Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute

Overflow

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It’s this simple: Child needs > Adult desires

Join the #GreaterThan movement. pic.twitter.com/sYOeYWQlXC

— Greater Than Campaign (@MakeKidsGreater) January 28, 2026

I applaud this three-minute video and the speakers who contributed to its true and vitally important message. However, I can’t help but notice how it demonstrates secularism’s obliteration of First Amendment rights and its domination of American culture – and how secularism achieves its conquest no so much by law, but by inducing self-censorship. Nine of the ten speakers are avowed believers in God, Jesus, and the Bible – yet not one of those three words is uttered by any of them.

The sources cited as authoritative by the speakers are “data,” “research,” and “social science.” All of these are, of course, valid authoritative sources and deserve to be mentioned. However, such sources can only inform us after the fact – after the damage has been done to children and society. The authoritative sources that always warn us ahead of the fact – God, Jesus, the Bible – are not mentioned even by speakers who revere them. My point is not to criticize, but merely to notice – and mourn – the power of secularism’s grip on public speech.

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(Today’s Reading)

YHWH in the Old Testament

(Essay Installment 11)

Conclusion

You now know that the most prominent word in the English Old Testament is Lord – not God. You also know that the reason for this is that the most prominent word in the Hebrew Old Testament is YHWH – not “ELOHIM.” (Adding Adonai into the equation only increases the count of Lord.)

Perhaps the most logical reason someone might put forward for this is that YHWH was needed to distinguish Israel’s God from all the other gods referenced in Old Testament times. Whatever the reason, there is no denying that YHWH is the word that dominates the Hebrew Old Testament.

Now add another data point for comparison. When analyzing the New Testament, we find more occurrences of Lord, Jesus, and Christ than we do of God and Father. Think about that, would you? I’ll say more about it tomorrow.

Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life

Bible Reading Plans

• Plan One: New Testament Only
• Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
• Plan Three: New Testament + History
• Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3

Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.

Extras

Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute

Overflow

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(Today’s Reading)

YHWH in the Old Testament

(Essay Installment 10)

Back to English Bibles

Let’s now return to the burning bush for the further explanation I promised you about how and why English Bibles translate YHWH as LORD.

Exodus 3:15 God, furthermore, said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is My name forever, and this is My memorial-name to all generations.

Recall that whenever you see “LORD” rendered in all caps like this, it means the underlying Hebrew word is YHWH. Recall also that this applies to the vast majority of English translations and not just the NASB 1995. All these English translations follow this convention because, as the NASB 1995 states, “This name has not been pronounced by the Jews because of reverence for the great sacredness of the divine name.” This Jewish reticence to vocalize YHWH was not present in Old Testament times, as you know well from the data I’ve given you on its ubiquitous presence in the Old Testament…if not from your own reading of it. This Jewish reluctance to speak the name of their own God arose in the centuries just after the Old Testament age ended. I’ll describe that development when I get to the installments that will cover “YHWH in the Intertestamental Period.”

As for the “The” that appears before “LORD” in Exodus 3:15 – as well as any other “the” that appears before “LORD” in an English translation of the Old Testament – you should not take it a sign that a definite Hebrew article was present in the text. Much to the contrary, no occurrence of YHWH in the Hebrew Bible is preceded by a definite article. In the Hebrew Old Testament, YHWH is treated as a proper name. Proper names didn’t take a definite article in ancient Hebrew just as they don’t in modern English. English, however, often prefers an article when a word functions like a title rather than a personal name. Since English translators render YHWH as “LORD” (a title-like substitute rather than a name), they frequently add “the” to make the English sound more natural.

Another fine point is that there are around 300 of the 6,820 occurrences of YHWH in the Hebrew text (which is less than 5% of the time) which occur next to an occurrence of the word Adonai (Lord). To avoid having the English text put “LORD” and “Lord” next to each other, the translators preserve the occurrence of Adonai as is, but then, instead of printing “LORD,” they print “GOD” (that is, Elohim in ALL CAPS) to indicate YHWH. To show you what that looks like, here’s an example of the normal rendering of YHWH, followed by two examples from the 5% exceptions I’ve been describing (where it’s “God” that is put in all caps instead of “LORD.”

