A reproduction of the Watchtower Society's article
JEHOVAH
(Je·ho′vah) [the causative form, the imperfect state, of the Heb. verb ha·wah′ (become); meaning “He Causes to Become”].
The personal name of God. (
Isa 42:8; 54:5) Though Scripturally designated by such descriptive titles as “God,” “Sovereign Lord,” “Creator,” “Father,” “the Almighty,” and “the Most High,” his personality and attributes—who and what he is—are fully summed up and expressed only in this personal name.—
Ps 83:18.
Correct Pronunciation of the Divine Name. “Jehovah” is the best known English pronunciation of the divine name, although “Yahweh” is favored by most Hebrew scholars. The oldest Hebrew manuscripts present the name in the form of four consonants, commonly called the Tetragrammaton (from Greek te·tra-, meaning “four,” and gram′ma, “letter”). These four letters (written from right to left) are יהוה and may be transliterated into English as YHWH (or, JHVH).
The Hebrew consonants of the name are therefore known. The question is, Which vowels are to be combined with those consonants? Vowel points did not come into use in Hebrew until the second half of the first millennium C.E. (See
HEBREW, II [Hebrew Alphabet and Script].) Furthermore, because of a religious superstition that had begun centuries earlier, the vowel pointing found in Hebrew manuscripts does not provide the key for determining which vowels should appear in the divine name.
Superstition hides the name. At some point a superstitious idea arose among the Jews that it was wrong even to pronounce the divine name (represented by the Tetragrammaton). Just what basis was originally assigned for discontinuing the use of the name is not definitely known. Some hold that the name was viewed as being too sacred for imperfect lips to speak. Yet the Hebrew Scriptures themselves give no evidence that any of God’s true servants ever felt any hesitancy about pronouncing his name. Non-Biblical Hebrew documents, such as the so-called Lachish Letters, show the name was used in regular correspondence in Palestine during the latter part of the seventh century B.C.E.
Another view is that the intent was to keep non-Jewish peoples from knowing the name and possibly misusing it. However, Jehovah himself said that he would ‘have his name declared in all the earth’ (
Ex 9:16; compare
1Ch 16:23, 24; Ps 113:3; Mal 1:11, 14), to be known even by his adversaries. (
Isa 64:2) The name was in fact known and used by pagan nations both in pre-Common Era times and in the early centuries of the Common Era. (
The Jewish Encyclopedia, 1976, Vol. XII, p. 119) Another claim is that the purpose was to protect the name from use in magical rites. If so, this was poor reasoning, as it is obvious that the more mysterious the name became through disuse the more it would suit the purposes of practicers of magic.
When did the superstition take hold? Just as the reason or reasons originally advanced for discontinuing the use of the divine name are uncertain, so, too, there is much uncertainty as to when this superstitious view really took hold. Some claim that it began following the Babylonian exile (607-537 B.C.E.). This theory, however, is based on a supposed reduction in the use of the name by the later writers of the Hebrew Scriptures, a view that does not hold up under examination. Malachi, for example, was evidently one of the last books of the Hebrew Scriptures written (in the latter half of the fifth century B.C.E.), and it gives great prominence to the divine name.
Many reference works have suggested that the name ceased to be used by about 300 B.C.E. Evidence for this date supposedly was found in the absence of the Tetragrammaton (or a transliteration of it) in the Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, begun about 280 B.C.E. It is true that the most complete manuscript copies of the Septuagint now known do consistently follow the practice of substituting the Greek words Ky′ri·os (Lord) or The·os′ (God) for the Tetragrammaton. But these major manuscripts date back only as far as the fourth and fifth centuries C.E. More ancient copies, though in fragmentary form, have been discovered that prove that the earliest copies of the Septuagint did contain the divine name.
One of these is the fragmentary remains of a papyrus roll of a portion of Deuteronomy, listed as P. Fouad Inventory No. 266. (PICTURE, Vol. 1, p. 326) It regularly presents the Tetragrammaton, written in square Hebrew characters, in each case of its appearance in the Hebrew text being translated. This papyrus is dated by scholars as being from the first century B.C.E., and thus it was written four or five centuries earlier than the manuscripts mentioned previously.—See NW appendix, pp. 1562-1564.
When did the Jews in general actually stop pronouncing the personal name of God?
