Who is this Deity Named Yahweh?
Dr. Thomas M. Strouse
Emmanuel Baptist Theological Seminary
Newington, CT 06111
The Psalmist David proclaimed, "O LORD our Lord, how excellent is
thy name in all the earth!" (Ps. 8:1). Certainly the Lord's name is
excellent, but what is this excellent name? Some state dogmatically that
the Hebrew tetragrammaton JHWH (hwhy) was originally
pronounced "Yahwe." Others say that it should be rendered 'Iabe
or 'Iao or Jaho. Orthodox Jews substitute the word
Ha-Shem ("The Name") into their commentaries to avoid taking the name
of the Lord in vain. The Masoretic Hebrew Text behind the Authorized
Version renders the vocalization of the tetragrammaton as Jehovah (hA'hy>).
This has been the accepted pronunciation of JHWH for at least the last
four hundred years in the Western world. Scripture, translations,
commentaries, prayer books, theological works, hymns and Christians at
large have utilized this standardized pronunciation Jehovah. Yet recently
in scholarly circles the notion has been advanced that the pronunciation
Jehovah should be replaced with Yahweh. Is it important that believers
know the correct vocalization of the Lord's special Old Testament name?
How will believers "sing praise to the name of the LORD" (Ps.
7:17), if they do not know how to pronounce it?
The History of the Pronunciation of JHWH
The traditional history for the pronunciation of the name for JHWH
assumes that the original correct pronunciation was lost, if ever given.
Some have claimed that God never inspired a pointed, vocalized original
Hebrew text. Others, building upon this initial view, have posited that
the Lord gave an oral tradition of vocalization for the un-pointed
consonantal text, but the vocalized pronunciation was lost. For instance,
Oehler stated, "The Jews maintain that the knowledge of the true
pronunciation of the name has been entirely lost since the destruction of
the temple." Josephus affirmed that the name was originally given to Moses
(cf. Ex. 3:14 ff.) and that he, Josephus, was not permitted to enunciate
it. Maimonides (AD 1135-1204) averred that the sacred name was pronounced
at blessings and by the high priest on the Day of Atonement during the
early years of the Second Temple, but later was exchanged for 'adonai
after the death of Simon the Just (3rd century BC).
The alleged loss of the proper pronunciation of JHWH occurred because
of one of several reasons, according to this common historical account. 1)
The Jews developed a superstitious fear of taking the Lord's name in vain
according to the warning of Ex. 20:7, and consequently stopped pronouncing
it. 2) These same Jews further interpreted Lev. 24:16 to read "and he that
nameth (Hebrew: blasphemeth) the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put
to death." Consequently, according to this history, during the silent
years until the coming of Christ, Jews refused to pronounce the sacred
name. This refusal among the Jews continued until time of the Masoretes
(c. AD 6th - 10th century), who, having supposedly
invented vowel pointing for the traditional Hebrew text, substituted the
vowels of 'adonai (yn"doa]) for the vocalization of JHWH,
producing the popular, but "linguistically impossible," Jehovah. Based on
the practice of the LXX to render JHWH by ho kurios ("the
Lord"), the pre-Christian Jews and ultimately the Masoretes placed the
shewa of the hateph pathach under the yodh (y>),
the cholem above the waw (A), and the kamets
beneath the waw (w"). The Reformation theologians continued
the practice of using the qeri vowels of the Masoretic text for the
kethiv consonants JHWH (the so-called qeri perpetuum),
popularizing the artificially "hybrid" name Jehovah. To augment the
veracity of this history, advocates appealed to the laws of philology,
showing that the prefix and suffix forms for proper names based on JHWH
(i.e., Yeho [Jehoshaphat], Yah [Shephatiah]) demand Yahweh (hw<h.y:)
as the proper pronunciation. The German rationalist Heinrich Ewald
(1803-1875) was the first to popularize the form Jahve, followed by
the eminent E. W. Hengstenberg (1802-1869) promoting Jahveh.