Psalm 68:18 You have ascended on high, You have led captive Your captives; / You have received gifts among men, / Even among the rebellious also, that the LORD God may dwell there.

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Psalm 68:20 God is to us a God of deliverances; / And to GOD the Lord belong escapes from death.

Psalm 69:6 May those who wait for You not be ashamed through me, O Lord GOD of hosts; / May those who seek You not be dishonored through me, O God of Israel,

The part of Psalm 68:18 I’ve put in bold is translating “YHWH ELOHIM.” This demonstrates the way that 95% of YHWH occurrences in the Old Testament are translated. By contrast, the other two verses are examples of how the 5% of YHWH occurrences are translated. The bold part of Psalm 68:20 is translating “YHWH ADONAI,” and the bold part of Psalm 69:6 is translating “ADONAI YHWH.” If the translators didn’t treat the 5% of cases differently, the bold parts of those two verses would read “LORD Lord” and “Lord LORD” respectively.

There are other finer points I could make about YHWH being rendered in English, but the ones above are fine enough.

Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life

Bible Reading Plans

• Plan One: New Testament Only
• Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
• Plan Three: New Testament + History
• Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3

Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.

Extras

Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute

Overflow

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(Today’s Reading)

YHWH in the Old Testament

(Essay Installment 9)

The End of the Old Testament Age

The Jews, from whom we receive the Old Testament (though they, of course, don’t call it that), stopped adding writings to it after the prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi left the scene. That was the 5th century BC. The Jews consider this to have been the end of the prophetic age. That is, they consider all their Scriptures (the Old Testament) to have been written by prophets of YHWH – beginning with Moses…and that this long line of prophets ended with the three men mentioned above. Thus the Jews consider the biblical age to have run from creation until shortly after the rebuilding of the temple.

We can accept the Jewish version of the Old Testament (what they call the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible), including its history, because Jesus did. Consider what He said to His disciples:

Matthew 5:17 “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.

Luke 24:44 Now He said to them, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”

Consider also what He said to a foreigner:

John 4:22 “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.

Consider also what He said to, and about, His Jewish opponents…for they believed in the same Scriptures He did:

John 5:39 “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me;
John 5:40 and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.

Matthew 23:2 …“The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses;
Matthew 23:3 therefore all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things and do not do them.

Consider also that there is nowhere in the New Testament where Jesus argued with the Pharisees about what books did and didn’t belong in the Old Testament. He argued with them about many things, but the contents of the Scriptures was not one of those things.

Thus the end of the Old Testament age and the contents of its Scriptures are clearly marked for us by the Jews, and ratified by Jesus.

The beginning of the Old Testament can be marked in a couple of meaningful ways. First and more obviously, it can be marked by the days of creation in Genesis 1. Second and less obviously, it can be marked by the man who wrote Genesis: Moses. Both are valid. The rationale for the first is that the Jews considered many of the Genesis patriarchs as prophets – beginning with Adam. And even God Himself called Abraham a prophet in Genesis 20:7. Enough said.

As for the value of the second framing, consider that Moses was the first writing prophet. Therefore, we may say that God instituted the Scriptures through Moses. YHWH did not give Adam anything to write for subsequent generations. Nor Abraham, nor any of the men of God who came before Moses. Why then Moses? Because he was the first prophet to have a nation surrounding him to preserve and protect his writings.

As Americans, we appreciate the founding documents of our nation. But we wouldn’t have those writings if we didn’t have the nation. A nation has ways of protecting and preserving documents that individuals and families cannot match. No wonder the Lord did not initiate of a collection of sacred writings for us until there was a mechanism for safeguarding them. Thus the man with a nation around him was the first to write on behalf of YHWH.

We may say therefore that the Old Testament age began with Adam, but began being documented with Moses, and ended with the prophecies of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.

