The Names of God in the Old Testament 7 min read Lesson 2 of 12

The four letters God gave as his name forever, why almost every English Bible hides them, and why this one does not

Yahweh: The Name, and What “the LORD” Did to It

God has a name in the Old Testament. It is there some six thousand eight hundred times, more than any other word for him, and it was given to Moses with the words "this is my name forever." Open most English Bibles and you will not find it once. In its place stand four capital letters, LORD, which is not a name but a title, and the reason is a history worth knowing.

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Lesson 2 of 12 · The name

Yahweh is the personal name of the God of Israel: four Hebrew letters, YHWH, given at the bush and used throughout the Old Testament by the people who knew him. Out of reverence, Jews stopped pronouncing it centuries before Christ and said Adonai, "my Lord," in its place; the Greek translators wrote Kyrios, Lord; the English translators followed, in capitals, and so the name became a title on nearly every page. "Jehovah" is an accident of that history — the name’s consonants read with the vowels of the word said instead. This reader’s main text prints the name, which is why its verses read differently from the ones you may know, and why this series can be taught here at all.

This is my name forever

Moses asks what he is to say when the people ask who sent him, and the answer comes in two parts. The second is the name.

God said moreover to Moses, “You shall tell the children of Israel this, ‘Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and this is my memorial to all generations. — Exodus 3:15 · WEB

Read the comment on I AM WHO I AM

Yahweh, the God of your fathers: this is my name forever, my memorial to all generations. It is given as a name, to be remembered and used, and the rest of the Old Testament uses it. Read it in the WEB, as this page does, and the name stands where it was written. Read it in the King James and the sentence says "the LORD," and something has been swapped.

יְהֹוָה Yᵉhôvâh H3068

from הָיָה; (the) self-Existent or Eternal; Jehovah, Jewish national name of God; Jehovah, the Lord. Compare יָהּ, יְהֹוִה.

Four consonants, YHWH, connected by Exodus 3 with the verb to be: he is, or he causes to be. Read the lexicon’s own lemma with care. It gives the word as Yehovah, and that form is the history of the name in miniature: the four consonants of YHWH written with the vowels of Adonai, the word Jewish readers said aloud in its place, so that no one reading the text would pronounce the name by accident. Christian scholars who did not know the convention read the hybrid as a word and got "Jehovah." The pronunciation Yahweh is a reconstruction from Greek transcriptions and the name’s shortened forms — the yah in hallelujah, the -iah in Isaiah — and it is the best there is, but it is a reconstruction. The consonants are certain. The sound is scholarship.

The name they would not say

The reverence began early and had a text behind it.

“You shall not misuse the name of Yahweh your God, for Yahweh will not hold him guiltless who misuses his name. — Exodus 20:7 · WEB

Read the comment on The First Table

You shall not misuse the name of Yahweh your God — take it in vain, in the older wording. By the last centuries before Christ, the surest way to keep that commandment seemed to be not to take the name at all, and the name was spoken only by the high priest, once a year, in the temple. Everywhere else Adonai was said, and in the synagogue ha-Shem, the Name. When the Old Testament was translated into Greek, the translators wrote Kyrios, Lord, for the name — the same word they used for Adonai — and the New Testament, quoting that translation, inherited it. That is why Jesus is called Lord in a sentence that quotes a psalm about Yahweh, and why the two are sometimes the same claim.

“that they may know that you alone, whose name is Yahweh, are the Most High over all the earth.” Psalm 83:18 · WEB
That they may know that you alone, whose name is Yahweh, are the Most High: a verse that exists to say the name, and in the King James it is one of only four places the name survives as "JEHOVAH."
““I am Yahweh. That is my name. I will not give my glory to another, nor my praise to engraved images.” Isaiah 42:8 · WEB
I am Yahweh, that is my name; my glory I will not give to another: the name as the thing God will not share.
“Yahweh says to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool for your feet.”” Psalm 110:1 · WEB
Yahweh says to my Lord: two different words in Hebrew — the name and Adonai — flattened to "the LORD said unto my Lord" in the King James, where the distinction the psalm turns on is carried only by the capital letters.
“It will happen that whoever will call on Yahweh’s name shall be saved; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be those who escape, as Yahweh has said, and among the remnant, those whom Yahweh calls.” Joel 2:32 · WEB
Whoever will call on the name of Yahweh shall be saved: quoted by Peter at Pentecost and by Paul in Romans, both of them of Jesus.

The English convention

The translators of 1611 knew all this and chose the convention that the Geneva Bible and the Great Bible had used before them: LORD in small capitals wherever the Hebrew has the name, Lord in ordinary letters wherever it has Adonai, GOD in capitals where the name follows Adonai. It is a careful system and it is invisible to most readers, who see capital letters as emphasis. Nearly every English Bible since has kept it. A handful have not — the American Standard Version of 1901 printed Jehovah throughout, the Jerusalem Bible printed Yahweh, and the World English Bible, this reader’s main text, prints Yahweh — and each was criticised for it, the first for the sound, the others for putting into readers’ mouths a word Jews will not say. That criticism is worth respecting. It is also worth knowing that the text itself says the name is to be remembered to all generations.

Not known by my name

One verse in this history is genuinely contested, and a reader will meet it.

I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty; but by my name Yahweh I was not known to them. — Exodus 6:3 · WEB

Read the comment on I Am Yahweh: Seven Promises

I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name Yahweh I was not known to them. Yet Genesis uses the name from its second chapter and puts it in the patriarchs’ mouths. Some readers take Exodus 6 at its word and hold that the name was new with Moses and Genesis uses it in hindsight; some hold that "known" here means known in its full sense, as the God who keeps covenant and delivers, which the exodus was about to show; some hold that different sources in the Pentateuch used different words. The lesson does not settle it. It notes that the question is about when the name was revealed, and no reading of it removes the name from the text.

What the name asks

It asks to be called on. The Old Testament’s standing phrase is to call on the name of Yahweh, from Abram at his altar to Joel’s last days, and a title cannot be called on the way a name can. Whatever a reader decides about saying it aloud, the text expects God to be addressed as someone with a name, by people who know it.