Tool Beta
The Gods of the Bible
Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.
Yahweh Tzevaot
A battle title: the God of armies, meaning heavenly ones rather than Israel's soldiers.
1 Samuel 1:3, in every translation this tool compares.
Call a man commander of the forces and nobody pictures him holding a rifle. This title, God of armies, works the same way. The armies are not Israel's infantry, they are the heavenly host, and the phrase turns up most often in scenes set around a throne.
Yahweh of armies, and the armies aren't Israel's infantry. The title puts him at the head of the heavenly host. It gathers in throne-room scenes. DDD counts 284 uses as a divine name, 121 of them free rather than formulaic, though DDD isn't consistent on this: its Archon article gives the figure as some 267. The uses concentrate in Isaiah 1-39, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, texts tied to the Jerusalem temple's own theology, and the title is nearly absent from the Pentateuch and Ezekiel. Its older, fuller form is the cherubim formula, "Yahweh Zebaoth, enthroned on the cherubim" (1 Samuel 4:4; 2 Samuel 6:2; Isaiah 37:16), and that formula describes the Solomonic temple's actual furniture: two cherubim forming an empty throne, with the ark for a footstool. The LXX renders the title three ways depending on the book, most often pantokrator, "Almighty," sometimes a transliterated "Sabaoth," and sometimes "Lord of Powers."
H6635 (צָבָא), 486 occ of the noun, in 463 verses
- 1 Samuel 1:3
- 1 Samuel 17:45
- Isaiah 6:3
- Psalm 24:10
- 1 Samuel 4:4
- Isaiah 37:16
- Psalm 89:6-9
- DDD s.v. "Yahweh Zebaoth," 920-921 (the 284 and 121 figures open the article)
- DDD s.v. "Archon," 82-84 (the 267 figure)
