Most of our English translations of the Old Testament use “the LORD” in large and small capital letters to represent the distinctive name of the God of Israel, which you’ll sometimes see as “Jehovah” or “Yahweh.” The reasons for this go back into Jewish practices well before the time of Jesus. However this name is represented, it is, unlike the more generic “God,” the name only of the God of Israel, not of the god of any other people.
    So when, for instance, Psalm 100:3 says “Know that the LORD, he is God,” a claim is made that would have been quite large in an age when different nations had their different gods. Know that he, this one, is God, and not Ba‘al, Zeus, Ra, or any of those others.

“Has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, and by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? To you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides him.” (Deuteronomy 4:34–35)

     If there is, then, only one, he must be the one who speaks in such a way that all else–the universe—listens. His is the powerful voice that spoke over the waters at the moment of creation (Genesis 1:1-3). His is the majestic voice that shakes great forests, mountains, and galaxies. Science tells us how these things happen; God speaks so that they happen.
     What is more amazing is that, while we are exhausting our stock of italics and exclamation points in worshiping this God “in holy array” and “ascrib[ing] to the LORD glory and strength” (Psalm 29:1–2), he also speaks in a soft voice (1 Kings 19:11-13) so that even those of us as stubborn as Elijah can hear him.

• Old Testament quotations are from the Revised Standard Version.
• These posts on the Psalms are in aid of the reading of the Psalms—one a day through the first five months of 2022—by members, attenders, friends, et al. of Together Church, Wyoming, MI.