Jehovah-Shammah: the Lord is there (Ezekiel 48)

Jehovah-Shammah means “the Lord is there”, or, in the words of the American Standard Version, “Jehovah is there”. It is not a title God takes for himself but the name of a city. The last verse of the book of Ezekiel announces that the city of the prophet’s final vision will be called by this name. The Hebrew is YHWH shammah: the divine name followed by the adverb shammah, “there” or “thither”. Ezekiel wrote for exiles in Babylon who had seen Jerusalem fall and had been told that the glory of God had left the temple. His book ends not with a building plan but with a promise that God will again live among his people. Christians read that promise as reaching its goal in Jesus, called Immanuel, “God with us”, and finally in the new creation, where God dwells with his people for ever. The phrase is best understood as a confession of God’s presence rather than a separate divine name.

A city name at the end of a long book

The book of Ezekiel closes with nine chapters of vision: a new temple, a river flowing out from it, and a restored land shared among the tribes. The final chapter measures the city and gives its twelve gates the names of the tribes of Israel. Then comes the last verse of the book:

It shall be eighteen thousand reeds round about: and the name of the city from that day shall be, Jehovah is there.

— Ezekiel 48:35 (ASV)

Older English works and many hymns join the Hebrew into a single hyphenated word, Jehovah-Shammah, and it is often listed with Jehovah-Jireh and Jehovah-Nissi among the “compound names” of God. It is worth being precise about what kind of phrase it is. Abraham named a mountain, Moses named an altar, and Ezekiel names a city. In each case the name says something true about God, but it is a name given to a place in response to what God has done or promised. The compound names are best read as confessions of faith fixed to particular places and moments, not as a list of separate titles that God uses of himself. Transliteration varies too: Shammah, Shamma and Shama all appear in older books.

It is striking that the city is not called Jerusalem here. The new name matters more than the old one. What makes the city what it is will be simply that God is present in it.

Why “there” mattered to the exiles

To feel the weight of the name, one must read the earlier chapters of Ezekiel. In a series of visions the prophet watched the glory of God withdraw from the temple in stages, because the people had filled it with idolatry.

And the glory of Jehovah went forth from over the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubim.

— Ezekiel 10:18 (ASV)

The glory then moved to the mountain on the east side of the city, and Jerusalem fell to Babylon. For the exiles this was the deepest of all their losses. The temple had been the sign that God lived among them; its destruction seemed to say that he had gone.

The later vision reverses the departure step by step. The glory returns by the same eastern gate through which it had left.

And the Spirit took me up, and brought me into the inner court; and, behold, the glory of Jehovah filled the house.

— Ezekiel 43:5 (ASV)

The book’s final words then name the city after what has happened. God, who had seemed absent, will be there. Jehovah-Shammah answers the question every exile asked: has the Lord abandoned us? The phrase also unfolds the meaning of the divine name itself, because the God who simply is (see what the name Jehovah means) is also the God who is present with his people.

How the promise is kept in Christ

Christians do not read Ezekiel’s city as a mere architectural plan. The vision gathers up the hope of the whole Old Testament, that God would dwell among his people without any barrier of sin between them. The New Testament announces that this hope has begun to come true in Jesus. Matthew’s Gospel opens with a name that makes the same claim as Ezekiel’s closing words:

“Behold, the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call Him Immanuel” (which means, “God with us”).

— Matthew 1:23 (BSB)

The same Gospel ends with the risen Jesus promising his continued presence to his disciples as they go out to the nations:

and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

— Matthew 28:20 (BSB)

The last pages of the Bible take up Ezekiel’s language directly. John sees a holy city with twelve gates named after the tribes of Israel, and he hears a voice from the throne:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and He will dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God.

— Revelation 21:3 (BSB)

Ezekiel’s last vision and the Bible’s last vision meet here. John adds that he saw no temple in the city, because the Lord God and the Lamb are its temple (Revelation 21:22). The promise made to the exiles is kept in the fullest way: not a building where God may be approached, but God himself dwelling with his people.

Living by the promise of presence

The name Jehovah-Shammah is a promise before it is a feeling. The exiles who first heard it had no temple, no king and no land. They were asked to trust that God would be present with them before they could see any sign of it. Christians are in a similar place. The New Testament teaches that God is present with his people now by his Holy Spirit, and that the church, gathered in the name of Jesus, is a temple in which he dwells (1 Corinthians 3:16). Yet the full sight of his presence still lies ahead.

This has practical consequences. When prayer feels empty, the name reminds the believer that God’s presence does not depend on how prayer feels. When a person is far from home, grieving, or living through a season that seems like exile, the name says that God is not confined to the places where he was once met. And because the promise is given to a people and a city, not only to individuals, it is a reason to gather with other Christians for worship rather than to seek God alone.

Where Christians differ

Ezekiel’s temple vision in chapters 40 to 48 is one of the most debated passages in the prophets. Some Christians read it as a symbolic picture of the church and of the new creation described in Revelation 21 and 22. Others read it as a prophecy of a literal future temple in a restored land of Israel, often linked with a thousand-year reign of Christ. Others see it as an ideal pattern held out to the returning exiles, which their rebuilt temple never fully matched. Faithful Christians hold each of these views. This site leans towards reading the vision as reaching its goal in Christ and the new creation, but all agree on the point of the city’s name: the purpose of God’s saving work is that he should dwell with his people.

For reflection

Read Ezekiel 43:1–7 and Revelation 21:1–7 side by side, and notice how the glory that returned in Ezekiel’s vision becomes the dwelling of God with his people. Then pray with the confidence the name gives, remembering the promise of Jesus to be with his disciples always. Look for God’s presence where he has promised to be found: in his word, in prayer, and among his people gathered for worship. If you do not belong to a church, seek one out; the name was given to a city, not to a solitary believer.

References

Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906).
C. F. Keil, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Ezekiel, in Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (English translation, 1876).
Patrick Fairbairn, Ezekiel and the Book of His Prophecy: An Exposition (1851).
Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710).
The Preface to the American Standard Version (1901).