Call His Name Jezreel

Call His Name Jezreel.  What’s in a name? Is it just a random cluster of letters, or does a name signify something more than the way it sounds? In some cultures, entire traditions exist for naming a child—after the father, after the mother, after a grandparent, after a hometown, after a saint, etc. But tradition does not seem to factor much in contemporary naming practices. 

The New York Post reported (6/13/2025) one non-traditional baby name that many readers thought was so bad that it must have been a spoof. Alas, once again, truth is stranger than fiction. A mother-to-be revealed that her daughter would be called Chernobyl Hope, unaware of the 1986 Chernobyl, Ukraine, nuclear crisis. “We just thought it just sounded nice.” Of course, readers of the story roasted (pun intended) the name, Chernobyl. “I’m sure everyone at the celebration will be radiant.” “Speak for yourself; if I were a guest at that shower and heard that name, I’d have a total meltdown.” “I guess it’s a nuclear family.” It is clear from the reactions that a name is more impactful to the entire community than just the way it sounds.

For sure, biblical names take the significance of names to a whole new level. Some names were prophetic, like Josiah, Immanuel, and John. But far more often, biblical names took the shape of a prayer, like Seth, Deborah, and Stephen. However, for three siblings in 8^th Century b.c., Israel, their names were ordained by God to be harbingers of doom. “Call his name Jezreel” (Hos. 1:4). “Call her name No Mercy (Lo-ruhamah)” (Hos. 1:6). “Call his name Not My People (Lo-ammi)” (Hos. 1:9). At every birthday party, every playground game, every school function the whole community would have to wrestle repeatedly with God’s intent for Jezreel, No Mercy, and Not My People.

In one sense, naming him Jezreel shares something in common with naming her Chernobyl, Jezreel and Chernobyl are both place names of terrible, man-made events that caused a deadly ripple extending several generations. But unlike the parents of Chernobyl, everyone knew what Jezreel meant when Hosea and Gomer named their firstborn after the place polluted by King Jehu’s bloody massacre of hundreds of people (2 Kings 10).

By naming him Jezreel (then No Mercy, then Not My People), everyone would be bothered. It was God’s design to provoke the community with these baby names since the community was unprovoked by their own sin. The babies’ names were wake-up calls to the nation. More than symbolic, their names were messages, object lessons, even parables to people who had stopped listening to the Bible.