Bible Reading Plans

• Plan One: New Testament Only
• Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
• Plan Three: New Testament + History
• Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3

Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.

Extras

Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute

Overflow

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New essay: AI Engines Have Learning Abilities and Disabilities (5 min)

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(Today’s Reading)

YHWH in the Old Testament

(Essay Installment 8)

YHWH and Israel in Old Testament History

The focus of Old Testament history and prophecy is YHWH’s covenant relationship with Israel – including what that covenant had to do with that history.

Genesis begins with the story of how YHWH created the heavens and the earth. For a few chapters thereafter, it covers some selected primeval events (including Noah’s Flood and the Tower of Babel). By Genesis 12, however, the book settles in on reporting YHWH’s interactions with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (including how Jacob received the name Israel, which would ultimately become the national name of the descendants of these three generations). Genesis is filled out with accounts of Jacob’s twelve sons, the most notable of which was Joseph. Because of Joseph, the extended family, which had become roughly seventy in number, migrated to Egypt.

Exodus opens with Jacob’s family multiplying greatly over the centuries that followed. Concurrent with that growth, their status shifted from being guests of Egypt to being slaves of Egypt, because of the threat they posed to Egyptian sovereignty. Then comes the story of Moses, the burning bush, the Exodus, and thus YHWH’s founding of the nation of Israel from a bunch of slaves. Thereafter, the story is about how YHWH gets His nation into the promised land and how they dealt with the nations already residing there.

After Moses, God raised up similar leaders (though none with the stature of Moses) including Joshua and men called judges. God used the last of these – a priest and prophet named Samuel – to anoint a king for the nation. The first of these was Saul. Then David. Then Solomon. After that, the kingdom became divided between north and south, each with its own succession of kings.

The northern kingdom was conquered and its people were scattered abroad by Assyria in 722 BC. The southern kingdom (also called Judah), because it was of the lineage of David, and therefore stronger, lasted longer. It was conquered in 586 BC by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, who burned Jerusalem – most notably its temple.

Nebuchadnezzar dispersed the Israelites (who had come to also be called Jews by this time) but hauled the best and brightest to serve him in Babylon. After seventy years, King Cyrus of Persia had conquered Babylon and authorized the Jews to rebuild Jerusalem, including its temple – a project completed in 516 BC – that is, after 70 years of being in captivity to the Babylonians. Yet the nation was never the same after this history…until Messiah came in the 1st century AD.

Using rounded numbers, here’s a rough approximation of the historical timeline, in 500-year segments, starting with Moses (all dates BC):

• 1500 (Moses) to 1000 (David)
• 1000 (David) to 500 (the rebuilding of the temple)
• 500 (the building of the temple) to Christ

Old Testament history stops shortly after the temple’s reconstruction, leaving a 400-500 year period of biblical silence before Jesus came on the scene. From Moses’ time forward, Old Testament history records the ups and downs of Israel’s history as a function of its faithfulness, or lack thereof, to the nation’s covenant with YHWH. Modern histories tend say that nations rise and fall on military, economic, social, and other such factors. But Old Testament history considers moral factors the most determinative. Given this point of view, you can see why Israel was so broken after Nebuchadnezzar burned down the temple that David had planned and Solomon had built. In the wake of this devastation and humiliation, Israel’s covenant relationship with YHWH was shaken to its core.

Bible Reading Plans

• Plan One: New Testament Only
• Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
• Plan Three: New Testament + History
• Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3

Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.

Extras

Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute

Overflow

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• Daily Help is the static page that hosts the Bible reading plans and related content.
• Daily Help Plus is the daily email subscription which includes that same information plus other content, including new books that are serialized into installments.

I made this distinction once I realized that some newcomers to this site have not yet fully formed a daily Bible reading habit and might be distracted from doing so by my daily output of new content. If you don’t have time to read the Bible and my stuff, read the Bible!