So, at least in written form, there is no sound evidence of any disappearance or disuse of the divine name in the B.C.E. period. In the first century C.E., there first appears some evidence of a superstitious attitude toward the name. Josephus, a Jewish historian from a priestly family, when recounting God’s revelation to Moses at the site of the burning bush, says: “Then God revealed to him His name, which ere then had not come to men’s ears, and of which I am forbidden to speak.” (Jewish Antiquities, II, 276 [xii, 4]) Josephus’ statement, however, besides being inaccurate as to knowledge of the divine name prior to Moses, is vague and does not clearly reveal just what the general attitude current in the first century was as to pronouncing or using the divine name.
The Jewish Mishnah, a collection of rabbinic teachings and traditions, is somewhat more explicit. Its compilation is credited to a rabbi known as Judah the Prince, who lived in the second and third centuries C.E. Some of the Mishnaic material clearly relates to circumstances prior to the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in 70 C.E. Of the Mishnah, however, one scholar says: “It is a matter of extreme difficulty to decide what historical value we should attach to any tradition recorded in the Mishnah. The lapse of time which may have served to obscure or distort memories of times so different; the political upheavals, changes, and confusions brought about by two rebellions and two Roman conquests; the standards esteemed by the Pharisean party (whose opinions the Mishnah records) which were not those of the Sadducean party . . .—these are factors which need to be given due weight in estimating the character of the Mishnah’s statements. Moreover there is much in the contents of the Mishnah that moves in an atmosphere of academic discussion pursued for its own sake, with (so it would appear) little pretence at recording historical usage.” (The Mishnah, translated by H. Danby, London, 1954, pp. xiv, xv) Some of the Mishnaic traditions concerning the pronouncing of the divine name are as follows:
In connection with the annual Day of Atonement, Danby’s translation of the Mishnah states: “And when the priests and the people which stood in the Temple Court heard the Expressed Name come forth from the mouth of the High Priest, they used to kneel and bow themselves and fall down on their faces and say, ‘Blessed be the name of the glory of his kingdom for ever and ever!’” (
Yoma 6:2) Of the daily priestly blessings,
Sotah 7:6 says: “In the Temple they pronounced the Name as it was written, but in the provinces by a substituted word.”
Sanhedrin 7:5 states that a blasphemer was not guilty ‘unless he pronounced the Name,’ and that in a trial involving a charge of blasphemy a substitute name was used until all the evidence had been heard; then the chief witness was asked privately to ‘say expressly what he had heard,’ presumably employing the divine name.
Sanhedrin 10:1, in listing those “that have no share in the world to come,” states: “Abba Saul says: Also he that pronounces the Name with its proper letters.” Yet, despite these negative views, one also finds in the first section of the Mishnah the positive injunction that “a man should salute his fellow with [the use of] the Name [of God],” the example of Boaz (
Ru 2:4) then being cited.—
Berakhot 9:5.
Taken for what they are worth, these traditional views may reveal a superstitious tendency to avoid using the divine name sometime before Jerusalem’s temple was destroyed in 70 C.E. Even then, it is primarily the priests who are explicitly said to have used a substitute name in place of the divine name, and that only in the provinces. Additionally the historical value of the Mishnaic traditions is questionable, as we have seen.
There is, therefore, no genuine basis for assigning any time earlier than the first and second centuries C.E. for the development of the superstitious view calling for discontinuance of the use of the divine name. The time did come, however, when in reading the Hebrew Scriptures in the original language, the Jewish reader substituted either
ʼAdho·nai′ (Sovereign Lord) or
ʼElo·him′ (God) rather than pronounce the divine name represented by the Tetragrammaton. This is seen from the fact that when vowel pointing came into use in the second half of the first millennium C.E., the Jewish copyists inserted the vowel points for either
ʼAdho·nai′ or
ʼElo·him′ into the Tetragrammaton, evidently to warn the reader to say those words in place of pronouncing the divine name. If using the Greek
Septuagint translation of the Hebrew
Scriptures in
later copies, the reader, of course, found the Tetragrammaton completely replaced by
Ky′ri·os and
The·os′.—See
LORD.
Translations into other languages, such as the Latin Vulgate, followed the example of these later copies of the Greek Septuagint. The Catholic Douay Version (of 1609-1610) in English, based on the Latin Vulgate, therefore does not contain the divine name, while the King James Version (1611) uses LORD or GOD (in capital and small capitals) to represent the Tetragrammaton in the Hebrew Scriptures, except in four cases.
