Shalom everyone,
Is the vocalisation of ‘Yahveh’ or ‘Yehovah’ correct? The answer is: both are correct. I’ll explain more a bit further on.
But before I begin, I need to say that I personally LOVE the Holy Name! Christians have a deep and emotional connection with the name of ‘Jesus’. However, in my ministry, I have tried instead to instil in the people I teach a deep, reverential love for the Name of YHVH – to have a profound, unassailable love of YHVH, through using the Holy Name. Isa 56:6 speaks about loving the Name of YHVH; surely, in order to love God’s Name, you have to know what that name is, and use it. I have found that using the Holy Name in my personal prayer has greatly deepened my connection to YHVH, in a way that NEVER happened for me when I tried saying ‘Hashem’ instead (which is the word used by the mainstream to avoid God’s Name). Being perfectly honest and frank, ‘Hashem’ became an impenetrable, spiritual barrier for me, which came down once I started calling on the actual Name of YHVH, my One true Saviour and Redeemer.
What the Holy Name can do for YOU!
The sacred Name of YHVH is a bridge between the intangibility and unseeing-ness of heaven, and the physical, experiential nature of this world.
I recall something that a rabbi once said to me, that I found very revealing and impactful. She said, “I wish we Jews could have a close, personal and emotional relationship with Hashem, in the same way as Christians have a close personal relationship with Jesus”. Why would she say such a thing?
In mainstream Judaism, God rules up there in a distant heaven, but on earth, it is the rabbis who hold sway. On earth, mainstream tradition teaches that the rabbis can overrule God (consider how Maimonides taught that the majority rules – if there were 1000 prophets delivering God’s ruling, of the same calibre as Moses and Elijah, and 1001 rabbis holding a contrary opinion, then the 1001 rabbis win out, because the majority rules). This is how rabbinic Judaism justifies the overruling of Torah with the Oral Law. In Talmidaism, no one can overrule God.
It has always been a keystone part of my ministry, which I have tried to instil in those I teach, that it is indeed possible to have a close, personal and vibrant relationship with YHVH. Part of that loving relationship involves using the Holy Name, as a way of bringing ourselves ever closer and closer to YHVH.
If you use the Holy Name in the right way, with the appropriate reverence and care, your mind starts to emotionally associate the very pronouncing of the Holy Name with a state of peace, comfort, blessedness, hope, and love. By doing this regularly, over time, simply pronouncing the Holy Name with such caring and loving reverence will instantly evoke these good things within you – this is how to enable the Holy Name to live within you!
Allowing God’s Holy Name to dwell within you
The practice of imbuing the pronunciation of God’s Name with all these good things, enables you to write YHVH’s wonderful and awesome Name on your heart, so that you have a tangible ‘something’ of our living God within you permanently. Being mortal humans, we cannot physically take hold of a Being who is invisible and incorporeal, but we can take hold of God’s Name and embrace it, inscribing it indelibly on our heart and soul, so that the holiness of YHVH’s Name truly lives within us! YHVH is with you, because the goodness of YHVH’s Name lives within you!
When YHVH’s Holy Name lives within you, it will bring you peace; saying ‘Hashem’ cannot do that, simply because it is not God’s Name. Using God’s uniquely powerful Name will deepen your love for YHVH; it will create a sacred and unassailable, unconquerable Sanctuary within you for God’s living Presence, so that your soul is protected from any evil that might come to destroy you or upset you.
This is all because calling on YHVH’s actual Name will save you (Joel 2:32: ‘Everyone who calls on the Name of YHVH will be saved’) – that is, calling on YHVH, while acknowledging that YHVH is your only Saviour, your only Sovereign, and your only Redeemer.
Using YHVH’s Name will deepen and strengthen your relationship with God, and bring you intimately closer to God, so that you need never be jealous of the Christian relationship with the name of ‘Jesus’. YHVH is not just up there in a distant heaven; YHVH is here, right next you, within your very heart and soul!
So how was the Holy Name pronounced?
Scholars have boiled it down to two possibilities: either Yahveh / Yahweh, or Yehovah.
