Ask any Chinese believer “Who is the God of Israel?”, and the answer would easily be “耶和華” {ye1-he2-hua2}. No surprises there, as His name can be plainly read from the pages of the Old Testament. But if we ask an English speaker the same question, we might get “Jehovah” or “Yahweh”, yet we can’t find either in the entire Bible (versions we commonly read: NIV, NKJV, NASB, ESV). In fact, we rarely directly mention it. If we ask an orthodox Jew, well, it gets complicated very fast. We would think that something as important as the very name of our God would be straightforward, but in reality, wisdom doesn’t always favor simplicity.
So, what happened?
The first thing we need to understand is, the God of Hebrews communicated to the Israelites in Hebrew. Unlike English, Hebrew letters are all consonants (okay, with one exception). Imagine the first verse in the Old Testament shows
“N TH BGNNNG GD CRTD TH HVNS ND TH RTH”.
We would have no idea how to read it. But in the early days, Israelites relied on memory and inference to read just fine (much like how the Israelis today read Hebrew fluently without vowel notations). During those golden days, everyone knew who their God was and how to say His name. However, the written records only contained consonants. What are the consonants? יהוה, or represented in Anglicized form, YHWH or YHVH.
As we all know, a lot happened to the Israelites after Moses led them out of Egypt. They had the desert, the Promised Land, Judges, Kings, destruction, and exile. During the centuries of exile and struggle with multiple empires, their culture and language were ravaged just like their countless lives. Fewer and fewer people could even speak or read Hebrew by the time the Word became Flesh. Fewer yet were those who cared about God and God’s laws enough to read the Scripture.
Oh Vowel
Still, the Scripture was miraculously preserved against all odds, again all in consonants. It wasn’t until around 1000 years after the exile that a group of people (Masoretes) attempted to add vowel notations (dots and strokes around the letters) to guarantee future generations’ ability to read the Scripture properly. Taking the Third Commandment literally and seriously, they deliberately replaced the vowels of God’s name with the vowels of “Adonai” (אֲדֹנָי, meaning “lord”), reminding people to literally say “Adonai” instead of His actual name. Thus, יהוה received the notation: יְהֹוָה (notice the similarity in the dots and strokes as Adonai). Therefore, יְהֹוָה is not strictly God’s name and is never meant to be pronounced as is.
But what if we forcefully read יְהֹוָה? It will sound like “Yehovah”. As previously discussed, Latin first translated all “Y” sounds with “I”, then later replaced all initial “I” with “J”, so what do we get? “Jehovah”.
Most English Bible versions understood the intention of the Masoretes and chose to use “Adonai”, or “Lord“, in place of God’s name. That’s why we don’t see “Jehovah” showing up in the Bible. To distinguish our God from other “lesser” lords, they made the word all capitalized: “The LORD”. (Go check Psalm 23:1 for example.)
What about “Yahweh“? “Yahweh” is our best attempt to restore the very original pronunciation of God’s name, reverently assigning YHWH with the vowels of Adonai, and Elohim (meaning “god”): “Yahweh”. Incidentally, God was often referred to as “Yah” in the Old Testament (translated to English as “jah” or “iah”), such as the familiar “Hallelujah” and names like Jeremiah and Nehemiah.
Takeaway
In most cases, how different languages pronounce God’s name isn’t an issue for interpreters. We just remember that “耶和華” = “The LORD”. But sometimes, there’s an intentional emphasis on God’s proper name, such as “耶和華以勒”. Then we may wonder, should we say “Jehovah Jireh”, “Yahweh Jireh”, “The LORD Jireh”, or “The LORD Who Provides”?
My take is, as long as we have honor and respect for God and God’s name in our hearts, any one of the above will do. We know, and God knows whom we are talking about. And honestly, don’t they all sound majestic and beautiful?
Photo by HeikoDoerr77 on Pixabay