The Divine Name
THE DIVINE NAME
The Old Testament is rich in special names, titles and designations for God, which place translators under considerable pressure. The mere use of the word “God” to translate all of these terms has two immediate effects. First, it impoverishes the richness of the biblical language, reducing a galaxy of words to one single term. More seriously, the practice fails to make distinctions that are often important to understanding the meaning of the original Old Testament text.
Among the Old Testament titles for God, one stands out as being of special importance. This is the combination of four Hebrew letters, often written YHWH, and referred to by scholars as the “tetragram-maton.” This combination of four letters—remember that Hebrew does not indicate vowels, which have to be supplied by the reader—was used to designate God. It is now thought that this word would have been pronounced “Yahweh,” although many Jewish writers felt that the term was too sacred even to be pronounced, and substituted “Adonai” in deference to this.
The word is often found linked to others, including the Hebrew word sabaoth, which literally means “armies” or “hosts.” The translation of the phrase “YHWH sabaoth” thus posed considerable challenges to translators. The King James Bible can be said to have had a considerable influence on English ways of referring to God, by translating “YHWH” as “LORD”—note the deliberate and systematic use of uppercase letters—and the phrase “YHWH sabaoth” as “the LORD of hosts.” At four points (Exodus 6:3; Psalm 83:18; Isaiah 12:2, and Isaiah 26:4), however, a new name is introduced, which has entered into the English language. This is the word JEHOVAH, perhaps now most associated with a sectarian group known as the “Jehovah's Witnesses.” This term is used to translate YHWH in contexts in which the simple use of LORD causes various difficulties. The unusual word is constructed by taking each of the four consonants of the Hebrew word YHWH—here represented as JHVH—and inserting vowel sounds.