The name "Jehovah" is NOT a mistake!
I know many of you viewing this video will disagree. You might even point to the fact that the Organization of Jehovah's Witnesses itself has admitted that Yahweh is the more correct form of the divine name in English.
They wrote this way back in 1964 to justify their use of Jehovah in their New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures which was first published in its entirety in 1961.
If the publishing agency for Jehovah's Witnesses recognizes that "Yahweh" is more correct, why do they use "Jehovah" in their translation, writing, and worship instead? Because the form "Jehovah" has been familiar to people for many centuries, and that form of the Name, just as faithfully as other forms, preserves the sounds of the four consonants of the Tetragrammaton. (w64 7/15 p. 423 What Is The Name?)
So, the Watchtower Society, the publishing agency for Jehovah’s Witnesses, recognized that Yahweh is more correct than Jehovah way back in 1964! There you have it. Do you now feel justified in using Yahweh instead of Jehovah?
But hold on just a second, people! We no longer take anything the Organization publishes as true simply because they say so, or even because they may happen to agree with what we think is true. Maybe they're wrong about Yahweh being the more correct way to pronounce God's name. Let’s face it. They’ve been wrong about a great many things.
Now, you might counter this by stating that the majority of Bible scholars also believe Yahweh is correct. Again, does the majority rule? The majority of Bible scholars also believe in the Trinity, but we've shown that their belief cannot be supported exegetically from Scripture.
So, let's take a fresh look at this question of the proper pronunciation of God's name. And when I say "fresh look," I'm talking specifically to anyone who has been negatively affected in life by the Watchtower Organization. Our minds are association engines, making cross-references constantly, such that if you've been negatively affected by people claiming to represent a God named Jehovah, you're not going to like that name very much, are you?
But that's not fair, is it? The Jews in Jesus' day believed in the God of the Old Testament, and they knew how to pronounce the four letters that make up the tetragrammaton. But those same believers in the God of the Bible killed God’s son. And they did so, believing they were rendering a sacred service to God.
And how did that turn out for them? Their God took away their temple, their city, their nation, and their lives. So, let's be very careful about dismissing Jehovah just because some people who carry his name have done us wrong. God does not take kindly to those who do not show the proper respect for his name.
I opened this video with a categorical statement that the name Jehovah is not a mistake. I will now qualify that by saying that when the letter J was pronounced in centuries past, it sounded like a Y. In modern English, the pronunciation has changed the sound of J to a voiced consonant. So, if we are to keep with the way it was pronounced back in the 1500s, we should write it this way: Yehováh. The last syllable is where the accent should be. So a more accurate statement would be: The name Yehováh is not a mistake.
Why don't I like Yahweh? Well, to begin with, when we examine the Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament, the vowel points that would produce Yahweh are simply not there — not even once. What we do find are thousands of instances across over a thousand manuscripts (to date) of the vowel points that produce Yehováh. That is not a minor detail. If the correct pronunciation were Yahweh, we would expect to find those vowels somewhere in the Hebrew manuscript tradition. We don't. What we find instead, consistently and repeatedly, is Yehováh.
I call that pretty conclusive evidence.
Ah, some will counter that Yehovah is just the four letters of the Tetragrammaton with the vowel points from Adonai (Lord) inserted. I used to believe that too, because I learned it from the publications of the Watchtower Society — a not entirely trustworthy source, as it turns out.
What do we know for sure?
First, we know that the Jews in the time of Jesus spoke and wrote Hebrew. One sterling piece of evidence is the inscription the Romans posted over the head of Christ. It was written in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.
Second, we have proof that the divine name was spoken in the Temple. The Mishnah, a written collection of Jewish oral laws and traditions compiled around 200 CE, confirms that the High Priest pronounced the divine name on the Day of Atonement and the people responded by bowing.
Now, there is the fact that for centuries there was a practice of substituting Lord or God for the divine name when reading from the Hebrew Scriptures in a synagogue. It was a process known as Qere-Ketiv — meaning "What is written, what is read." They wrote one thing, but they read another.
It is true that the vowels from Adonai were inserted into YHWH, but not because the Jews forgot the correct pronunciation. Rather, it served as a flag to the rabbi reading from the Scriptures to substitute Adonai for the divine name.
Think about it. The vowels from Adonai are a-o-ai. Wouldn't that produce Yahovai? Any Hebrew rabbi would know that was not God's name, so they wouldn't mistakenly pronounce it — they would substitute Adonai instead. That was the purpose for the vowel substitution. But what happened when they came to a part of the Bible like Genesis 15:2, which reads in Smith's Literal Translation, "And Abram will say, My Lord Jehovah, what wilt thou give to me…"?
The rabbi could hardly read that as "My Lord Lord." That would be silly. So, in cases where Adonai was used as a title before the divine name, the scribes used the vowel letters from Elohim (God) so that the rabbi would read "My Lord God."
