Yahweh Has Built

Think of how important your name is to you. When someone gets it wrong, you can feel slightly offended. When someone remembers it and gets it right, you feel respected and loved. It is one of those things that you have your whole life that you never even had a say in. But it identifies you as you. It is your name!

When we found out Trista was pregnant almost a year ago today, one of the first things I thought about was what this baby’s name would be. This one decision of ours would impact him the rest of his life and I wanted it to mean something yet also sound good. No Nimrod. No Shammuah. No Abishag. So when Trista mentioned the name Benaiah, I was a little hesitant to say the least.

However, the more we talked about it and the more stories I read out about him in the Bible, the more I loved the name. In fact, we grew to like the name so much we started calling him Benaiah before we found out the gender! Here are the things I love about the name:

1. Benaiah means “Yahweh has built”. This is awesome because it is true. God has built Benaiah in a unique way to show his glory and we want him to know that.
2. Benaiah could be trusted. King David put him in charge of his bodyguards (2 Sam 8:18). He was essentially the captain of his professional soldiers. For David to do this, he must have trusted him greatly!
3. Benaiah deserved to be trusted. When King David’s son Adonijah staged a coup to take over the kingdom, he left out Benaiah (1 Kings 1:8-10). I think that he was too close to David and would have spoiled his plans. Adonijah knew he was too loyal to David to help him take the kingdom.
4. Benaiah was a bad ass. One time he went up against an Egyptian warrior and killed him with his own sword. Another time he went down and killed a lion in a snowy pit. If this wasn’t enough, he acted as Solomon’s executioner and was eventually promoted as the army commander (2 Sam 20:20-23; 1 Kings 2:25-46). He was Israel’s James Bond…that is pretty awesome.

I can’t wait to share these things with Benaiah Aaron Pagel as he grows up! I hope he sees the Benaiah from the Bible as an example of what a man of God is, that he strives to glorify God in the unique way he has been made to, and that he becomes a man of trust.