Jehovah God's name, abuse, a fixation

YHWH: the tetragram

This is a term applied to the four Hebrew letters that make up God's name, as revealed to Moses in Exodus 3:14:

God told Moses: "And God said to Moses,: I am who I am, and said: So you will tell the children of Israel, the I AM has sent me to you”.

YHWH forms the basis of the verb “to be “, from which God designated his name as “I AM “.

It is from these four letters that God's name is derived and has been rendered as “the Sir”. The custom of pronouncing God's name was lost, as the Jews, to whom the name was given, they never uttered it out of fear and respect for God.

Because in the Bible we have the word “LORD “instead of YHWH or Jehovah?

The practice of replacing lord with YHWH it began hundreds of years before Christ. The Jews never wanted to risk mispronouncing the name of YHWH out of reverence and also because they did not want to break the commandment it says: “Do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave unpunished whoever takes his name in vain” (Exodus 20:7).

Thus the Jews began to substitute God's name (in Hebrew “lord”), which is now “Adonai“. This practice is followed to this day in Bible translations precisely to show respect for the Holy Name. finally, since the initial Hebrew text does not contain vowels, but only the consonants , it is not known exactly how God's name is pronounced. Then, lord is replaced with YHWH .

In Old Testament Hebrew, the word It gave is Elohim. God is also called lord, which is the translation of the Hebrew word Adonai. But the exact name of God that is given in Exodus 3:14 is YHWH, what does it mean “I AM”.

Exodus 3:14:

God told Moses: "I am who I am". Then he said: "You will say this to the children of Israel: “the I AM has sent me to you”».

The four letters YHWH are sometimes written and pronounced Yahweh, a better pronunciation of Jehovah as there is no sound “j” in Hebrew. But we cannot be sure what the correct pronunciation for God's name is.

What is the real name of God? YHWH, Jehovah or Lord?

We do not know the correct pronunciation for God's name, therefore we cannot affirm and insist on our beliefs (like Jehovah's Witnesses do) what is God's true name. however, in Exodus 3:13-14 we read:

Moses said to God: "Here, when I have gone to the children of Israel and told them: “The God of your fathers has sent me to you”, if they say: “What's his name?” what will I reply to them?God said to Moses: "I am who I am". Then he said: "You will say this to the children of Israel: “the I AM has sent me to you“».

Dio says: “the I AM” he's talking about his name, he is therefore not authorizing to pronounce YHWH. In the Hebrew language, language in which this verse was written, the letters are Yod, He, VAV, from which YHWH is derived . These four letters were later loosely and incorrectly translated as “Jehovah”. however, there is no j sound in Hebrew. Then, a better approximation of God's name would be Yahweh.

But a further problem in pronouncing God's name is that the ancient Hebrews did not use vowels in writing. They used only consonants, hence the hypothetical sentence “God's name is YHWH ” such a thing would appear, for example: “l nm d D YHWH” (without the vowels). This problem did not exist for the Jews because they knew how the words in their language were pronounced. Only after many hundreds of years did the Jews insert the vowels in the texts of the Hebrew Old Testament .

But unfortunately we don't know exactly which vowel sounds are the correct ones. however, from the text above God's proper name is “I AM”, not Jehovah, which will transliterate into YHWH.