… Genesis 15:7 contains a well-known formula for divine self-revelation: “I am Yhwh.” The wording would have evoked a number of texts like Exodus 20:2 and Leviticus 25:38, which tie the revelation of the divine name to the exodus. Whatever modern historians might conclude about the advent of Yahwism, the Priestly view is clear: Abram never received a revelation of Yhwh’s name. Genesis 15, on the other hand, creates a flatly contradictory scenario: while the ancestor’s name was still Abram, he heard directly from Yhwh: “I am Yhwh, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.” The scope of the Yhwh story is expanded backwards in time, from the sojourn in Egypt to an origin in Babylon. It is not simply that the narrator and audience know the divine name, while it remains unknown to the characters in Genesis, as suggested by the Priestly source in Exodus 6:2–3. The secret of the name is out, and Abram can use it freely (Genesis 15:2, 8) …