Until recently, it was considered that Yahveh with a v was correct. Increasingly, scholars are now coming to the view that originally, in ancient Classical Hebrew it would have been Yahweh. However, by the 1st century BCE, because of the influence of Aramaic, it became Yahveh. In the Galilee, the sound made by the letter vav was already a v-sound by the 1st century CE, while in Mishnaic Hebrew in Judea, it was still in transition from w to v – sometimes a w, and sometimes a v. Use whichever pronunciation is most meaningful and holy to you. In this article, I shall use Yahveh, because that is how I have heard God pronounce God’s own Name in my spiritual experiences.
So which one is correct – Yahveh, or Yehovah? The answer is, they both are. One is God’s actual Name, and the other is simply a title of God (‘name’ and ‘title’ are the same word in Hebrew: sheim).
Historical evidence for ‘Yahveh’
The Holy Name vocalised as ‘Yahveh’ is an amalgam of all three tenses of the Hebrew verb ‘to be‘ – lihyot: hayah, hoveh, and yihyeh. ‘Yahveh’ therefore literally means, ‘The One who was, is, and will be’.
As an aside, I just need to write a quick note here on the words, “I AM WHO I AM” (Ex 3:14), which is often described as being one of God’s names. This is a regularly quoted mistranslation of the Hebrew, ehyeh asher ehyeh. It actually means, ‘I will be who I will be’ (if you don’t believe me, just check in any good Hebrew grammar, or a Hebrew verb-conjugation book). When Moses asked God for God’s Name, and God said, ehyeh asher ehyeh, what God meant by saying that was, ‘I won’t just tell you My Name, I will show you My Name, by what I am going to do for the Israelites’. This interpretation is because sheim (‘name’) also means ‘reputation’.
Now, because ancient Israelites regularly pronounced the Holy Name, Gentiles in pre-rabbinic times were able to hear it being pronounced, and consequently were able to transcribe the Holy Name in their own writing, using their own alphabets. For example, in the Temple of Amun at Soleb in Egypt, built by Amenhotep III in about 1400 BCE, in two inscriptions they describe a nomadic people in the far eastern Sinai, mentioning that they are ‘of Yahweh’.
One of the inscriptions spells the Holy Name as YH-HW-WE, vocalised as Ya-hu-wey (see Unearthing the Bible, by Titus Kennedy, page 61). The inscriptions mention several groups of ‘Shasu’ (the Egyptian word for ‘nomads’), and the two relevant inscriptions mention, ‘the Land of the Nomads of Yahhuwe’.
In ancient Jewish amulets written in Greek, the Holy Name is written as ΙΑΒΗ (Yabē), or ΙΑΟΥΕ Yaouē (pronounced Yaowē – ancient Greek also had no ‘V’ sound, so they would either substitute it with a ‘B’ or a ‘W’ sound).
Ancient Coptic manuscripts (e.g. Apocryphon of John, which appears in three versions in the Nag Hammadi Library) also transcribed the Holy Name in a similar way (Iawē). And Clement of Alexandria reported in the late 2nd century CE that Jewish mystics pronounced the Name as Ⲓⲁⲩⲉ (Yaouē).
The overwhelming historical evidence is that, before the Pharisaic ban, the ancient Israelites pronounced the Holy Name as ‘Yahweh’ or ‘Yahveh’, and Gentiles around the Mediterranean heard it being pronounced like that.
Linguistic and grammatical evidence for ‘Yehovah’
However, there is also evidence that the Holy Name was later pronounced as Yehovah (such as how it is vocalised and pointed by the Masoretes in the traditional Hebrew text of the Bible). This form is nevertheless more of a title than an actual name; Yehovah means, ‘Yahveh exists’ or ‘Yahveh is’.
Let me explain. When the Holy Name forms part of someone’s personal name, the word ‘Yahveh’ mutates (changes), in accordance with the rules of the Hebrew language. When it goes at the end of a name, it becomes the suffix -yahu (e.g. Eliyahu / Elijah, Yeshayahu / Isaiah, Yirmeyahu / Jeremiah etc). However, when it goes at the start of a Hebrew name, it becomes the prefix Yeho-.
Yeho- is a prefix, and -yahu is a suffix. I therefore need to mention here, that the practice of saying Yeshua’s name as ‘Yahushua’ or ‘Yahshua’ is grammatically incorrect; no Hebrew- or Aramaic-speaker would ever have made such a strange-sounding error in speech (it actually sounds a little grating or dissonant to an Aramaic speaker, the same way as if an English-speaker were to say Jaa-sus instead of Jesus). His name would always have been pronounced as YēshÅ«a, being the Aramaic form of the Hebrew YēhÅshÅ«a. Yeshua is Aramaic, Yehoshua is Hebrew.
