Understanding the Name JEHOVAH

Understanding the use of JEHOVAH as the name of our LORD God. 

Many profound theological expressions of the OT are tightly bound up with Hebrew language and grammar. Even the most sacred name of God himself, “the Lord” (Jehovah or Yahweh), is directly related to the Hebrew verb “to be” (or perhaps “to cause to be”). Many other names of persons and places in the OT can best be understood only with a working knowledge of Hebrew.

Jehovah in English Translations

The form “Jehovah” appears seven times in the King James Version and is the usual rendering for the divine name in the American Standard Version (1901). The King James Version uses Jehovah in the passage where God reveals his proper name to Moses: “And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them” (Exod 6:3 KJV). The form Jehovah is also used in the KJV and ASV in verses where a sacred place is named:

A Perpetual Qere

Medieval scribes known as Masoretes are responsible for the vowel markings (or points) found in the manuscripts used for most modern printed copies of the Hebrew Bible. The tetragrammaton is typically marked in Masoretic Hebrew manuscripts as yhwh—a form that seems as if it should be pronounced “yehovah” or “jehovah.” However, the “pronunciation is grammatically impossible” in the Hebrew (Hirsch, “Jehovah,” 7:87). The written form yhwh is an example of a qere and kethiv, where the vowels indicate a reading that differs from what is written (Kelley, Mynatt, and Crawford, Masorah, 41). With yhwh, the vowel markings for אֲדֹנָי (adonay, “Lord”) have been placed under the consonants of the divine name yhwh to signal the reader to say adonai wherever yhwh appeared in the text.

Many examples of qerekethiv/ were explicitly marked by the Masoretes, but some were so common and standard that they were not marked. The vocalization of the divine name is an example of this unmarked kind, known as qere perpetuum, or “perpetual qere”; the vocalization alone signals that the word was always to be read differently than what appeared in the consonantal text (see Yeivin, Tiberian Masorah, 56–60; Kelley, Mynatt, and Crawford, Masorah, 42). 

The pronunciation of the name as “Jehovah” is based on this misunderstanding of how the medieval reading tradition (the vowel pointing) related to the older written Hebrew consonants. In ancient Hebrew, only the consonants of a text were written, and the vowels were supplied by the fluent reader. The oldest copies of the Hebrew Bible, such as those found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and ancient Hebrew inscriptions have no markings to indicate the proper pronunciation (though some consonants, called matres lectionis, came to be used to help indicate vowels).

By the Middle Ages, Jewish tradition discouraged pronunciation of the divine name as a way to prevent breaking the commandment about misusing God’s name (Exod 20:7). To keep the reader from pronouncing and thus profaning the sacred name of God, the Masoretes developed the convention of the perpetual qere for reading adonai when YHWH appeared in the text. This convention was adopted to prevent anyone who was reading the text aloud (most reading until the modern period was done aloud) from saying the divine name out loud.

The Lexham Bible Dictionary, Copyright 2016 Lexham Press Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225, LexhamPress.com; The Lexham Bible Dictionary; John D. Barry, Editor; David Bomar, Derek R. Brown, Rachel Klippenstein, Douglas Mangum, Carrie Sinclair Wolcott, and Lazarus Wentz, Associate Editors; Elliot Ritzema and Wendy Widder Contributing Editors; Rebecca Brant, Claire Brubaker, Lynnea Fraser, Britt Rogers, Abigail Stocker, Jessi Strong, Rebecca Van Noord, Elizabeth Vince, and Joel Wilcox, Assistant Editors; T. Michael W. Halcomb and Micah Wierenga, Major Contributors