<p>1:49 <i>For He that is mighty has done to me great things, and holy is His name</i>- The Magnificat shows that Mary had a fair appreciation of God&rsquo;s Names, in that she refers to Him as &ldquo;He that is mighty&rdquo;, interpreting for us the Old Testament idea of El Shaddai, the God of fruitfulness Heb. <i>shad</i> = &lsquo;breast&rsquo;. Note how neither Mary nor the NT writers transfer the OT Hebrew titles of God, e.g. &lsquo;Yahweh&rsquo;, rather they interpret them. She sees her conception of the Son of God as an example of how &ldquo;holy is His Name&rdquo; (Lk. 1:49). The Lord Himself understood that &ldquo;Hallowed be Your Name&rdquo; is to be paralleled with the Father&rsquo;s will being done. The Name of God speaks of His actions; because He is who He is, He will articulate this in how He acts. This is why all His actions are understandable and broadly predictable in terms of the basic characteristics that comprise His Name. The Name is not just a word, a lexical item. And Mary perceived all this- that the Holy Name of Jehovah was to be manifested ultimately and supremely in the Son she would bear. For this is the climax of God manifestation. Because &ldquo;Holy is His Name&rdquo;, she would bear a &ldquo;holy thing&rdquo; that manifested that Name. There is in Hebrew an &lsquo;intensive plural&rsquo;, whereby the plural form is used to reflect the greatness of a singular thing. Thus &lsquo;Jehovah Elohim&rsquo;, Jehovah who will be mighty ones, can be read as a specific prophecy of His definitive revelation in the &lsquo;mighty one&rsquo; of His Son. And could it be that Mary grasped all this? I for one think she did. &nbsp;</p>