Here are some examples of the prefix Yeho- being used in Hebrew Names (note that the verb also mutates when creating a name):
Yahveh + yoshaʽ becomes Yeho-shuaʽ› (Joshua / Jesus), which means, ‘Yahveh saves’
Yahveh + yithen becomes Yeho-nathan (Jonathan), which means, ‘Yahveh has given’
Yahveh + yishpot becomes Yeho-shafat (Jehosaphat), which means, ‘Yahveh judges’
In the same way:
Yahveh + hoveh [is / exists] becomes Yeho-vah (Jehovah).
The vocalisation of the Holy Name as ‘Yehovah’ is therefore not a name per se, but rather an affirmation meaning, ‘Yahveh exists’ or ‘Yahveh is’.
My conclusion is that the unique, individual, personal Name of the God of Israel, is Yahveh (‘The One who was, is and will be‘), and one of the many, many titles of God is Yehovah (‘Yahveh exists’). This conclusion of ‘Yahveh‘ as God‘s Name is the overwhelming, scholarly consensus, for all the reasons I have explained above.
So, which one should we use? My advice has always been: use whichever one feels holier to you, and instils you with a deep feeling of reverence. If God’s actual Name feels holier, then say ‘Yahveh’; if God’s title feels holier, say ‘Yehovah’.
The Holy Name was NOT forbidden before the Pharisees
Non-Jews today often think that the sole, true standard by which Judaism is to be understood, copied and emulated is Rabbinic Judaism – believe me, it’s not. The true standard by which Judaism is to be emulated is the Israelite faith (‘the Way of YHVH’, Gen 18:19, Jdgs 2:22, Prov 10:29). That is, the Yahwist beliefs and cultural practices that were in place before the Pharisees started changing and forbidding things wholesale, left, right and centre.
From the time of Moses, when the Name of YHVH was first revealed, until the time of the Maccabees in the 2nd century BCE, Jews used the Holy Name in their daily lives, especially in times of personal prayer.
You see, before the sect of the Pharisees began, which was around the time of the Maccabean revolt (they arose because they were opposed to the Maccabees), it was common practice to use the Holy Name. For example, when you welcomed someone, you would say, “Blessed be the one who comes, in the Name of YHVH!” Until the rise of the Pharisees, there was no ban on pronouncing the Holy Name.
This is because of two main verses. The first is from Joel 2:32, “Everyone who calls on the Name of YHVH will be saved.” The second is from Jer 23:27, “They think the dreams they tell one another will make My people forget My Name, just as their ancestors forgot My Name through Baal worship.” In ancient Israelite culture, to forget someone’s name and cause it to be blotted out, is the most terrible thing you can possibly do to anyone, not just God (cf Dt 25:19).
King David used the Holy Name to bless the people (2Sam 6:18); the Holy Name, when pronounced on someone, was seen as a form of protection (Ps 20:1); and the priests were commissioned to bless Israel in the Name of YHVH forever (Dt 21:5, 1Chron 23:13), because anyone who is blest using the Name of YHVH will truly be blest (Num 6:27)!
We are also commanded to remember God’s Name forever (Ex 3:15): “Say to the Israelites, ‘YHVH, the God of your ancestors […..] has sent me to you.’ This is My Name forever, the Name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation”.
The pretence is often made that saying ’Hashem’ honours God, but ask yourself this: Is it honourable to go against what YHVH has explicitly and unambiguously asked us to do, and forbid something which YHVH has not forbidden?
Why did the Pharisees forbid pronunciation of the Holy Name?
In contrast, in direct opposition to the written Torah, the Pharisaic and mainstream practice has been to blot out God’s Name, and cause it to be forgotten. This prohibition comes from the Oral Law, not from the Hebrew Bible. The reasoning in Pharisaic Judaism was, in order to prevent one thing, they forbade the doing of anything that led up to that which was forbidden. They call this, ‘putting a fence around the Torah’.
For example, it is forbidden in Torah to buy or sell on the Sabbath. So, to make buying and selling impossible, the Pharisees forbade even touching money on the Sabbath. It was the same principle with the Holy Name. Torah rightfully forbids using God’s Name for false and evil purposes (the 3rd Commandment). So, to make breaking this commandment impossible, the Pharisees forbade even the pronouncing of the Holy Name. You were even forbidden to bless someone using the Holy Name, in opposition to common Israelite practice at the time.
