Jehovah-Mekoddishkem: the Lord who sanctifies you (Exodus 31)

Jehovah-Mekoddishkem means “the Lord who sanctifies you”, that is, the Lord who makes you holy and sets you apart for himself. The Hebrew is YHWH meqaddishkem, from the verb qadash, “to be holy” or “to set apart”, in a form meaning “the one who makes holy”, with the ending “you” in the plural. The phrase comes from Exodus 31:13, where God gives the sabbath to Israel as a sign “that ye may know that I am Jehovah who sanctifieth you”, and it recurs in Leviticus. It is not the name of an altar or a place, and Scripture does not present it as a separate title. It is drawn from a formula in which God declares who he is and what he does for his people. Transliterations vary: Mekoddishkem, M’kaddesh and Mekaddishkem all appear. The truth it carries runs through the whole Bible: holiness begins with God, who claims a people as his own and then makes them like himself.

The phrase in Exodus 31 and the sign of the sabbath

Exodus 31 comes at the end of the long instructions for building the tabernacle. Before Moses comes down from the mountain, God adds a word about the sabbath:

And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily ye shall keep my sabbaths: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am Jehovah who sanctifieth you.

— Exodus 31:12-13 (ASV)

The placement is significant. The tabernacle was holy space, the place where God would dwell among his people. The sabbath was holy time, a day set apart in every week. Both were signs that Israel belonged to God. Resting on the seventh day was a public, repeated confession that the people were not their own. They did not make themselves holy by their work; they were set apart by the God who had redeemed them from Egypt. Ezekiel later looks back on this and says that God gave his sabbaths “to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am Jehovah that sanctifieth them” (Ezekiel 20:12).

What it means to be sanctified

The Hebrew verb qadash and its related words have the basic sense of being set apart from ordinary use and devoted to God. Places, days, vessels, garments and priests could all be holy. Holiness in this first sense is about belonging: a thing is holy because it has been claimed by God.

But holiness in the Old Testament is never merely a matter of ownership. God himself is holy, pure and utterly good, and those who belong to him are called to share his character. Leviticus 19 opens with the words that sum up the book:

Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be holy; for I Jehovah your God am holy.

— Leviticus 19:2 (ASV)

What follows in that chapter is not ritual only but honesty, generosity to the poor, fair wages, care for the deaf and blind, justice in the courts, and love for one’s neighbour. Being set apart for God reshapes the whole of life.

Holiness given and holiness pursued

Leviticus 20 holds together two things that can seem to pull apart:

Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy; for I am Jehovah your God. And ye shall keep my statutes, and do them: I am Jehovah who sanctifieth you.

— Leviticus 20:7-8 (ASV)

In one breath the people are told to sanctify themselves, and in the next they are told that God is the one who sanctifies them. Both are true, and the order matters. God’s sanctifying comes first; it is the ground of the command, not the reward for keeping it. Israel was not told to become holy in order to be accepted. They were told that because God had set them apart, they must live as those who belong to him. The phrase “I am Jehovah who sanctifieth you” returns in Leviticus 21:8 and 22:32 like a signature under the laws of holiness.

The Lord who sanctifies, in Christ

The New Testament takes up this language and finds its deepest meaning in the work of Christ. The letter to the Hebrews says that believers have been made holy once and for all through his sacrifice:

And by that will, we have been sanctified through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

— Hebrews 10:10 (BSB)

Paul uses the same word for the lifelong work of God in his people, and he closes his first letter to the Thessalonians with a prayer that rests on God’s faithfulness:

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely, and may your entire spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The One who calls you is faithful, and He will do it.

— 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 (BSB)

Christian teaching has long distinguished these two senses. There is a sanctification that is complete: in Christ believers are set apart as God’s holy people, as Israel was at Sinai. And there is a sanctification that grows: by the Holy Spirit, through the word, prayer and the fellowship of the church, God makes his people more like Christ throughout their lives. Both are the work of the Lord who sanctifies. The Father, the Son and the Spirit share in it, which is one of the ways the New Testament shows the one God acting as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Growing in holiness day by day

The phrase is a relief before it is a demand. Holiness is not a project a Christian must complete alone, but a work God has promised to do. That changes how one approaches failure and growth.

Start from belonging. Holiness begins with being claimed by God in Christ, not with a spotless record.
Keep holy time. The sabbath taught Israel to stop and remember whose they were. Christians who meet for worship each Lord’s Day, and who set aside time for rest and prayer, receive a similar gift.
Expect ordinary obedience. Leviticus 19 shows that holiness looks like honest work, kind speech and justice for the weak.
Trust the promise. “He will do it.” Slow progress is not proof that God has stopped working.

Where Christians differ

Christians agree that God sanctifies his people; they differ on some of the details. On the sabbath, some churches keep the seventh day; many, following the Westminster standards and much of the Reformed tradition, regard the Lord’s Day, Sunday, as the Christian sabbath; others hold that the sabbath law finds its completion in the rest Christ gives, while still valuing a weekly day of worship. On sanctification itself, Wesleyan traditions teach that believers may be made perfect in love in this life, while Reformed and Lutheran traditions stress continuing struggle until the resurrection. All hold that holiness is God’s gift and work. For a related phrase about God’s righteousness given to his people, see Jehovah-Tsidkenu; for the wider family of such phrases, see Jehovah-Shalom.

For reflection

Read Exodus 31:12–17 and Leviticus 19, then Hebrews 10:1–18. Ask where you have been trying to make yourself holy rather than receiving it from God, and where you have treated grace as a reason not to change. Pray Paul’s prayer from 1 Thessalonians 5 for yourself and for others by name. Keep a day for worship with your church, and let it be a weekly reminder of whose you are.

References

Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906).
C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Pentateuch (English translation, 1864–1865).
The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), chapters 13 and 21.
Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710).
The Preface to the American Standard Version (1901).