Jehovah-Sabaoth: the Lord of hosts (1 Samuel 1)

Jehovah-Sabaoth means “the Lord of hosts”, in the American Standard Version “Jehovah of hosts”. The Hebrew is YHWH tseva’ot: the divine name joined to the plural of tsava’, a word for an army or an organised host. Sabaoth is the Greek spelling of that Hebrew plural, and it survives in two New Testament verses. The phrase first appears in 1 Samuel 1, in the story of Hannah, and it becomes one of the most frequent ways of speaking of God in the Old Testament, used well over two hundred times, especially by the prophets. The “hosts” are the armies of heaven, the ranks of angels, the stars in their order, and at times the armies of Israel. Unlike Jehovah-Jireh or Jehovah-Shalom, it is not the name of an altar or a place; it is a fixed phrase of worship and prayer, the closest of the compound forms to a regular title. It proclaims that the God of Israel commands every power in heaven and on earth.

Where the phrase first appears

The first use of the phrase in the Bible is set not on a battlefield but at a place of worship, in the life of an ordinary family. Elkanah took his household every year to the sanctuary at Shiloh:

And this man went up out of his city from year to year to worship and to sacrifice unto Jehovah of hosts in Shiloh. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, priests unto Jehovah, were there.

— 1 Samuel 1:3 (ASV)

His wife Hannah was childless and mocked for it. At Shiloh she prayed in such distress that the priest thought she was drunk. Her vow is the first prayer in Scripture addressed to God by this title:

And she vowed a vow, and said, O Jehovah of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thy handmaid, and remember me, and not forget thy handmaid, but wilt give unto thy handmaid a man-child, then I will give him unto Jehovah all the days of his life, and there shall no razor come upon his head.

— 1 Samuel 1:11 (ASV)

It is worth noticing who first calls on the Lord of hosts. Not a general or a king, but a woman with no power and no child. She appeals to the God who commands the armies of heaven to notice one handmaid. The answer to her prayer was Samuel, the prophet who would anoint Israel’s first kings.

What the “hosts” are

The word tsava’ is broad, and the Old Testament uses it for several kinds of host. The phrase gathers them all under the one Lord.

The armies of heaven. Micaiah sees the Lord on his throne with “all the host of heaven standing by him” (1 Kings 22:19). The hosts are the angelic ranks who serve God.
The stars. Genesis 2:1 speaks of the heavens and the earth “and all the host of them”, and Isaiah 40:26 pictures God bringing out the stars by number and calling each by name. Where the nations worshipped the stars, Israel confessed that they are an army under orders.
The armies of Israel. When Israel left Egypt the tribes are called “the hosts of Jehovah” (Exodus 12:41).

The last sense is clear in David’s words to Goliath, which join the title to Israel’s battle line:

Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a javelin: but I come to thee in the name of Jehovah of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied.

— 1 Samuel 17:45 (ASV)

David’s point is that the battle does not depend on the size of Israel’s army. The Lord of hosts is not a tribal war-god; he is the sovereign of every host there is.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts

The prophets used the phrase more than any other writers, and its most famous occurrence is in Isaiah’s vision of God in the temple:

And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.

— Isaiah 6:3 (ASV)

Here the title speaks of majesty and holiness more than of warfare. The one whom the angelic hosts adore is the King of all the earth. The same title becomes a refrain of comfort in the Psalms:

Jehovah of hosts is with us; The God of Jacob is our refuge. [Selah

— Psalm 46:7 (ASV)

The New Testament writers, writing in Greek, usually rendered the divine name as Kyrios, “Lord” (see the name in the New Testament). But in two places they kept the Hebrew word Sabaoth untranslated. Paul quotes Isaiah:

It is just as Isaiah foretold: “Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have resembled Gomorrah.”

— Romans 9:29 (BSB)

And James warns employers who defraud their workers:

Look, the wages you withheld from the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts.

— James 5:4 (BSB)

The Berean Standard Bible translates the word; the King James Version keeps it as “the Lord of sabaoth”. James’s use echoes Hannah’s. The God who commands the armies of heaven hears the cry of the powerless.

Praying to the Lord of hosts when you are weak

The title can sound remote, even warlike, but in Scripture it is most often used by the weak. Hannah used it in her barrenness, David facing a giant, Isaiah overwhelmed by his own sin, the psalmist when the earth seemed to be giving way. For a Christian today it offers three encouragements.

First, no situation lies outside God’s command. Illness, injustice and fear are real, but they are not rival powers equal to him. Second, God is not too great to notice one person. The first prayer to the Lord of hosts was about a single child. Third, the phrase calls for trust rather than self-assertion. David did not claim that God would fight for any cause he chose; he stood for the honour of God’s name. The Lord of hosts is to be trusted and obeyed, not recruited.

Where Christians differ

Translations handle the phrase differently, and Christians use each with good conscience. The older English tradition says “the Lord of hosts”. The ancient Greek Old Testament often rendered it with a word meaning “Almighty”, and some modern versions follow that sense. Others spell out the meaning as armies. Each captures part of the Hebrew. Some Christians avoid the martial overtones and prefer “Almighty”; others keep “hosts” because it preserves the picture of heaven’s ordered armies. English hymnody has kept Sabaoth itself, most famously in translations of Luther’s hymn “A Mighty Fortress”; the entry on the name in hymns gives more.

For reflection

Read 1 Samuel 1 and 2, and let Hannah’s prayer and song teach you how the weak may address the Lord of hosts. Then read Isaiah 6 and Psalm 46, and pray with both awe and confidence. If you are carrying something no one else sees, bring it to God as Hannah did, and bring it also to your church, where others can pray with you.

References

Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906).
Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures (trans. Tregelles, 1857).
C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Books of Samuel (English translation, 1866).
Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710).
The Preface to the American Standard Version (1901).