In summary then, the best that critical scholars can derive from
history for the discovery of the pronunciation for the sacred
tetragrammaton JHWH is as follows. If God ever revealed the proper
vocalization of His OT name JHWH, the apostate Jews, from the Babylonian
captivity onward, lost this pronunciation. Believers therefore have not
known the true name of the Lord for about 2,600 years. However, with the
help of the LXX, the laws of philology, and the scholarship of
liberal German rationalism, the "true" vocalization Yahweh has been
recovered. Should believers be thankful that critical scholarship has
restored the proper vocalization of the name of JHWH that God chose not to
preserve? Is it true that Christians may now know that the proper
pronunciation of the OT name of the Deity they serve is Yahweh?
The Biblical Position on the Name of JHWH
It should be evident to those who believe God has promised to preserve
His Words perfect, and this preservation is in the Masoretic Hebrew text
and the Received Greek text, that this history contradicts Scriptural
promises and is therefore un-biblical and consequently contrived. The Lord
has promised to preserve all of His inspired, canonical Words through His
ordained institutions for all generations subsequent to the
inscripturation of these Words. Therefore, He has preserved His OT Words,
consonants and vowels, jots and tittles, including the inspired
vocalization of His name, the tetragrammaton. Since the Lord God
has preserved the proper pronunciation of JHWH, scholars have no need to
restore their vocalization of it, and, as history, philology, and critical
scholarship have demonstrated, they are incapable of restoring
authoritatively the pronunciation of JHWH.
The Scriptural Promises of Plenary Verbal Preservation
The Bible is replete with the teaching that God will perfectly preserve
His Words. This teaching then constitutes the doctrine of the verbal,
plenary preservation of the Words of God. Several passages from the OT
Scripture promise the preservation of the Words of the Lord forever.
Although one reference is sufficient to establish the doctrinal truth of
the preservation of the Words of the Lord, a selective few additionally
clinch the clear Biblical position. The Psalter gives these references for
this doctrine: Pss. 12:6-7; 119:111, 160, et al. In addition, Prov.
22:20-21 and Isa. 40:6 make the same claim for perfect Words preservation.
In the NT, the Lord Jesus Christ claimed the perfectly intact Hebrew OT
Words (Mt. 4:4), the preservation of the consonants and vowels of Hebrew
Words (Mt. 5:18), and the perfect preservation of all of His canonical
words including the NT Words (Mt. 24:35). The Scriptures also teach the
respective agencies which God promised to use for His preservation
process. For the OT Scriptures, His agency was the Jewish nation (Rom.
3:2) and for the NT Scriptures, He promised to use the pillar and ground
of the truth--the NT churches (I Tim. 3:15). In fact, bound up in the
great Commission is the requirement of the churches to observe or guard
His canonical Words (Mt. 28:19-20). The Lord's people, in their respective
agencies, have the sole responsibility to preserve for their generation
and following the Words of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Deficiency of History, Philology and Critical
In rejecting the preserved Words of Scripture, including the inspired
vowel pointing for JHWH, critical scholars are left with several
non-authoritative means to attempt to discern the "correct" vocalization
of the Lord's tetragrammaton. These means are historical
documentation, comparative philology, and rationalism.
Bible history indicates that believers and unbelievers did not have
"the dread of uttering The Name" of the Lord. From the first writer of
Scripture to the last, OT saints pronounced the name of Jehovah. The first
writer of the OT canon, Job, referred to "the hand of the LORD" in
the affairs of man (Job 12:9). Moses, upon writing Genesis, initially
referred to the LORD God as creator of the earth and the heavens in Gen.
2:4. Later, Moses began to express the name of Jehovah to the Lord and to
others (Ex. 4:1; 5:1). About a thousand years later Nehemiah expressed the
LORD's name in his prayer (Neh. 1:5) as did Ezra in his preaching (Neh.
8:9). The last book of the Tanak records the name of Jehovah (II
Chron. 36:23) as well as the last book of the prophets (Mal. 4:5).
Furthermore, unbelieving Gentiles mentioned the vocalized
tetragrammaton in their conversations without fear of punishment by
death. Ranging from Pharaoh to Rahab to Cyrus, these goyim
pronounced Jehovah's name without dread and suffered no ill affects (cf.
