The Covenant Name of God

I recently subscribed to Bibliotheca Sacra, a quarterly published by the Dallas Theological Seminary. I have read three or four of the articles in the two issues I have since received, and in every case I have found the authors referring to God by the name Yahweh.

Please let me start by saying, for the record, that God's name is not Yahweh!

I suppose it was some twenty years ago, at least that was when I first heard of this, that someone transliterated the covenant name of God from Hebrew, and said, "There are no vowels here! This isn't pronounceable! Let's pronounce it 'Yahweh!'" Let me reiterate this, just in case the irony passed unnoticed the first time. Someone said, "This isn't pronounceable! Let's pronounce it 'Yahweh!'" Since then theological students the world over have all been learning to pronounce the unpronounceable "Yahweh."

But there are two problems here. One, the covenant name of God is not unpronounceable, and two, it is not pronounced "Yahweh!"

You may have guessed that this is a pet peeve of mine. Nonetheless, I do understand how this confusion perpetuates. The covenant name of God, in Hebrew, is spelled %&%* (yod-he-vav-he), which transliterates "YHWH" or "YHVH," with no vowels. And if you've ever seen an observant Jew write God's name in English, they write it "G-d," leaving out the vowel.

The name of God has been a big issue for the Jews going back at least as far as Moses. Confronted by God in the burning bush, what did Moses ask God? He asked God's name? And God told Moses, "I AM THAT I AM:... Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you," (Exodus 3: 14; excerpted).

So there is a long history of issues concerning the name of God. Still the question remains, why don't the Jews include vowels when they write the name of God? And the answer is, it depends. Oh to be sure, they do not write the vowels in God's name. But the why depends largely on who's doing the writing, and in what language they're writing.

Many people believe that Jews write God's name as G-d because they are observing the commandment against taking the Lord's name in vain. The errant logic holds that since Jews believe one must not utter God's name in vain, then they must also believe that they should not even write it casually. But this is not why observant Jews abstain from writing the name of God.

Neither do they decline to write God's name in deference to the commandment against making a graven image of God. Some believe that observant Jews consider the written word a type of graven image, and to write His name would therefore constitute a graven image of God. Again, this is wrong.

Observant Jews do not write God's name because of His commandment to them in Deuteronomy 12.

These are the statutes and judgments, which ye shall observe to do in the land, which the LORD God of thy fathers giveth thee to possess it, all the days that ye live upon the earth. Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree: And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place. Ye shall not do so unto the LORD your God. (Deuteronomy 12: 1 - 4; emphasis added).

Observant Jews do not write God's name so that it can never be erased.

But is this why they spell His name %&%* (yod-he-vav-he), with no vowels, in scripture? Hardly. They don't include any vowels in %&%* (yod-he-vav-he), in scripture, for the same reason they don't include vowels in any other words in scripture. Because there are no vowels in Hebrew.

Okay, maybe that's an oversimplification. But the Hebrew alephbet indeed has no vowels. Instead, the Hebrew language uses diacritical marks to aid in pronunciation. Nonetheless, most people who are fluent in Hebrew don't write the diacriticals/vowels in their daily correspondence because they see them as superfluous, unnecessary. The diacriticals are like training wheels that they have long outgrown.

As for scripture, the Sephardim (Scribes) are forbidden to use the diacriticals when they write scriptures. And that's why there are no vowels in %&%* (yod-he-vav-he), because there are no vowels in all of scripture. Of course, the Jews know how to pronounce all the other words in scripture, and they know how to pronounce %&%* (yod-he-vav-he), the covenant name of God. It's pronounced "Yehovah" in Hebrew, and "Jehovah" in English. It is not, at least ever by me, pronounced "Yahweh."

And so it seems that the two anomalies of language are unrelated. The Jews don't include the vowel when writing God's name so as to prevent anyone from ever erasing it, they don't include vowels in their daily language because they're unnecessary, and they don't include vowels in scripture because it is forbidden.

But then one must ask, why is it forbidden for the Sephardim to use vowels in scriptures? Is it possible that these linguistic anomalies are not so unrelated after all? Clearly, not including the vowel is how the Jews learned to avoid writing the name of God. And they must have learned not to use vowels when reading and writing by learning to read and write from scriptures. So why is it forbidden for the Sephardim to use vowels in scripture?

I can't speak for the Sephardim. I don't know what they would say if asked this question. I suspect they would say that they aren't explicitly forbidden from using vowels. It's just that every stroke of the pen, while writing scripture, is well defined and those definitions don't include the vowels. Still, that amounts to being implicitly forbidden, and I do not know why. But I do know this. In his gospel, John tells us that Jesus is the Word.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ... And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth (John 1: 1, 14).

I do not claim to understand the reality of this, any more than I can understand the reality of a triune God. Nonetheless, there it is, and I believe that in a very real and deeply meaningful way Jesus is the Word. And so maybe, just maybe, God's reason for giving the Sephardim the instructions He did was related to His commandments in Deuteronomy 12 after all. And then again, maybe not. I'd have to deliberate the matter a lot more than I have before I would hold this position adamantly.

In either case, His covenant name, %&%* (yod-he-vav-he), is pronounced Jehovah, not Yahweh!

Comments or questions? I'd like to hear them. Comments