What is the proper pronunciation of God’s name?
In the second half of the first millennium C.E., Jewish scholars introduced a system of points to represent the missing vowels in the consonantal Hebrew text. When it came to God’s name, instead of inserting the proper vowel signs for it, they put other vowel signs to remind the reader that he should say ʼAdho·nai′ (meaning “Sovereign Lord”) or ʼElo·him′ (meaning “God”).
The Codex Leningrad B 19
A, of the 11th century C.E., vowel points the Tetragrammaton to read
Yehwah′, Yehwih′, and
Yeho·wah′. Ginsburg’s edition of the Masoretic text vowel points the divine name to read
Yeho·wah′. (
Ge 3:14, ftn) Hebrew scholars generally favor “Yahweh” as the most likely pronunciation. They point out that the abbreviated form of the name is Yah (Jah in the Latinized form), as at
Psalm 89:8 and in the expression
Ha·lelu-Yah′ (meaning “Praise Jah, you people!”). (
Ps 104:35; 150:1, 6) Also, the forms
Yehoh′, Yoh, Yah, and
Ya′hu, found in the Hebrew spelling of the names Jehoshaphat, Joshaphat, Shephatiah, and others, can all be derived from Yahweh. Greek transliterations of the name by early Christian writers point in a somewhat similar direction with spellings such as
I·a·be′ and
I·a·ou·e′, which, as pronounced in Greek, resemble Yahweh. Still, there is by no means unanimity among scholars on the subject, some favoring yet other pronunciations, such as “Yahuwa,” “Yahuah,” or “Yehuah.”
Since certainty of pronunciation is not now attainable, there seems to be no reason for abandoning in English the well-known form “Jehovah” in favor of some other suggested pronunciation. If such a change were made, then, to be consistent, changes should be made in the spelling and pronunciation of a host of other names found in the Scriptures: Jeremiah would be changed to Yir·meyah′, Isaiah would become Yeshaʽ·ya′hu, and Jesus would be either Yehoh·shu′aʽ (as in Hebrew) or I·e·sous′ (as in Greek). The purpose of words is to transmit thoughts; in English the name Jehovah identifies the true God, transmitting this thought more satisfactorily today than any of the suggested substitutes.
Importance of the Name. Many modern scholars and Bible translators advocate following the tradition of eliminating the distinctive name of God. They not only claim that its uncertain pronunciation justifies such a course but also hold that the supremacy and uniqueness of the true God make unnecessary his having a particular name. Such a view receives no support from the inspired Scriptures, either those of pre-Christian times or those of the Christian Greek Scriptures.
The Tetragrammaton occurs 6,828 times in the Hebrew text printed in Biblia Hebraica and Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. In the Hebrew Scriptures the New World Translation contains the divine name 6,973 times, because the translators took into account, among other things, the fact that in some places the scribes had replaced the divine name with ʼAdho·nai′ or ʼElo·him′. (See NW appendix, pp. 1561, 1562.) The very frequency of the appearance of the name attests to its importance to the Bible’s Author, whose name it is. Its use throughout the Scriptures far outnumbers that of any of the titles, such as “Sovereign Lord” or “God,” applied to him.
Noteworthy, also, is the importance given to names themselves in the Hebrew Scriptures and among Semitic peoples. Professor G. T. Manley points out: “A study of the word ‘name’ in the O[ld] T[estament] reveals how much it means in Hebrew. The name is no mere label, but is significant of the real personality of him to whom it belongs. . . . When a person puts his ‘name’ upon a thing or another person the latter comes under his influence and protection.”—
New Bible Dictionary, edited by J. D. Douglas, 1985, p. 430; compare
Everyman’s Talmud, by A. Cohen, 1949, p. 24;
Ge 27:36; 1Sa 25:25; Ps 20:1; Pr 22:1; see
NAME.
“God” and “Father” not distinctive. The title “God” is neither personal nor distinctive (one can even make a god of his belly;
Php 3:19). In the Hebrew Scriptures the same word (
ʼElo·him′) is applied to Jehovah, the true God, and also to false gods, such as the Philistine god Dagon (
Jg 16:23, 24; 1Sa 5:7) and the Assyrian god Nisroch. (
2Ki 19:37) For a Hebrew to tell a Philistine or an Assyrian that he worshiped “God [
ʼElo·him′]” would obviously not have sufficed to identify the Person to whom his worship went.
