Reference: Servant of the Lord
Hastings
In this phrase, as repeatedly in the English Version of the OT, 'Lord' is substituted for 'Jahweh,' the proper name of the God of Israel, which stands in the Hebrew text.
1. Originally the term 'servant' in this phrase is simply correlative to such terms as 'lord,' 'master,' which the ancient Hebrews, in common with their Semitic kinsmen, applied to their god. In the first instance, the phrase 'the servant of Jahweh' merely defines a man as one who acknowledges Jahweh as his god; it corresponds closely to what we might rather call a worshipper of Jahweh. Naturally, therefore, it may stand in antithesis to a similar phrase in which the name of another deity takes the place of that of Jahweh. Thus the 'servants of Jahweh' and 'the servants of the (Tyrian) Baal' are contrasted in 2Ki 10:23, though the fact that the same word is used in both phrases is obscured by the RV, which exaggerates a distinction capriciously introduced by the punctuators into the Hebrew text.
2. Thus it will be readily understood that any Israelite might be called 'the servant of Jahweh,' and as a matter of fact a large number of individuals received this phrase as their name; it is familiar to English readers in the form Obadiah, which was originally pronounced, as the Septuagint indicates, Abdiyah (cf. the parallel name Abdiel