YHVH: THE NAME OF GOD

THE PERSONAL NAME of God is written with the four Hebrew letters equivalent to ‘YHVH’. The Hebrews call this Name the shem meforash or ‘explicit name’. In English, we sometimes call it the ‘ineffable name’ or, more often, the ‘Tetragrammaton’, a Greek word meaning ‘four letters’.

But the question is “How should one pronounce these four letters?” From what we can see in the Bible and elsewhere, everyone in ancient Israel knew how to pronounce it, and they had no qualms about doing so. But, from the third century BC on, the leaders of Israel—particularly the high priests—introduced more and more restrictions regarding the speaking of the Name. Finally, only the high priest himself could speak the Name, and only once a year, on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur.

Then, after the Jewish revolts of AD 66-73 and 132-135, the Romans drove the Israelites from their land into 1,900 years of wandering. And everyone forgot how to pronounce the Name.

Or did they?

In the tenth and eleventh centuries, a group of non-Rabbanite Jews, the Masoretes, wrote some wonderful copies of the Bible. In these, they showed that the true pronunciation of the Name should be Yehovàh (with the accent on the last syllable). Medieval Christians took this up, and the name entered into Latin and then into English as Jehovah. (“J” is the Latin equivalent to our “Y”.)

Then along came a French monk called Gilbert Génébrard (1535-1597). He quoted a fifth-century Syrian church father, called Theodoret of Cyrus. Theodoret knew no Hebrew, but he said that the Samaritans pronounce the Name Iabe. Genebrard thought this was quite possible. Then, in the early nineteenth century, along came a German genius called Gesenius (1786-1842), who said that the name was maybe Yahweh or maybe Yehowah. (That’s the German “w”, which they pronounce as “v”, of course.) Then along came another German theologian called Heinrich Ewald (1803-1875) aka “Gesenius’s parrot”. He loudly proclaimed that Gesenius got it right the first time.

The rest, as they say, is history. The Yahweh form became popular worldwide. They sing it in praise songs all over the world, even in Lingala. But there was never any evidence for it except the idea of Theodoret who really knew little about the subject. And on this testimony, everyone dismissed the much more solid testimony of the Masoretes.

But, when you come to examine the fact—Oh, that more people would examine the facts!—you find that the name was always Yehovàh. It’s never been anything else.

If you want to examine the facts about the sacred Name YHVH, you can read about it in the First Appendix to The Songs of Ascents.