Why God Has So Many Names - The BAS Library

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When the prophet Jonah, on a ship in the Mediterranean, was asked by his fellow travelers who he was, he answered: “I am a Hebrew. I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land” (Jonah 1:9). From this passage, it is clear that the Hebrews referred to their God as both “God” (Hebrew, Elohim) and “the Lord” (Yahweh). Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, God is called Adonai (also translated as “Lord”);a El and Eloah (also rendered as “God”); Shaddai, traditionally translated as “the Almighty”; El Elyon, the “Upper God” or “Most High”; […]

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Footnotes

To distinguish between Adonai and Yahweh, some modern English translations use small capital letters: Adonai = the Lord, Yahweh = the LORD.

In Psalms 42–83, Elohim occurs more than four times as often as Yahweh, whereas in the rest of Psalms, Yahweh is used 20 times more often than Elohim.