My Daughter 'The Goat'! (Judges 5)

My Daughter 'The Goat'! (Judges 5)

Judges 5.24 "Most blessed of women be Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, most blessed of tent-dwelling women." [nkjv]

Our family has a special connection to the name 'Jael'. It's our youngest daughters middle name - Zion Jael Swan. My wife and I have prided ourselves on the names we have chosen for our three children. We see chosing a child's name to be one of the greatest privileges and responsibilities we have as parents. Someone's name is like a prophetic word spoken over their lives right from birth. Over and over again we see examples of this through scripture. Can you imagine if Mary and Joseph had named Jesus, 'Bob"! No offense if that's your name but it just doesn't sit right for the Son of God to be called 'Bob'.

As a new parent, holding that precious 'gift from God' in our arms for the first time, we can get a sense of His will for that young life. We then have an opportunity to prophetically affirm this through the name we choose. In fact, with Zion, we had chosen her name even before she was conceived. Regardless of whether she was born a boy or girl, the name chosen was Zion, 'dwelling place of God.'

For some reason we always thought that Jael meant 'bringer of light'. We had a sense that this would be part of her God's given destiny on this earth. Someone who would bring light and truth into dark places. Yet yesterday as I sat to write my blog, after reading as much as I could on Jael from Judges, imagine my surprise to discover that her name in Hebrew means 'wild mountain goat'!

Where on earth did we get 'bringer of light' from? What does that say about our daughter's destiny?

In the hope that maybe the material I was reading was wrong, I did a more extensive research. The only other meaning I could find was 'one who ascends' (again with a mountain goat connotation).

When I told my wife, all we could do was laugh. It explained so much about our beautiful little girl. She is a wild child! She is mischievous, adventurous and she has no fear of anyone or anything.

Does this change anything? Have we somehow altered her God given destiny? No, not really. But the one thing that it does, is remind me no matter how hard we try as parents, we are bound to get it wrong with our kids, even when we try so hard to get it right. That's where we just have to trust God that He has their lives in His hands.

And as for Zion Jael, one day when she is older, she will discover the true meaning of her name. When that time comes I'm sure she will ask the question, "WHAT WERE WE THINKING!' Thank God we have a few more years up our sleeve to come up with a very 'spiritual' sounding answer for that one. In the meantime, our focus is simply to help her grow up with a strong love for God, for others and for life.

After all, as Christians, this is ultimately what we all want for our kids isn't it?