That I may Know HIM - A Devotional

Day 40: PASHUR: The Mystery of Hidden Names

3 The next day, when Pashhur released him from the stocks, Jeremiah said to him, “The LORD’S name for you is not Pashhur, but Magor-Missabib.  4 For this is what the LORD says: ‘I will make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends; with your own eyes you will see them fall by the sword of their enemies…   6 And you, Pashhur, and all who live in your house will go into exile in Babylon.  There you will die and be buried, you and all your friends to whom you have prophesied lies.

Jeremiah 20:3-6, New International Version.

1. A Name in the Spirit

a) Pashur

 Pashur was “the chief officer in the temple of the LORD” (v.1, NIV).  He was a priest, the deputy high priest, a top shot in the affairs of the house of God.  His name, according to Smith’s Bible Dictionary, meant “freedom.”  According to the Cruden’s Complete Concordance, it meant “most noble,” and Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible, in its notes to our passage, offers “staying on” as the meaning of the name.

Whatever the correct interpretation, there was the idea of freedom and nobility in Pashur’s name; nobility in his person as well as in his religious and social status. That status of nobility offered him a kind of immunity and power that every other person did not enjoy.  But whereas his natural name meant “freedom” and“nobility,” he had another name, by which he was known in the spirit realms; a name that was going to chart the course of events for the rest of his life towards the disaster encoded in it.  Sadly, Pashur did not know about his change of name in the realm of the spirit.

 Not too long ago, there was a national commission of enquires in Nigeria: the Oputa Panel, which was set up to address some of the grievances of the past.  One of the cases that came before that Panel involved the Pyrates Confraternity, a campus-based confraternity popularly conceived of as a cult, but which has begun to claim the name of a social organization.  The prosecuting lawyer, seeking to prove that the Pyrates Confraternity was a “secret society,” a cult, confronted one of its ex-student leaders in the witness box with a copy of the Confraternity’s register, which had the names of their members, except that it was not their known natural names. There were such names as Butcherman, The Spy, Knifer, The Bullet, Son of Satan, and other such esoteric and very unpleasant names of violence and blasphemy. So, whereas their friends at school probably called them by such nice names as John, Mr Wisdom, Bestman, etc., their names in the cult were Butcherman, Killer, and so on.  At least these knew their ‘new’ names.

 Do you have a name by which you are called in the spirit? Do you know it?

 It is possible to have more than one name, especially a name in the spirit, and not know it.  If anybody had told Pashur the priest that his true name was Magor-Missabib, which meant “terror (or fear) on every side,” he would never have believed.  His international passport, if he had one, bore his natural, beautiful name.  That name was on his driver’s license and all his certificates.  The media houses, and everybody who knew him, called him by his natural name, his beautiful name of nobility and freedom.  But that was not what they called him in the spirit realms.  That was not the name that was to rule the rest of his life.         

 b) Pharaoh

 It was announced of Pharaoh,“Pharaoh king of Egypt in but a noise, he hath passed the time appointed” (Jeremiah 46:17).  The Good News Bible states: “Give the king of Egypt A NEW NAME – Noisy Braggart who Missed his Chance.” So, whereas men still called him “Pharaoh king of Egypt,” his name had changed in the spirit realm to“Noise,”which meant that he had expired, or “missed his chance.”