This chapter copes with the challenge of portraying a divinity which is supposed to be nameless and imageless, and evoked by ‘abstract’ notions such as the ‘God’, the ‘Lord’, the ‘Name’ or even the ‘Place’. The bans on pronouncing his name and depicting his image are two faces of the same coin: to explore in a new and unpredictable way his identity. Starting from the role played by names in ancient Near Eastern traditions and in the Hebrew Bible, this chapter explores the onomastic puzzle of the biblical god, who holds many names, but whose name YHWH is the only one regarded as a proper name and revealed by himself to Moses. Such a central and enigmatic name is interpreted as a promise of presence and assistance to the people god chose on earth (Israel). The onomastic connection between YHWH and the Jews never ceased to strike external observers and produced many misunderstandings, and even mystifications, in the history of the research of the biblical divine names.

Chapter 6 offers summary reflections on the conclusions and contributions of the present work, including its findings for the study of the royal palms, the study of Syro-Palestinian inscriptions, Hebrew Bible theology, and the history of Israelite religion. In addition to proposing a new analytic for royal psalms (i.e. psalms of defeat), the book adds depth and specificity to previous scholarship on the theology of the royal psalms. It draws in sharper silhouette the animating commitment of royal psalms: Yhwh’s loyalty to his one individual client king. The book also calls attention to the non-narrative and lyric qualities of inscriptions, and it emphasizes the rhetorical centrality of their closing curse sections. For the study of Hebrew Bible theology, the present work holds up the important and distinctive theological offer of royal psalms. Historically, Levantine memorial inscriptions reflect an earlier engagement with Neo-Assyrian royal ideology and its monuments than scholars have argued heretofore, and a deeper indigenization.