“For who is God, but the Lord? And who is a rock, except our God?— the God who equipped me with strength and made my way blameless.” -Psalm 18:31–32
Yesterday, we looked at David’s employment of Moses’ song as inspiration for his description of God’s name and character. Thomas Oden also provides a helpful explanation for the origin and development of God’s name in the more general sense. He writes,
The special name ʾAdōnaī, “my Lord,” arose about 300 b.c. out of the reluctance of pious Jews to pronounce the divine name, later translated into Greek as Kyrios. The testimony of Thomas to the lordship of Christ, “my Lord and my God” (John 20:28), brings together in the New Testament the two earlier traditions of naming God as ʾAdōnaī (for Yahweh) and ʾElōhīm (God). The single New Testament text that best draws together in Greek these most important Hebraic names for God (ʾElōhīm, Yahweh, ʾAdōnaī, and Shaddaī) is the remarkable ascription in Revelation 1:8, where the divine Word declares: “ ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord [Kyrios, i.e., ʾAdōnaī] God [Theos, i.e., ʾEl], who is and who was and who is to come, the sovereign Lord [Pantokratōr, i.e., ʾEl Shaddaī] of all.” It is through the historical activity of the One thus named that God’s character has been made known to the remembering community (Tertullian, Ag. Praxeas XXII, ANF III, pp. 617 ff.; Ag. Marcion, I.6 ff., ANF III, pp. 275 ff.).
David tells us, it is this God who equipped him with strength and made his way blameless. “Blameless” is translated from the Hebrew (tāmîm) and is more of a description of God’s activity than of David’s. The idea is that God’s flawless wisdom, love and power are reflected in, as well as the source of, David’s soundness of thought, motives and achievements.