And God said, Let us make man in our image, like us: and let him have rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every living thing which goes flat on the earth. — Genesis 1:26
Every name in the record files with one of two registers, and the record states, on its own page, exactly when the second register opens. This is not a claim imported from outside the text. Elohim — the plural judges and rulers — speaks in the first person plural here, and the root of that plurality is El. Every compound built on El, from this verse forward, is filing a name with the bench: the structure, the statute, the enforcing plurality that decides what exists. YHVH's own personal name is active in the narrative from Genesis 2:4, but never once through the entire patriarchal record does it become an element inside a human name. The court states why in Exodus 6, in so many words. What follows is that seam traced from Genesis to Elijah — El as the register a name files under while the statute is being established, Yah as the register the court opens for itself once its own name is filed, and the two, fused into one word, in the mouth of a single prophet on a single mountain. The court's instrument in every case is the same: the name itself, filed once, enforced after its kind.
Elohim and El — Genesis Day Six, The Bench Named at Its Own Decree
Genesis 1:26 is Elohim speaking, not YHVH. "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" is the plural bench issuing a decree — Elohim, from the root El (Strong's H410), acting as the plurality Genesis 1:1 has been running since "In the beginning." Elohim (H430) is grammatically the plural of El itself: the judges and rulers, not a singular petitioner. Every human name built from El — every Ishma-el, Beth-el, Isra-el that follows — is filing with this exact register, the decree-issuing bench of Genesis 1, before any relational, present-tense name has been extended into personal identity. This is Genesis Day Six's category: dominion granted, image declared, the statute of identity itself set once and enforced after its kind from that point forward.
Ishmael and El Roi — Genesis, The Statute Before the Name Is Filed
Hagar's flight in Genesis 16 puts this to the test directly. The angel of the court finds her at the well and tells her to name her coming son Ishmael — Yishma-El, "El shall hear" (H3458) — because, in the BBE's own words:
And the angel of the Lord said, See, you are with child and will give birth to a son, to whom you will give the name Ishmael, because the ears of the Lord were open to your sorrow. — Genesis 16:11
The court that speaks in this verse is YHVH — "the Lord," present, addressing her directly. But the name it hands down to file is El. Hagar then names the encounter itself:
And to the Lord who was talking with her she gave this name, You are a God who is seen; for she said, Have I not even here in the waste land had a vision of God and am still living? — Genesis 16:13
El Roi — "El who is seen" — is what she calls the direct, personal encounter with YHVH ...
