God's Name

YHWH

Which directly translates to:

The name, יְהוָ֖ה, is the Tetragrammaton. Different groups transliterate the third Hebrew letter, ו, differently.

YHWH is the dominant academic spelling and is common in encyclopedias, biblical scholarship, many Christian reference works, and parts of the Hebrew Roots or Sacred Name movements. Jehovah's Witnesses usually write the divine name as Jehovah, though their glossary also gives YHWH or JHVH as possible transliterations.

YHWH is common in Jewish-English and Judaic teaching contexts, including Sefaria, Jewish Mystic or Kabbalah contexts, and some Christian Hebrew teachers such as Hebrew4Christians.

Pronounciation

The vowels are uncertain. The traditional English form "Jehovah" developed from reading the consonants of YHWH with vowel points that reminded readers to say "Adonai" instead of pronouncing the sacred name directly. In older English and related languages, the letter "J" was also pronounced more like a "Y" sound.

Others argue that "Jehovah" is incorrect because it combines YHWH with the vowels of Adonai; Encyclopedia.com calls "Jehovah" a later misunderstanding and says YHWH ought to be pronounced "Yahweh", while Britannica says scholars now widely use "Yahweh". Some pronounce it "Yahoveh" or just "Yah", the shortened version, but I could not verify a reliable public source for "Yahoveh".

Even the most popular "Yahweh" is still an approximation because the English language lacks certain Hebrew sounds that are required to pronounce the name like a native Hebrew speaker would. Historically the pronunciation is disputed, linguistically every English rendering is approximate, and different traditions judge different forms as acceptable or unacceptable. Jeff Benner, an expert on Ancient Hebrew, provides more detail on how to pronounce the name YHWH.

Another pronunciation used by some believers is “Yahuah” or “Yah-hoo-ah” because they want to restore what they believe is the original Hebrew sound of the name instead of following later Jewish and Christian traditions. Their pronunciation often comes from seeing Yah, Yahu, or -yahu sounds in Hebrew names such as Aviyah (אֲבִיָּה), Eliyahu (אֵלִיָּהוּ), Yeshayahu (יְשַׁעְיָהוּ), and Yirmeyahu (יִרְמְיָהוּ), then applying those sounds back to YHWH. These name patterns motivate this view but do not establish YHWH's pronunciation. Critics respond that the final “-ah” is not certain, because the final Hebrew letter heh does not always represent a clearly pronounced “ah” sound.

Because of this uncertainty, I did not add my own vowels to YHWH on this website so that you can pronounce it whichever way you are comfortable with. However, I do find it important to at least differentiate from the English word "lord" to avoid confusion and provide context of which god a scripture is referring to.

To summarize:

The point is not to force one pronunciation on everyone, but to preserve the distinction between God's personal name, His character and His authority, and the more general titles "god" and "lord". A name can identify who is being discussed, while the meaning of that name reveals what He is like and what authority He has.

LORD

The Jewish tradition is to avoid pronouncing the sacred name at all. Therefore, some read the Tetragrammaton YHWH as "Adonai" instead. Many English Bibles normally represent YHWH as "LORD", and they often use "GOD" when YHWH appears together with the Hebrew word "Adonai". Usually the translators would use the capitalized words "LORD" or "GOD" to indicate this substitution, however in the New Testament, YHWH's name is substituted with the lowercase "Lord".

For example, when Moses tries to uniquely identify his God among the foreign gods of the other nations, the translators change God's identity to a generic "lord" which simply means master.

Obviously, any god that you serve is your lord (master). Therefore, the translators turned Moses' important plea, to serve YHWH, into a silly statement. However, when you replace "the LORD" with God's original name, YHWH, the meaning of Deuteronomy changes to address specifically YHWH and not just any other god (idol).

Another example is:

In this case the Hebrew word "adonai" was translated to "Lord", meaning sovereign master or owner, and God's name "YHWH" was replaced with GOD. Although the same English words were used as the above example from Deuteronomy, the meaning is different because in this case Isaiah highlights that YHWH is the sovereign master or owner.

More examples:

Sadly God's name was completely removed from the New Testament, because most English Bibles even drop the capitalization which used to differentiate God's name from mortal lords for example:

Jesus was quoting the Shema:

which transliterates to:

Another example in Romans 12:19

This is a quote from Deuteronomy 32:35-36

Another example in Romans 14:11 (ESV):

This is a quote from Isaiah 45:

As you can see from the above examples, it is easy to confuse Jesus' words and God's words. Modern Bible translations often blur God the Father's and Jesus' personalities, authorities and roles.

Paul also quoted:

This is possibly a paraphrased quote from Isaiah 52:11:

Lord Jesus

To further add to the confusion, God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are all addressed as "Lord" with no clear distinction to which one the author was referring. For example:

and

Yet they would translate Paul's words:

Clearly there is now more than one "Lord" in our modern English Bibles. So what could Paul have meant?

2 Corinthians 6:17-18 is often quoted to prove that Jesus is "the Lord Almighty". However, Paul's quotation is built from Old Testament language where the speaker is YHWH, and the same speaker says, "I will be a father to you." That identifies the speaker as God the Father, not Jesus the Son. Therefore this passage should not be used to confuse YHWH's authority with Jesus' delegated authority.

Trinitarians would be quick to point out this "proof" that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one Lord. If this was true, then "Lord Pilate" (Matthew 27:63), "Lord Agrippa" (Acts 26:19) and all husbands (1 Peter 3:6) should also be included in the "Trinity".

Sadly, this tampering with God's name causes confusion with verses like:

A common assumption is that Jesus is the Spirit, but Jesus himself said:

Other lords

The Greek word "kurios" means Lord. That same word which substitutes God's name and also often refers to Jesus is also used in the following contexts:

• Property owners (Matthew 20:8), translated as “owner” in NIV
• Heads of households (Mark 13:35), translated as “owner”
• Slave owners (Matthew 10:24), translated as “master”
• Husbands (1 Peter 3:6), translated as “master” in NIV
• A son called his father "Lord" (Matthew 21:30), translated as “sir”
• The Roman Emperor (Acts 25:26), translated as “His Majesty”
• The King (Acts 26:19), translated as "King"
• Roman authorities (Matthew 27:63), translated as “sir”

That is why it is important to indicate to which "lord" one is referring. For example in a mixed community of different religions, everyone could serve a "lord", although they most likely would be serving different lords.

Knowing God's name

Moses wrote:

and

For most English readers this would make no sense because in the Western culture a name is simply a designation to identify someone or something.

However, the Hebrew word שֵׁם ("shem") translated as "name" means much more than a simple designation. It also means character, ownership or reputation. This completely changes the meaning of the above scriptures.

Instead of teaching people what to call God, we should rather declare His character (who He is) and His authority (what He does or will do) in all the earth and teach our children to do the same.

God

Unfortunately, the same word "god" could also refer to a mighty human leader or champion, an idol or a heavenly being and the word "lord" could also refer to any human in authority or an angel. Therefore, the Bible translators translated "God" with a capital letter G to indicate that they understood that it refers to the almighty God, or they would use a lowercase letter g to indicate that they understood that it refers to an idol, ruler or mighty one. In most cases it is obvious in the context which type of god the author is referring to.

However, we need to be mindful about this matter when we use quoted verses where the context is often lost and, as seen above, it is easy to get confused between which "lord" and which "god" the author is referring to, especially in Greek New Testament manuscripts written in majuscule script, containing Hebrew quotations rendered in Greek and later translated into English.