Name of God - El Nathan Neqamah: The God Who Avenges Me
El Nathan Neqamah: The God Who Avenges Me
Daily Verse: “God – He grants me vengeance and casts down peoples under me.”
☆ 2 Samuel 22:48 CSB
Let's Talk About It: Navigating through this fallen world as children of God, we often face injustice, prejudice, unwarranted threats, and dangers. This also includes adult bullying. Thankfully, we serve a righteous and just God. He comes to our aid and avenges us. Though we are not able to physically see or hear about it in many cases, trust me friends, He does avenge us.
In this verse, David uses El, which is a Hebrew word meaning God. He goes on to use nathan (naw-than’), for the word “grants”. Nathan, according to the Hebrew Strong’s Dictionary, means add, apply, appoint, ascribe. For vengeance, David uses the word neqamah (nek-aw-maw’). It is actually spelled nqamah, but to eliminate improper pronunciation, an “e” is normally added after the “n”. Neqamah is defined in the Hebrew Strong’s Dictionary as avengement, whether the act of the passion, to avenge, revenge, vengeance.
There are many examples of the Lord avenging His people as well as those who are chosen by Him for a higher purpose, or for His glory. Moses was defended by God when His own people were criticizing him. God avenged Moses when Moses wasn’t even aware of being talked badly about. Can you recall when Moses’ own family members, Miriam and Aaron, were talking about him harshly, amongst themselves (Numbers 12)? I believe this is where the old saying “Don’t mess with/talk bad about God’s people” comes from. Another example is David in 2 Samuel 22. He sings a song of thanksgiving to God for avenging him from those who wished to take his life.
Studying out these examples and others in Scripture, we can easily come to the conclusion that the Lord, our God, our Heavenly Father, will fight and avenge those who are called by Him. It’s like when a bully in the neighborhood picks on you and your big brother comes to deal with it. Your big brother could do a whole lot more than you can to the bully (Romans 12:18-19).
The Lord says, “Vengeance belongs to Me; I will repay (Deuteronomy 32:35 HCSB).” When we find ourselves in situations where we are wronged, often we are not able to do anything about it. In our weakness, God shows His strength and brings His righteous justice.
I remember on one of my combat deployments, the E-6s were conducting all the missions and debriefs while the E-7s (platoon sergeants) and 2nd lieutenants (platoon leaders) remained in the base camp. Their main responsibilities were to supply “beans and bullets” and provide mission tasks handed down from the company commander. I was an E-6 in charge of an 8-man team. Because of the terrain, we used HMMWVs (highly mobile multi-wheeled vehicles), which are called humvees or hummers in the civilian world.
Most of the time, my team’s mission required us to dismount and conduct foot patrols, reconnaissance, etc. Because of this, I was given a minefield overlay for my map of the area. This marked known minefields throughout our area. Well after about 6 months and countless successful missions, our platoon leader decided to go “outside the wire” with my team. Instead of sitting back and observing, as agreed upon in my mission brief to the team, he decided to take charge. He did not listen to my suggestions and treated me poorly in front of my section.
None of our small missions and tasks were successful. On one mission in particular, he was leading our foot patrol into a minefield. I tried with every thing I had, to convince our Platoon Leader that he was wrong. His overlay showed clear and mine did not. I respectfully asked him who's map is he willing to trust. He gave the order to continue forward, using his map. Fearing for my team’s safety, I took point and sure enough, we encountered a minefield. I slowly lead our team out of the area and had some “words” with the lieutenant.
When we returned to the base camp, I was reprimanded for my actions and threatened with rank reduction. Several months later, we returned home to our home base in Germany. During our post deployment reintegration, our platoon leader had made a bad decision while off duty and was reprimanded and due to the severity, was processed out of the Army.
When you are dealing with or is constantly having to deal with being a victim of wrongdoing and even unwarranted threats, I have found that immersing into Deuteronomy 32:35-43 will bring comfort and a reminder that our God, who is known by many names, bears the name El Nathan Neqamah…God Who Avenges Me! – Kevin