In its articles on Jehovah, The Imperial Bible-Dictionary nicely illustrates the difference between ʼElo·him′ (God) and Jehovah. Of the name Jehovah, it says: “It is everywhere a proper name, denoting the personal God and him only; whereas Elohim partakes more of the character of a common noun, denoting usually, indeed, but not necessarily nor uniformly, the Supreme. . . . The Hebrew may say the Elohim, the true God, in opposition to all false gods; but he never says the Jehovah, for Jehovah is the name of the true God only. He says again and again my God . . . ; but never my Jehovah, for when he says my God, he means Jehovah. He speaks of the God of Israel, but never of the Jehovah of Israel, for there is no other Jehovah. He speaks of the living God, but never of the living Jehovah, for he cannot conceive of Jehovah as other than living.”—Edited by P. Fairbairn, London, 1874, Vol. I, p. 856.
The same is true of the Greek term for God,
The·os′. It was applied alike to the true God and to such pagan gods as Zeus and Hermes (Roman Jupiter and Mercury). (Compare
Ac 14:11-15.) Presenting the true situation are Paul’s words at
1 Corinthians 8:4-6: “For even though there are those who are called ‘gods,’ whether in heaven or on earth, just as there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords,’ there is actually to us one God the Father, out of whom all things are, and we for him.” The belief in numerous gods, which makes essential that the true God be distinguished from such, has continued even into this 20th century.
Paul’s reference to “God the Father” does not mean that the true God’s name is “Father,” for the designation “father” applies as well to every human male parent and describes men in other relationships. (
Ro 4:11, 16; 1Co 4:15) The Messiah is given the title “Eternal Father.” (
Isa 9:6) Jesus called Satan the “father” of certain murderous opposers. (
Joh 8:44) The term was also applied to gods of the nations, the Greek god Zeus being represented as the great father god in Homeric poetry. That “God the Father” has a name, one that is distinct from his Son’s name, is shown in numerous texts. (
Mt 28:19; Re 3:12; 14:1) Paul knew the personal name of God, Jehovah, as found in the creation account in Genesis, from which Paul quoted in his writings. That name, Jehovah, distinguishes “God the Father” (compare
Isa 64:8), thereby blocking any attempt at merging or blending his identity and person with that of any other to whom the title “god” or “father” may be applied.
Not a tribal god. Jehovah is called “the God of Israel” and ‘the God of their forefathers.’ (
1Ch 17:24; Ex 3:16) Yet this intimate association with the Hebrews and with the Israelite nation gives no reason for limiting the name to that of a tribal god, as some have done. The Christian apostle Paul wrote: “Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of people of the nations? Yes, of people of the
nations also.” (
Ro 3:29) Jehovah is not only “the God of the whole earth” (
Isa 54:5) but also the God of the universe, “the Maker of heaven and earth.” (
Ps 124:8) Jehovah’s covenant with Abraham, nearly 2,000 years earlier than Paul’s day, had promised blessings for people of all nations, showing God’s interest in all mankind.—
Ge 12:1-3; compare
Ac 10:34, 35; 11:18.
Jehovah God eventually rejected the unfaithful nation of fleshly Israel. But his name was to continue among the new nation of spiritual Israel, the Christian congregation, even when that new nation began to embrace non-Jewish persons in its membership. Presiding at a Christian assembly in Jerusalem, the disciple James therefore spoke of God as having “turned his attention to the [non-Jewish] nations to take out of them
a people for his name.” As proof that this had been foretold, James then quoted a prophecy in the book of Amos in which Jehovah’s name appears twice.—
Ac 15:2, 12-14; Am 9:11, 12.
In the Christian Greek Scriptures. In view of this evidence it seems most unusual to find that the extant manuscript copies of the original text of the Christian Greek Scriptures do not contain the divine name in its full form. The name therefore is also absent from most translations of the so-called New Testament. Yet the name does appear in these sources in its abbreviated form at
Revelation 19:1, 3, 4, 6, in the expression “Alleluia” or “Hallelujah” (
KJ, Dy, JB, AS, RS). The call there recorded as spoken by spirit sons of God to “Praise Jah, you people!” (
NW) makes clear that the divine name was not obsolete; it was as vital and pertinent as it had been in the pre-Christian period. Why, then, the absence of its full form from the Christian Greek Scriptures?
