“The LORD Will Provide”

Genesis 22:14

Foreign wordSettledNarrator

And Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. So to this day it is said, 'On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.' (Genesis 22:14 BSB)

* Hebrew: YHWH Yireh (Jehovah-Jireh), 'the LORD sees, and so provides'; it echoes verse 8, where Abraham said God would 'see to' the lamb. Provision is God's seeing-to-it.

What it sounds like today

Abraham gives the place a nice devotional nickname.

The cultural key

Naming a site after an act of God was how memory was anchored to geography. The name Yireh comes from the verb 'to see,' and it deliberately picks up Abraham's earlier words in verse 8: 'God will provide (see to) the lamb.' Hebrew fuses seeing and providing in one word, because for God to 'see' a need is for Him to meet it. The ram caught by its horns in the thicket is the provision, and the naming turns a private ordeal into a landmark of trust for later generations.

Recovered meaning

On the mountain where Abraham expected to lose everything, he names the place for what he found instead: a God who sees the need and supplies it. The ram in the thicket becomes the enduring picture of provision arriving at the last moment.

Parallels: Genesis 22:8; Genesis 22:13