But here's the thing. In recent years, thanks to the Vatican opening up its archives to the online community and thanks to the ability to make comparisons electronically from large database archives, serious scholars have uncovered over a thousand manuscripts containing the proper vowel points producing Yehováh. And it's not just one occurrence per manuscript — each of those manuscripts contains multiple instances of the correct vowel pointing. The cumulative weight of that evidence is considerable.
Here's what they found over and over. They found places where the divine name occurred repeatedly in a passage, and among the multiple instances of Adonai pointing, they'd find an instance where the scribe slipped up and wrote the name with the proper vowels, producing Yehováh. I say slipped up — but who knows. Was the conscience at work? Was holy spirit involved? That's all speculation, but what is not speculation is that we now have thousands of instances where the vowel points are not from Adonai nor Elohim. For that, those scribes deserve a posthumous “Thank you very much,” from each of us.
Now some are going to jump in and counter with the objection that Yah is the short form of the divine name, so that makes Yahweh the more likely choice. They'll also say that the word Hallelujah has Yah in it, so again Yahweh seems to fit. If you are really interested in the intricacies of Hebrew pronunciation and grammar, I would recommend you spend some time on the YouTube channel Nehemia's Wall. He’s a renown Hebrew scholar who'll explain how and why a syllable like Yeh at the start of Yehovah becomes Yah when put at the end of a Hebrew word. It's got nothing to do with theology. It's just the rules of the Hebrew language.
But most of us get bored when we have to get into rules of grammar, so instead I've found an easier and, for me, more convincing way to establish Yehováh over Yahweh.
Everyone agrees that the name of God's Son is Jesus. But Jesus is an English transliteration of the Latin Iesus. Again, we see how the J comes from a Y sound. But the Latin Iesus comes from the Greek Iēsous (Ἰησοῦς), which in turn is a transliteration of the Hebrew Yeshua. And here's where it gets interesting. You see, is a Hebrew contraction from the post-Babylonian exile. What is it a contraction of you ask. Well, prior to the Babylonian exile and going all the way back to the time of Moses, the name was Yehoshua.
Yehoshua is derived from two Hebrew words: Yehovah/YHWH (יְהוָה) and yāshaʿ (יָשַׁע), meaning "to save."
But Christ wasn't the first human in the Bible to bear that name.
The man who eventually led God's people Israel into the promised land was named originally name Hoshea son of Nun of the tribe of Ephraim. But he was renamed by Moses.
"These are the names of the men Moses sent to explore the land. (Moses gave Hoshea son of Nun the name Joshua.)" (Numbers 13:16 NIV)
Joshua is the anglicized version of Yehoshua as is Jesus.
Now, everybody accepts Yehoshua as a valid transliteration from the Hebrew. Likewise, there are other names beginning with Yeho- that everyone, from Bible scholars down to laymen, agrees are valid. Names like:
Yehonatan (Jonathan), which means "Yehovah gives" or "Gift of Yehovah."
Yehoshaphat, which means "Yehovah has judged" or "Yehovah is judge."
Yehoyada, which means "Yehovah knows" or "Known by Yehovah."
Notice that all these names start with Yeho-, which makes sense if God's name is Yehovah.
And no one argues about the proper pronunciation of Yeho- as part of Yehoshua. So that takes care of the first two syllables. What about the last syllable — vah — in Yehovah?
When the divine name appears at the end of a person's name, it becomes yah, as in Isaiah or Jeremiah.
Isaiah means "Yehovah is salvation." Jeremiah means "Yehovah will exalt."
This gets a little technical, but there is a rule in Hebrew that when a syllable is stressed, the vowel becomes lengthened. So Yeh at the start is a short vowel, but when moved to the end of a word it goes long and becomes yah. Sorry — I had to sneak a little technical language into the transcript.
I saw a video of a group pushing for Yahweh as the only legitimate pronunciation. So what happened when they came to Jesus' post-exile Hebrew name, Yeshua? Guess what — they changed it to Yahshua. That is eisegesis on steroids.
There is much more to this subject and I urge you to investigate further and make up your own mind based on the evidence. I just wanted to explain why I now use Yehovah.
Of course, if I'm dealing with specific JW topics and targeting a video for a JW audience, I'll still use Jehovah and Jesus. Why complicate things for them, right?
But for pure Bible-based topics, I'll go with Yehovah and Yeshua or Yehoshua as my default pronunciation of both names.
Okay, we’re done with pronunciation now. But why should we still use the divine name? After all, once we are adopted by God as his children, we naturally want to call him Abba Father. Should we just put his name on a shelf and never use it. That would be wrong. Why? Well, that will be the topic of the next video in this series on the Divine Name.
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