- Name 30 of 70A God of Truth
- HebrewEl emunah
- In plain wordsThe God who is firm, faithful and never false
- Where to find itDeuteronomy 32:4, in the Song of Moses
The God of truth is a name Moses gave to God in the song he taught Israel just before he died. In Deuteronomy 32:4 the Hebrew is El Emunah, and emunah means firmness, steadiness, and faithfulness. This God is true the way solid ground is true: you can put your whole weight on Him and He will not give way.
A farewell song from Moses
Moses had led Israel for forty years. He was now 120 years old, and God had told him he would not cross the Jordan with the people (Deuteronomy 31:2). God also told him something painful: after he was gone, the nation would turn to other gods. So God gave Moses a song to teach them, as a witness for the future.
Now therefore write ye this song for you, and teach it the children of Israel: put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel.
Deuteronomy 31:19
A witness is someone, or something, that tells what really happened. Why a song? Because people forget speeches, but they remember songs. Long after Moses was buried, his words would still be on their lips. When hard times came, the song would remind them who had stayed faithful and who had not.
The song starts with God before it says anything about Israel. In one packed verse Moses calls Him the Rock, says His work is perfect, says His ways are fair, and then gives the name on this page.
He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.
Deuteronomy 32:4
Judgment here means justice, doing what is right. Iniquity means wrongdoing. Then the very next verse turns sharply toward the people: They have corrupted themselves
(Deuteronomy 32:5). The contrast is the point. Someday Israel would be tempted to blame God for their troubles. Moses answered that ahead of time. He had watched God for four decades, through Egypt, the sea, and the long desert, and God had never once broken His word.
Moses did not keep the song to himself. He spoke it in the ears of all the congregation of Israel
(Deuteronomy 31:30), with Joshua at his side (Deuteronomy 32:44). When he finished, he told the people that these words were not a small matter: it is your life
(Deuteronomy 32:47). A whole nation walked away singing that their God was true, firm and fair, even before they knew how much they would need that reminder.
Emunah: truth you can lean on
In English, truth usually means facts that are correct. The Hebrew word here goes further. Strong's dictionary explains emunah as firmness, and in a figurative sense, security and faithfulness. The King James translates it as faithfulness, truth, faith, stability, and steady.
You can feel that meaning in an earlier story. When Israel fought the Amalekites, Moses held up his hands on a hill, and Aaron and Hur held them up for him and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun
(Exodus 17:12). The word for steady is emunah. Moses' arms needed two men to keep them firm. God needs nobody to hold Him up. He is firmness itself.
The word grows from the Hebrew root aman, which has to do with supporting, holding firm, and trusting. That same root gives Hebrew its words for believing and for being faithful. It also gives us a word almost everyone knows: amen. Amen means sure, or truly. When you say amen at the end of a prayer, you are saying, "This is solid. I am leaning on it."
The prophet Isaiah even uses it as a title. In Isaiah 65:16 the King James twice says the God of truth
, and the Hebrew there is literally "the God of Amen."
Key King James verses about the God of truth
God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?
Numbers 23:19
These words were spoken by Balaam, a foreign prophet hired to curse Israel, who found he could only bless them. To repent here means to change his mind. People change. God's word stands.
And, behold, this day I am going the way of all the earth: and ye know in all your hearts and in all your souls, that not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the LORD your God spake concerning you; all are come to pass unto you, and not one thing hath failed thereof.
Joshua 23:14
Joshua, Moses' helper and successor, gave the same testimony at the end of his own life. Going the way of all the earth meant he was about to die. Looking back, he could not find a single promise God had dropped.
Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O LORD God of truth.
Psalm 31:5
David trusted his very life to the God of truth. The Hebrew word here is emet, a close cousin of emunah from the same root.
It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:22-23
These lines were written after Jerusalem had been destroyed, the very kind of disaster Moses' song had warned about. In the rubble, the writer still found God faithful. The well-known hymn "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" takes its title from this verse.
Trusting a firm God in a shaky world
Most of us have learned not to lean too hard on anybody. Friends move away or turn on us. Parents let us down. Companies cut jobs. Leaders say one thing and do another. After enough of that, it is easy to treat God the same way: keep some weight on your own feet, just in case.
Moses had more reason than most to feel let down. He led a complaining people for forty years and then was told he could not enter the land. Yet his final song begins by calling God the Rock and the God of truth. That is not the hopeful guess of a young man. It is the settled report of someone who had tested God for a lifetime.
This name also shapes the kind of person you become. Children of a faithful God should be people whose word means something.
- Pick one promise of God from Scripture and lean on it this week as if it were solid ground.
- Next time you say amen, stop and mean it: this is firm, and I am trusting it.
- If you have broken your word to someone, go and make it right.
A God of Truth is name 30 of the 70. Before it comes A Consuming Fire. Next is a name from a mother's song of joy, A God of Knowledge. Moses' word Rock in this same verse has its own page too: God is my Rock.