In the Israelite faith, only the actual Name of God was considered holy; the titles of God were not to be accorded the same holiness, in order to preserve the absolute and unique holiness of God’s personal Name. However, once the Pharisees forbade the pronunciation of the Holy Name, the unique holiness of God’s Name was transferred onto God’s titles, such as Adonai and Eloheinu. In time, the original caution exercised over the Holy Name was transferred onto God’s titles as well, so that they themselves became either forbidden to say properly, or to say out loud. For example, ’Adonai’ (’My Sovereign’), is considered so holy, that Orthodox Jews only whisper it; some refuse to say it at all.
This is where the affectatious mainstream practice of writing ‘God’ as ‘G-d’, and the Hebrew Eloheinu as Eloqeinu came from (something that Talmidis don’t do, in recognition of the fact that only God’s actual Name is holy). Over time, the only word left that could be spoken out loud was ‘Hashem’ (which just means, ‘the Name’), because there is no holiness or honour left in so mundane and bland a word (i.e. ‘Hashem’ is not considered a holy word, so it can be pronounced as is).
How the blotting out of God’s Name goes against what God has said
However, God has told us that we should not blot out or erase God’s name (Dt 12:3-4):
“…so you shall obliterate their names (that is, of pagan gods) from that place. However, you must not do so with [the Name of] YHVH your God.”
Because of this commandment, Talmidis do not write the Holy Name on something that is going to be destroyed or thrown away (so instead, for example, we might write an underlined capital Y). Any printed material that contains the Holy Name, such as books, also cannot be destroyed.
People who erase and obliterate the Holy Name, causing it to be forgotten, claim they are honouring God, and write copious tomes to explain how wondrous and awesome it is to blot out God’s ineffable Name, and how hiding God’s unknowable Name can send you into a state of spiritual ecstasy. However, God is saddened by this erasure and rejection of God’s Name:
“[Your] rulers howl, says YHVH, and continually all day long, My Name is despised!” (Isa 52:5)
In contrast, Karaite Jews, the Tennessee Ebionites and the Massorite community follow the Torah and Israelite custom, not Pharisaic law or custom. We do use the Holy Name, but only in communal and personal prayer, and in positive religious teaching contexts, where the intended audience shares our reverence for the Holy Name. We honour the Holy Name; we therefore do not say the Holy Name in jest, heated argument or in anger; in this way, we honour the spirit of the 3rd Commandment, not to misuse the Holy Name for false or evil purposes.
The Talmidi method of avoiding the Holy Name
In contexts where it would be inappropriate to use the Holy Name, for example, in front of people who have no respect for God, or who might misuse the Holy Name if they were to hear it, Talmidis substitute the Holy Name with another epithet for God. We do not use ‘Hashem’, because that would suggest that we follow Pharisaic practice, and we do not descend from the Pharisaic or rabbinic tradition. We have no objection to mainstream Jews saying Hashem, because that is their tradition.
Ancient non-Pharisaic custom was to use Adonai (which means ‘My Sovereign’, but in its majestic form); or ‘The Holy One’ (Qadshā in Aramaic), or ‘the Merciful One’ (Rachmanā in Aramaic). These three epithets are in full accordance with known, non-Pharisaic traditions at the time of Yeshua.
If you are someone who regularly uses foul language, or regularly says things like, ‘Oh my God!’ or ‘Goddamn!’, then you should never use the Holy Name; it would not be safe on your lips. Only those who have the proper reverence and respect for God, and can use it properly, should use the Holy Name.
I would also advise you not to argue any of the points expressed in this article with mainstream Jews, because, truth be told, it will adversely affect your emotional relationship with the Holy Name. Just let them do their thing, while you treasure the holiness of YHVH’s Name close to your heart.
Conclusion
By using the Holy Name, and by keeping its use to peaceful times of prayer and occasions of deep, sacred reverence, you imbue the Holy Name with loving emotion and holiness. As a result, when you use it, in time it automatically sends you into a peaceful and reverential state of mind. You cannot achieve this by blotting out God’s Name. Those who LOVE the Name of YHVH, use the Name of YHVH.