“Therefore my people will know my name.” (Isaiah 52:6)
tradition passed down from generation
to generation directly from Moses,
which would mean it could be lost in
history? Or..... has it been preserved
somewhere in Jewish tradition?
How do we say “YHWH” without
knowing the vowels between the
The “LORD” (YHWH) God of your fa- consonants?
thers, the God of Abraham, the God of In this New Covenant age, when we
Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent walk in God’s presence and can hear
me unto you: this is my name for ever,
His voice as we enjoy a personal reand this is my memorial unto all generlationship with Him through Yeshations; [Exodus :4:16].
ua, it has often discomfited me that
We see clearly from this text that we should be unsure of how to say
YHWH is God’s name throughout the written name of God, the Father.
all generations! This is the name of Should we have to wait until Heavnames! It is mentioned 6829 times in en to ask Him how to pronounce His
the Bible. (No other name comes even name? Some might not consider this
close to that number). It is THE most of much importance, since we can
dominant name in the Bible. And a always call Him, “Father”, yet how
person’s name is not merely an appel- many of us would not be uncomfortlation (title) but denotes his identity, able if someone addressed us by our
and suggests important qualities of name, but pronounced it wrong, or
being and character to the world out- even worse, constantly called us by
side himself. YHWH is God’s cove- a title instead of our personal name?
nant Name, the name He declared was And since it is God’s covenant Name,
forever, from generation to generation, by which He will be known by all gen[Exodus 3:15]. Then in Exodus 6 God erations, it also seems significant that
twice declares his name is YHWH, we actually pronounce it somehow.
and goes on to state that our fathers After all, it is the scriptural identifiAbraham, Isaac, and Jacob never cation of the Creator’s eternal Name!
knew Him by the name of YHWH.
But how do we pronounce this precious name? Does it matter? Is the
name forbidden to pronounce, as the
Rabbis assert? Since original Biblical
Hebrew has no vowels, one would
think that the true pronunciation of the
Name could only be known by oral
Blessings
in the
Mighty
Name of
Yahweh,
Netanel
& Dikla
Nickalls
& Family
And even more important, the very
Name of God carries authority and
power and blessing just to be uttered,
if it’s not uttered “in vain”, but with
hallowed awe and deep respect. The
common practice is to use the term
which was substituted for the Name,
in the Authorized King James version,
the term “LORD”. But this is a title,
not a name! It is an alteration of the
very word of God. And I’m not at all
sure that the Creator, who very intentionally gave us His personal Name, is
happy to be constantly addressed by a
title, instead of the Name He gave us.
So I submit a tentative personal conclusion based on my own study and
meditation on this subject, with the
suggestion that we begin at least to
consider addressing our Father by His
rightful Name, especially when we
read the Bible, (even if we may not be
100% sure how to pronounce it).
Now, “yaweh”, in Hebrew, is a verb
which means, “to constitute, bring
into being, or fulfill a promise or covenant”. And I believe this is the strongest support we have that God’s name
is pronounced “Yahweh”. Let me explain: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had
the promise of the land. But they never
actually inherited the land, remaining
sojourners in it. They knew God as
El Shaddai. But to Moses, in Exodus
6:4, God explains that He established
His land covenant with them, and He
tells Moses that “YHWH” is His Covenant Name! So the pronunciation of
the verb “yaweh”, which means “to
constitute or fulfill a promise or ‘covenant’, could well be the very key to
the pronunciation of the Name of the
Covenant making God! I believe this
linguistic key points us in the right direction toward the correct pronunciation of “YHWH”. But there is more...
“A name in the Past spoken”
Here are some interesting facts: history and Jewish Holy books clearly teach
us that the pronunciation of “YHWH”
was prohibited in the time of the high
priest Simeon the Just around 200 BC.
(“Whoever pronounces the name forfeits his portion in the future world”
[Talmud Sanh. x1.1]) The Rabbis, who
still believe and teach this to this day,
went to great measures to prevent anybody from accidentally pronouncing
God’s name. To accomplish this they
used a substitute for each of the 6829
times it was written in the Tenach
(OT), using vowels which they knew
were incorrect when their scribes
copied the Bible by hand, so that
the pronunciation of the Name was
altered by the use of vowels which
were known to be inaccurate.
Their method was to remove the
correct vowels from the word
“YHWH” (according to the pronunciation which they believed was the
true one), and then insert the vowels
from the word “Lord” (“Adonai”).
Thus the name “Jehovah” was formulated, successfully hiding the
true pronunciation. Today, religious Jews are extremely unwilling to even give a hint of the correct pronunciation, and instead of
pronouncing God’s name, they say,
“the name” (“Hashem”), or “Elohim”; and if they are very religious,
“Elokim”. Yet we know for certain
that King David, all the kings and all
the prophets pronounced God’s covenant name without any restrictions.
But there is a remarkable and important exception to this practice. Every
year, just as Yom Kippur ends and
the sun goes down, Jews are allowed
to pronounce this sacred name, because at that time, having repented
and prepared an entire mouth, then
fasted and thoroughly confessed all
their sins, the Rabbis consider observant Jews to be holy enough to utter
the Holy Name. And if you happen
to be at the Western wall in Jerusalem, or within earshot of Orthodox
Rabbis at this unique moment, you
will hear the name.... “Yahweh” being spoken aloud into the air... but
never, “Jehovah”. So, apparently
they do believe they have the correct pronunciation; they have simply made it a very well-kept secret...
first translated into English by William Tyndale. Tyndale was greatly
influenced by Galatinus and wrote
“IEHOUAH” for the name of God.
90 years later, the original 1617
King James version exchanged the
“u” for a “v”, and thus the name
In 1509 a Catholic Priest by the “Yehovah” was “memorialized” for
name of Pietro Galatinus who stud- posterity.
ied oriental languages in Rome, was
meditating on the name “Jehovah”; And while we know that Yeshua, the
(which, remember, the Rabbis were only Son and image of the Father reusing to disguise the real pronuncia- veals Himself as one who was, is and
tion). Galatinus came up with anoth- is to come, the fact remains that the
er interpretation which he published covenant name of “YHWH” is most
in 1520. His thesis was that the three closely derived from a Hebrew word
letters “Ye”, “ho” “Vah”, are abbre- with a meaning with which He Himviations of three Hebrew words, self identified: i.e. “to constitute,
“was” , “is”, and “will come”. This bring into being, or fulfill a promwas an arbitrary formulation with ise or covenant”. Hebrew names are
no direct scriptural support, though especially expressive and all have
it could easily be argued from scrip- meanings. Our Father carefully
ture that God is eternal in both di- chose the Hebrew Name by which
rections of time. Nevertheless after He would be eternally identified, a
1509 this meditation on the falsified Name which renders a powerful expronunciation of the covenant name pression of His nature and identity. I
of YHWH became an established believe that Name is “Yahweh”, and
“truth” concerning the interpretation I feel personally privileged and even
of the name of our Creator. Before obligated to speak this Holy Name
1509 there was no interest or argu- which the Creator chose and gave us
ment at all in the church concern- in Scripture to be called by us for all
ing the correct pronunciation of the generations.
name of God. Just a few years after
Galatinus, in 1527, the Bible was
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