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(Today’s Reading)

YHWH in the Old Testament

(Essay Installment 7)

What Uniqueness Is Not

For Israel and the Gentile nations in Moses’ day to agree that YHWH was an outlier among gods, was not to say, as we today would say, that there were no other gods. We today obviously believe there is only one God. That’s why we capitalize the word’s first letter when it’s in its singular form (God), but make it lower case when in its plural form (gods). We do this routinely, without even thinking about. And when I say “we” I mean pretty much everybody – even atheists. Ancient writers like Moses didn’t even have a concept of upper and lower case letters. All letters were the same case, the same size.

If we’re going to understand the Bible, we have to understand it on its own terms. That means we need to read its words according to the meaning that the authors assigned to them – as best we can. We certainly shouldn’t read its words according to modern definitions. We live in a monotheistic world; the Old Testament was written in polytheistic times. This is why I could say that Israel and the other nations agreed that YHWH was unique. But they could not agree that there were no other gods…because they all agreed there were. The other nations had their gods and the Israelites saw those other gods as false – not non-existent.

With this in mind, let’s carefully reread the Shema.

Deuteronomy 6:4 “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!

Notice that Moses is not saying there is only one God. He’s saying “YHWH IS OUR GOD.” He follows that statement with “YHWH IS ONE.” By his first statement, Moses was saying “WE ARE MARRIED TO YHWH AND CAN’T BE MESSING AROUND WITH ANY OTHER GODS.” In other words, given the covenant between YHWH and Israel, idolatry was, in effect, adultery. By his second statement, Moses was saying, “THERE IS ONLY ONE YHWH, AND WE CAN’T BE DIVIDING OURSELVES WITH DIFFERENT VIEWS OF HIM.” In other words, YHWH wasn’t going to allow regional factions or other decompositions of the body politic. He wanted Israel united in their view of Him.

This distinction I’m addressing – that is, the distinction between “YHWH is unique among gods” and “YHWH is the only God there is” – may not seem important to you now. But it is essential keeping modern understandings distinguished from ancient ones. God reveals truth to humanity gradually. (By the way, this doesn’t mean that modern people are always going to be smarter than ancient people; we forget things gradually, too.)

The best example I can give you of this is how we understand Jesus. If you’re going to understand that He is God, you have to first understand that He was a man…and then that He was unique among men. If you can accept those two facts, then you’re in a good position to see Him as more than a man…and eventually as God in the flesh. That’s why God wakes us up with a dawn, and does not blind us with a high noon sun right off the bat. That is, He reveals things to us gradually…over time.

Let us, therefore, keep in mind that Old Testament revelations were given in a polytheistic context. And all that was being revealed by YHWH through Moses was that YHWH was unique among gods – not that those other gods were figments of human imagination.

Bible Reading Plans

• Plan One: New Testament Only
• Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
• Plan Three: New Testament + History
• Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3

Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.

Extras

Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute

Overflow

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(Today’s Reading)

YHWH in the Old Testament

(Essay Installment 6)

The Uniqueness of YHWH

Although in one sense, as far as the other nations were concerned, Israel was just bringing one more god to the table, Israel and its God were different from their contemporaries in noticeable ways. I’ve already mentioned that Israel had one god while almost all the surrounding nations had multiple gods. Consistent with this posture, Moses famously declared to his fellow Israelites:

Deuteronomy 6:4 “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!

I say “famously” because this statement is known as “The Shema” (from the Hebrew word for “Hear!”) and is still recited daily by many Jews today. But think through how it would have sounded in its original context. Moses was calling Israel to its one and only God. Unlike the other nations, it would have one God only…and YHWH was His name. YHWH was declared the national God from the beginning…and there was never to be another.

This exclusivity was inherent in YHWH’s covenant with Israel. Other nations had multiple gods, rituals, vows, and treaties; but their gods were not mutually bound to the people, and their relationships were transactional, not relational. YHWH’s covenant was like a marriage – a relationship entered into by two parties with room for no more. Each party – God and nation – had duties to each other, and a mutual pledge of exclusivity.

