THE “NAME” JEHOVAH
Thanks for the feedback from this past Sunday’s message on the names of Yahweh and Jesus the Messiah. It’s more than ironic, and certainly tragic, that after God revealed His sacred name to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3:13-14, Pharaoh would later say in Exodus 5:2 “Who is the LORD (Yahweh) that I should obey his voice….” And the rest is history.
Later, in Jesus’ ministry, after the Gospel of John has clearly identified Jesus as the Messiah, the Pharisees and leading Jews ask in John 8:25, “Who are you”? We know that Jesus’ response in John 8:58 made it clear that He was identifying Himself as God because in John 8:59 the Jewish leaders picked up stones in order to stone Jesus to death.
The name of God is so powerful, it evokes awe, fear and disbelief.
One of the items I was not able to address in the message is the artificial name of Jehovah. Yes, it is an artificial name. Here’s how it came to be.
As I mentioned, no one knows how to pronounce those four consonants representing God’s sacred name YHWH. Jews avoid trying to pronounce it. In order to have something to speak, however, many would say Yehowah (Jehovah), which is a combination of the four consonants (YHWH), and the vowels of the name Adonai, which means lord or Lord, depending on its context.
If referring to God, then Adonai is written as “Lord” (uppercase L), but the word Adonai can also mean something other than God such as the “lord” of a house, in which case it means something like boss, master, chief, etc. In those cases, it is then spelled “lord” (lowercase L) to indicate that it is not referring to God.
So, Jehovah comes from:
YHWH + The vowels from: adonai = YaHoWaiH =
Because this discovery happened by German scholars, the German language translates the Hebrew letter Y with “J” and the Hebrew letter W with “V”. Thus:
JEHOVAH
You can say, or read Jehovah and not be wrong, per se. However, Jehovah is NOT a proper name, it is an artificial name that simply allows readers and/or speakers to articulate something when reading YHWH.
Having fun?🤓
Read your Bibles!
Rescued by Christ,
Pastor Tim