Ex. 9:27; Josh. 2:9; Ezra 1:2). This survey of the period of Biblical
history (22nd to 5th century BC ) indicates that no
saint or sinner, Jew or Gentile, from beginning to end, ever expressed
dread to pronounce the tetragrammaton or suffered death as its
The history of this "dread" must have commenced during the silent years
(the four centuries before Christ's first advent) while Judaism continued
to apostatize. The testimony of unbelieving Jews, such as Josephus or
Maimonides, and fallible patristics such as Origen, Eusebius, and
Theodoret, suggesting that the vocalization was lost among all the Jewry
for sacred reasons must be debunked. These non-authoritative historians
have passed on their surmisings of the traditions of apostates.
Maimonides' speculation that the vowels for 'adonai were
substituted for the tetragrammaton is just that--non-authoritative
speculation. There is no historical documentation for this popular but
That this conjecture is strengthened by the supposed existence of a
pre-Christian LXX which translated the tetragrammaton with
ho kurios and approved of the 'adonai pointing for JHWH is
based on unproved assumptions. There is no credible history for the origin
of the LXX, and the Bible does not teach that Christ and the
Apostles ever used the LXX or had need to use it. If there was a
pre-Christian LXX it is not extant except in the hybrid form of
three different "LXX" translations in Origen's Hexapla. The
Lord Jesus Christ declared that the Hebrew text was perfectly intact in
His day (Mt. 4:4), the jots and tittles were preserved (Mt. 5:18), and the
three-fold Tanak division of the Hebrew OT was in use (cf. Lk.
11:50-51; 24:44). Neither He nor His disciples attempted to evangelize
Gentiles with the Greek OT Scriptures. They used the Hebrew OT with the
Jews and their inspired Greek statements and messages, as recorded in the
canonical Scriptures, with the Gentiles (cf. Mt. 15:21 ff.; Acts 2:42,
etc.). The best that history can demonstrate is that some Jews, apparently
apostates, had a dread for pronouncing the Lord's name and may have
justified re-pointing JHWH with the use of a Greek translation. This
history however, is inadequate for overturning the pointing of JHWH as it
is preserved in the Masoretic text.
Philology is the study of words, and is foundational to the study of
grammar, which includes linguistic phenomena and their origin. Modern
philology is based on evolutionary principles, including the evolution of
the Hebrew language and the need for the practice of textual criticism
since God allegedly did not preserve His words. However, the preserved OT
words must constitute the basis for Hebrew grammar as divine revelation,
since scientific and comparative linguistics are not authoritative and
therefore fallible. For example, M'Clintock and Strong argue that JHWH
comes from the hayah (= hawah) "to be" verb and consequently
the middle radical may not take the cholem, thus ruling out the
Jehovah pronunciation. However, this is an effort to make the science of
linguistics authoritative over divine revelation and ignores the fact that
the tetragrammaton is the unique revealed name of God (cf. Ex.
Furthermore, the aforementioned authors insisted that the Greeks would
have pronounced JHWH as Jao, treating the two He consonants as
silent letters, placing an alpha after the iota and
substituting the omicron for the waw. Gehman favored
extra-biblical sources as well, stating, "There was also in the coastal
Plain and in part of Galilee a dialect pronunciation Yeu from
Yehu, a form derived by dissimulation from Phoenician Yohu from
Yahu. The Yahweh pronunciation is also favored by Greek
transcriptions: Iabe, Iaoue, Iaouai, Iae." In this case, looking to
extra-biblical grammatical guidance is an attempt to make comparative
linguistics authoritative over the preserved vowel pointing the received
In the classic passage for the presentation of the special name of JHWH,
the LORD punned on the hayah verb with His name (Ex. 3:13-15). The
Lord God gave His name as a denominative with the jodh prefixed and
special, unique pointing. As the NT confirms, He did not give Moses the
Qal imperfect of hayah, which would be Yihyeh ("he shall
be"). In Jn. 8:58, the Lord Jesus Christ declared "before Abraham was,
I am" (ego eimi), emphasizing His interpretation of the unique
Hebrew pointing for Jehovah. Philology which rejects the divine
preservation of Hebrew pointing, words and grammar, must instead rely upon
evolutionary linguistic schemes and extra-biblical comparisons for the
vocalization of JHWH is deficient. It produces the non-biblical and
therefore non-authoritative vocalization Yahweh and must be rejected by
The Scripture is clear about its own authority and sufficiency. The
Apostle Paul stated, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and
is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction
in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished
unto all good works" (II Timothy 3:16-17). The Lord God does not need
man to recover what He allegedly chose not to preserve, because He has
indeed preserved all canonical revelation He gave man. The doctrine of
verbal plenary inspiration demands the doctrine of verbal plenary
preservation and the Bible teaches both doctrines. Man's only
responsibility is to receive by faith God's written revelation and then
guard it for his respective generation. It is ludicrous then, for critical
scholarship to attempt to restore and reconstruct the text of the divinely
written revelation, including the vowel points for the tetragrammaton.