Another distinctive in the YHWH-Israel relationship was its founding narrative. There were dramatic plagues, a miraculous redemption of a people from slavery, and a complex and comprehensive system of law laid down by the deity. As for that law, called “The Torah” (meaning “teaching”), it was deemed undeniably superior to any other national legal code at the time. As Moses said:

Deuteronomy 4:5 “See, I have taught you statutes and judgments just as the LORD my God commanded me, that you should do thus in the land where you are entering to possess it.
Deuteronomy 4:6 “So keep and do them, for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’
Deuteronomy 4:7 “For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as is the LORD our God whenever we call on Him?
Deuteronomy 4:8 “Or what great nation is there that has statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole law which I am setting before you today?

Though there are many other things that make the YHWH-Israel relationship different from those of other nations and their gods, there is one more that deserves to be mentioned here. It is not that Israel’s God was claimed to be the Creator of heaven and earth, for many nations claimed that distinction for their gods. It is the way that Israel claimed YHWH did it: One God, standing independent of nature, creating everything by His word alone. Other creation stories involving other gods were never that simple and straightforward. Rather, they were usually fanciful myths.

As to a nation’s responses to concept of creation, while Gentile nations had creation festivals of one kind of another, only Israel had a weekly sabbath applying to everyone. The ritual consisted not of doing things – but rather of not doing them. Once a week, every week of the year, Israel’s body language was saying to the world, “YHWH created this world; and it does not depend on our labor.”

Summarizing, YHWH put His distinctive mark on Israel. Neither Israel – nor the nations surrounding it – would say YHWH was like other gods. Whether believed in or not, YHWH was indisputably unique in the world.

Bible Reading Plans

• Plan One: New Testament Only
• Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
• Plan Three: New Testament + History
• Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3

Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.

Extras

Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute

Overflow

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(Today’s Reading)

YHWH in the Old Testament

(Essay Installment 5)

Back to the Burning Bush

Getting back to the conversation at the burning bush, notice what is said next – that is, in the 15th verse. Notice especially the occurrence of “LORD” in ALL CAPS:

Exodus 3:13 Then Moses said to God, “Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you.’ Now they may say to me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I say to them?”
Exodus 3:14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
Exodus 3:15 God, furthermore, said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is My name forever, and this is My memorial-name to all generations.

By printing “the LORD” here Exodus 3:15, the NASB 1995 translators are signaling that the Hebrew word they are translating is YHWH. And they follow this rule throughout the Old Testament – as do most other English translations. Therefore, whenever we read “The LORD” in the Old Testament, our minds should treat it as “YHWH” and as meaning “I am.” There is more I will explain, but this is all that needs to be said for now.

Other Nations, Other Gods, Other Names

While God was establishing the nation of Israel through Moses, the surrounding nations had gods of their own. Therefore, what would distinguish Israel from the other nations would not be that Israel had a god. On the contrary, it was probably because all the other nations had gods that Moses was motivated to ask for the name of Israel’s god. What distinguished Israel from those other nations was 1) only Israel’s God was named YHWH, and that 2) most of those nations had multiple gods – not just one.

The Egyptians surely had multiple gods, and YHWH (“the LORD”), through the ten plagues, was going to demonstrate His superiority over them.

Exodus 12:12 ‘For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments–I am the LORD.

Joshua, the successor to Moses as human leader of the Israelites, was in the following verses reminding his fellow Israelites of the gods of three different regions and three different time periods: 1) the gods of Mesopotamian nations and city-states (who were served by contemporaries of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), 2) the Egyptian gods (in Moses’ day), and 3) various Canaanite (also called Amorite) deities with whom Joshua and his contemporaries were all too familiar. That’s a lot of gods!

Joshua 24:14 “Now, therefore, fear the LORD and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD.
Joshua 24:15 “If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”

I haven’t peppered you with the names of the numerous gods to which the Israelites had been exposed through their neighbors, because those names are not necessary to our study of YHWH. It’s only enough that we recognize that in the day of the burning bush, the surrounding world was thoroughly polytheistic. Lots and lots of gods. Israel’s would be just one more.