Is God's Name Jehovah?

Is God's Name Jehovah?

A common claim one occasionally comes across is God's name is Jehovah. So, is this true? Well, today we will look into the Hebrew of the text to see if this is true.

The Hebrew word for God's name is "יהוה." As we see in Exodus, "And God said unto Moses, I Am That I Am(Yahweh): and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you," (Exodus 3:14 KJV). Now one may say, well there we go, just have to pronounce the name, and boom we have his name! Well, there is a bit of a problem there. This is because the vowels used in Hebrew consists of dots and lines called Niqqud. The niqqud wasn't normally used however, this was done to make the scribing work easier. So, what do we have with these four letters?

י=Y

H=ה

V/W=ו

silent/A/H=ה

So,  by letters alone, it could be YHV, YHVA, YHVH, YHW, YHWA, or YHWH. During the temple period, the divine name was eventually lost as Jews were to scared to misuse the name. To help people remember to not use the divine name, the niqqud of Adonai was placed on our four letters("יהוה" with "אֲדֹנָי" meaning my Lord). If someone didn't understand this, combining the constants and vowels would make it sound like "Ya-Ho-Vah," which eventually became Jehovah or Jahovah. If one wants to call God Jehovah, there isn't necessarily a problem with it, it is just technically wrong.

This is also why Bibles will replace the name of God with "LORD," as to not use the incorrect name of God.

Works Cited:

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Yahweh". Encyclopedia Britannica, 2 Jan. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yahweh. Accessed 31 March 2023.