Why Those Who Think Jehovah Is God’s Name Are Wrong

Is it important that we know God’s name?  If you know and love God don’t you know think you should know His name, and don’t you think you should get it right?  God revealed His personal name to Moses. He instructed Moses to have the priests put His name on the people and that He would bless them. This name is YHWH and not Jehovah.

What if anything is significant about a name. Do you mind if someone mispronounces your name, what if they get it totally wrong? Those of us who have unusual names have gotten use to people not getting our names exactly right, but those who know us best, know our name and get it correct.

The Bible teaches us that God’s name is important and powerful.

The name of the Lord [YHWH] is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe. Proverbs 18:10

Our help is in the name of the Lord [YHWH], who made heaven and earth. Psalm 124:8 (ESV)

From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord [YHWH]  is to be praised! Psalm 113:3 (ESV)

Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord [YHWH] our God.      Psalm 20:7 (ESV)

Jesus teaches us that it is through His name that we have access to Him and that He will act so that His father will be glorified as we avail ourselves of His name.

13 “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 “If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.     John 14:13-14 (NASB)

We all need to understand that:

We have no spiritual power in ourselves.

All spiritual power is God’s.

We only have access to this power through His name.

God revealed His personal name to Moses. God commanded Moses to have the priests place upon his people His name, [YHWH].  I believe that having God’s name[YHWH] put on me is an avenue to my being blessed by Him, therefore I want His blessing.  God did not command Moses to place Elohim, Adonai, El Shaddai or any of the other names by which the Hebrew people referred to Him upon the people for blessing, only [YHWH].  Because God is this precise in His instruction to Moses then it seems obvious to me that we should be precise also, especially when we are asking for His blessing to be upon us and when we are using His name to bless others.

22 The Lord said to Moses, 23 “Tell Aaron and his sons, ‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them: 24“ ‘ “The Lord [YHWH] bless you and keep you; 25the Lord [YHWH]  make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; 26 the Lord [YHWH] turn his face toward you and give you peace.” ’27 “So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.” Numbers 6:23-27

What about the name Jehovah?

The form Jehovah has arisen through attempting to pronounce the consonants of “The Name” [YHWH] with the vowels of Adonai ( = “Lord”), which the Masorites inserted in the text, to indicate to the Hebrew reader that Adonai was to be read (as a ” Qere perpetuum”) instead of  [YHWH].

When the word Adonai itself precedes [YHWH], to avoid repetition of this name, The Masoretes inserted the vowels of Elohim, to indicate that Elohim is to be read instead of [YHWH].  In acknowledgment of this Masoretic reading the KJV and revised English versions render [YHWH] by the word “Lord” in the great majority of cases. (The American Standard Version of 1901 places the word Jehovah into the text everywhere that Yahweh appears in the OT. This is the only version which I know of that does this with the exception of the Bible the Jehovah’s Witnesses use for obvious reasons).

God’s personal name which he revealed to Moses in Ex 3:14 is [YHWH]. This word appears 6,823 times in the Hebrew OT.  Few Christians, however,  know that this is God’s personal name.  Many well meaning and knowledgeable Christians have depended on the textual work of others who mispronounced and misspelled God’s name.

The word “Jehovah” is a mispronunciation of the Hebrew[YHWH] the (ineffable) name of God arising from pronouncing the vowel pointing of the (Masorites marginal reading for “Adonai”) with the consonants of the (textual-reading for “YHWH”).  The reading “Jehovah” is a comparatively recent invention.

Early Christian commentators who read Philo (20 B.C. – 50A.D.) would have learned this.  From whatever source they learned it is is clear that Origen, (185-254); Jerome (347-420); and Theodoret, (393-457); knew and wrote that [YHWH] was written but not pronounced by the Jews.

How did the name Jehovah came into our vernacular?

The source of this mistake can be traced back to a folio written in 1518 by Peter Galatin for Pope Leo X.  The folio’s title is “De Arcanis Catholicæ Veritatis.” During the reformation Galatin’s mistake was multiplied as various Christian theologians unfamiliar with the Hebrew language quoted his work. In this way the mistake persists until today.
The name [YHWH] is also often referred to as the Tetragrammaton (from the Greek ?????????????? meaning “a word having four letters”).

Some people get offended by the idea that God’s personal name has been misinterpreted or misspelled in English since the time of the Reformation.  They believe that the texts of the Masoretes with there vowel pointing  is the inspired or received text of Holy Scripture. While they are well meaning and sincere they are simply wrong.

When we say that we believe the Bible is the inspired and infallible word of God we are talking about the original texts, known as the autographs.  That is the original text, written by the original author, on the original paper, in the original language.  Sometimes this is known as the received text. The original language of the OT is for the most part Hebrew, with some Aramaic portions in Daniel.  Hebrew is an ancient language which consists entirely of consonants and has no vowels.  The pronunciation of a word was learned over time by the native speakers.  The vowel pointing was added after the diaspora in 70 A.D. as a means to preserve the pronunciation as the Jewish people were scattered across the globe.  During the 5th century A.D. vowel pointing was developed for use in written Hebrew.  Between the 7th and 11th centuries  the Masorites copied the OT scriptures and provided vowel pointing under each word so that the word could be pronounced properly.  Though the Masoretes did invent the graphical symbols of the vowel points, they did not invent the vocalization represented by the vowel points. They only sought to preserve their strain of the traditional vocalization.

The KJV of the Bible did not exist before 1611 A.D.  It is based on the Latin Vulgate.  The KJV is a translation into English of a translation into Latin of the Hebrew and Greek texts.  Modern versions such as the NASB, NIV, ESV, HSB are translations of the Hebrew and Greek texts into English.