There are a number of words used for God in the Old Testament, but the one that is most puzzling to Bible scholars is the name Yahweh<\/i>. Hebrew grammarians cannot be sure of the exact spelling of the NAME<\/b> because, originally, Hebrew was written without vowel letters. It appeared as YHWH<\/b> in the text, the so-called \u201cTetragrammaton\u201d. The vowels in the name Yahweh,<\/i> therefore, are an educated guess.<\/p>\n
The NAME<\/b> was too sacred to be pronounced by the ancient Hebrews, so when they came to it in the biblical text they would say the word for \u201cLord\u201d. When Hebrew became a dead language and vowels were added to the consonantal text in the Christian era, the vowels for the word \u201cLord\u201d were used with the Tetragrammaton. This led to the peculiar transliteration of the NAME<\/b> as \u201cJehovah\u201d in the King James Version of the Old Testament. Many times, however, the King James translators simply rendered the NAME<\/b> as \u201cLord\u201d.<\/p>\n
Yahweh<\/i> is a distinctive name for God used only by the Hebrews so far as we know. What scholars have been trying to determine for centuries is where did the NAME<\/b> come from and what is its root meaning?<\/p>\n
The NAME<\/b> undoubtedly derives from the Hebrew verb \u201cto be\u201d. In Exodus 3:14 an explanation of the meaning of Yahweh<\/i> is apparently given to Moses by God Himself. The difficulty here is in understanding the full meaning of the original Hebrew. It is translated as \u201cI am that I am\u201d in the King James Version. In 1909 Paul Haupt suggested that it meant \u201cI call into being what will be.\u201d William F. Albright, in 1924, correlated this explanation with the use of sentence names in the ancient Near East and came up with \u201cHe causes to be, He creates.\u201d Other sentence names have been suggested based on the uses of the NAME<\/b> in other passages of the Old Testament.<\/p>\n
William H. Brownlee has taken a fresh look at the meaning of <\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 7:1 (Winter 1978) p. 22<\/p>\n
Yahweh<\/i> by examining the use of the NAME<\/b> in the Dead Sea Scroll text of 1 Samuel 2:3b. In the King James Version it reads, \u201cthe Lord (Yahweh<\/i>) is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.\u201d The usage of this verse at Qumran, however, indicates that a more accurate translation would be \u201cThe God of knowledge makes things happen, or come into being.\u201d Brownlee believes that the Qumran usage of the NAME<\/b> shows that it means not simply \u201cto come to be\u201d but \u201cto cause to happen.\u201d Thus Yahweh<\/i> was understood as referring not only to God\u2019s work of creation, but also to His preservation and providential control.<\/p>\n
This moves the term from a simple reference to God as Creator to a depiction of God\u2019s role in salvation history. Brownlee observes that the understanding of Yahweh<\/i> as \u201cOne who causes things to happen\u201d better fits Moses\u2019 announcement of Yahweh\u2019s<\/i> deliverance of the Hebrews from bondage in Egypt: \u201cSlaves are not necessarily rebellious and ready to follow any leader who promises them liberty; they may be utterly demoralized and fully resigned to their bondage. Their situation seems hopeless, and they dare not make the slightest protest, lest the oppressor bear down upon them harder than ever. Such was the case of the Hebrews in Egypt, so that what they needed to overcome their despair was the assurance that they had a God who could make things happen, who could bring to pass the promises He had made to them through Moses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis gives the revelation of the NAME<\/b> to Moses the kind of relevance that Gerhard von Rad was seeking in interpreting this in the light of Exodus 3.12, \u2018I will be with you.\u2019 Thus for him the meaning of Yahweh is \u2018being present, being here.\u2019 In the etymology given here, it is God\u2019s redeeming presence of which the Bible speaks. Note particularly Exodus 6:6: \u2018Therefore say to the children of Israel: \u201cI am He who makes things happen, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage, and I will redeem you…\u201d \u2018This understanding of the ineffable NAME<\/b> may be directly relevant to a host of passages in the Hebrew prophets, especially in the contexts of threats and promises, where \u2018I am Yahweh,\u2019 may appropriately mean \u2018I am He who makes things happen.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The theological importance of this interpretation is far-reaching. God is not just a God who created the world and left it to run on its own, but He is continuously active in history and in the lives of individual believers.<\/p>\n
(\u201cThe Ineffable Name of God,\u201d by William H. Brownlee, in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research<\/i>, No. 226, 1977, pp. 39-46.)<\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 7:1 (Winter 1978) p. 23<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are a number of words used for God in the Old Testament, but the one that is most puzzling to Bible scholars is the name Yahweh. Hebrew grammarians cannot be sure of the exact spelling of the NAME because, originally, Hebrew was written without vowel letters. It appeared as YHWH in the text, the … Continue reading “THE
\nINEFFABLE NAME OF GOD”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}