As rationalistic scholarship looks to historical documentation and
philological techniques to determine the "true" name of the Lord in the
OT, it falls short because of its initial rejection of the doctrines of
inspiration and preservation. The best that rationalistic scholarship can
produce is the suggested speculation, confirmed by liberal Bible
scholarship, for the vocalization of the tetragrammaton.
Unregenerate Jews, catholic patristics, and liberal scholars have all
agreed that the best pointing for the tetragrammaton should be
something like Yahweh, and not Jehovah. However, this rationalistic
approach for vocalizing the name of the LORD is Biblically deficient and
spiritually unsatisfactory for the Bible believer.
Rationalists have rejected the teaching of the preserved vocalization
for JHWH because they have rejected the teaching that the preserved OT
Scriptures have been preserved through the Masoretic text. For instance,
E. Wurthwein reasoned that the main criterion for discovering the OT text
must be the history of the transmission of the text. However, he did not
look to biblical history that gives theological grounding for the
transmission of the text, but instead considered religious history. He
maintained that three text types representing the OT text emerged at
Qumran, namely the Samaritan Pentateuch, the LXX and the Masoretic
text. How this could be, however, he could not answer reasonably.
Wurthwein cited F. M. Cross, who stated, "The ground is not yet sure, and
many missteps will be taken before sure results can be hoped for."
Although others suggest a pre-sixth century AD "Masoretic" text, they do
not look to Scripture for this "faith" position as expressed by the Lord
Jesus Christ (Mt. 4:4). For instance, B. J. Roberts affirmed the "likely
existence of a pre-Massoretic 'Massoretic' text." The student of the Bible
knows that there was a pre-Masoretic Hebrew text and a pre-Textus
Receptus Greek text based on the promises of God, and not on the skills of
the Masoretes or Erasmus. These "pre" texts are the preserved texts of the
Hebrew OT and the Greek NT.
The Name Jehovah in the OT
The preserved vocalization of JHWH is Jehovah as represented by the
Masoretic Hebrew text. The Authorized Version (1611) and the American
Standard Version (1901) translate the tetragrammaton as LORD and
the Hebrew name 'adonay as Lord, differentiating the two Hebrew
words. The AV transliterates JHWH in Ex. 6:3, Psalm 83:18, Isa. 12:2 and
26:4 as JEHOVAH, with the last two references reading literally Jah
Jehovah. David's reference to Jah is transliterated JAH in Ps. 68:4.
The writers of Scripture coupled both Jehovah and Jah with 'elohim
(God) in various places throughout the OT (cf. Gen. 2:4 and Ps. 68:18,
respectively). The translators of the AV have given English speaking
people a consistent presentation and biblical understanding of the
vocalized tetragrammaton Jehovah.
Do Christians worship and serve a God named Yahweh? If God has not
preserved His words including the vowel pointing of the tetragrammaton,
and critical scholars have restored His name through historical
documentation, philology, and rationalism, then the answer is in the
affirmative. However, since none of the aforementioned is Scripturally
valid or authoritative, then believers do not know how to pronounce the
name of the Lord unless they receive by faith the preserved vocalization
found in the Masoretic Hebrew text. Christians do not know or worship a
god named Yahweh, but instead believers do know and worship the God
Jehovah. Believers have the assurance that "His name shall endure
forever" (Ps. 72:17), which name is "the LORD God" (v. 18).