The Masoretic Pointing of God's Name Vindicated

The name "Jehovah" contains all times: future, present, and past

It is common to see the accusation that the Masoretic scholars replaced the vowels for the Tetragrammaton with those from the word Adonai, meaning my Lord — thus God was given the artificial name of Jehovah by Jewish rabbis, and Christians just went along with this.

The website Hebrew 4 Christians claims:

The Third Commandment (Exodus 20:7) states, "Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." In Hebrew: לֹ֣א תִשָּׂ֣א אֶת־שֵׁ֥ם יהוה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ לַשָּׁ֑וְא

On account of this, the Masoretes ensured that the Name of the LORD would not be taken in vain by substituting the vowel marks for Adonai and putting them under the letters י-ה-ו-ה in the running text (this is called Qere (קרי), “what is to be read”) as opposed to Ketiv (כתיב), “what is to be written”). The Hebrew text, then, contains the Ketiv form YHVH (יהוה), usually translated as "LORD" in English, but deliberately changed the vowelizing for the name for use when reading, and this has led to the obviously incorrect pronunciation of the Name as "Jehovah” (in older English, “J” had a “y” sound).

Yet this is not correct, as Bernardinus de Moor observes:

β. They do not at all agree with those letters of the word אֲדֹנָי/Adonai, while under the י/Yod in יְהוָֹה is a simple Shewa (ְ), not the composite hateph-patach (ֲ), agreeing more with the guttural א/Aleph: which sort does not obtain in יֱהוִֹה,[2] in which that is thought to receive its pointing from אֱלֹהִים/Elohim, when under the י/Yod is found a hateph-segol (ֱ); and that happens not rarely, but, as DRUSIUS noted out of Elias, two hundred and twenty-two times; or, as GOMARUS taught, in two hundred and seventy places. But if יְהוָֹה actually has the three points of the Name אֲדֹנָי/Adonai, it would not thence follow that for this reason the letters of the latter Name are to be substituted in the place of those four, יהוה; seeing that a great many words, altogether distinct with respect to letters, receive the same vowels points, yet for this reason those words are not to be confounded or exchanged according to our will, with the consonant letters completely disregarded, which more principally constitute and distinguish those words.

The name Jehovah has the meaning of being — and it is introduced to us with a form of the Hebrew word for being in the future tense: Ehjeh.

When God appears to Moses, he says “I am who I am”, or in Hebrew Ehjeh asher Ehjeh”. This form Ehjeh — at least grammatically — indicates the future tense “will be.” The Septuagint rightly captures the sense of being attached to God’s name in Exodus 3:14 — ἐγώ εἰμι (Ego Eimi meaning I am):

καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεὸς πρὸς Μωυσῆν ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν καὶ εἶπεν οὕτως ἐρεῖς τοῖς υἱοῖς Ισραηλ ὁ ὢν ἀπέσταλκέν με πρὸς ὑμᾶς

In the KJV translation, we read:

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

John Calvin calls this the "root" of the name Jehovah, in his comment on Exodus 3:14 (emphases mine):

The verb in the Hebrew is in the future tense, “I will be what I will be;” but it is of the same force as the present, except that it designates the perpetual duration of time. This is very plain, that God attributes to himself alone divine glory, because he is self-existent and therefore eternal; and thus gives being and existence to every creature.

Nor does he predicate of himself anything common, or shared by others; but he claims for himself eternity as peculiar to God alone, in order that he may be honored according to his dignity. Therefore, immediately afterwards, contrary to grammatical usage, he used the same verb in the first person as a substantive, annexing it to a verb in the third person; that our minds may be filled with admiration as often as his incomprehensible essence is mentioned.

But although philosophers discourse in grand terms of this eternity, and Plato constantly affirms that God is peculiarly τὸ ὄν (the Being); yet they do not wisely and properly apply this title, viz., that this one and only Being of God absorbs all imaginable essences; and that, thence, at the same time, the chief power and government of all things belong to him. For from whence come the multitude of false gods, but from impiously tearing the divided Deity into pieces by foolish imaginations? Wherefore, in order rightly to apprehend the one God, we must first know, that all things in heaven and earth derive at His will their essence, or subsistence from One, who only truly is.

From this Being all power is derived; because, if God sustains all things by his excellency, he governs them also at his will. And how would it have profited Moses to gaze upon the secret essence of God, as if it were shut up in heaven, unless, being assured of his omnipotence, he had obtained from thence the buckler of his confidence?

Therefore God teaches him that He alone is worthy of the most holy name, which is profaned when improperly transferred to others; and then sets forth his inestimable excellency, that Moses may have no doubt of overcoming all things under his guidance. We will consider in the sixth chapter the name of Jehovah, of which this is the root.

Edward Leigh says of Ehjeh:

“The third name of God is Ehjeh (אֶהְיֶה) (Exodus 3:14), I am, or I will be, this name also notes the essence of God, and is derived from the same root as the two former: it implies God's incomprehensibility and immutability: Christ alludes to this name, John 8:58.”

George Hutcheson comments on Christ’s use of Ehjeh in John 8:58:

“Christ’s subsistence before his incarnation, is immutable and unchangeable, not subject to the vicissitudes of time; Therefore says he, before Abraham was I am, not, I was, to show that this has subsistence is unchangeable, still present, and consequently eternal.”

Exodus 6 brings in the full eternity of God into his name, Jehovah, encompassing the past, present and future.

To say “he is”, you’d say Hoveh, and to say “he was”, you’d say Hayah. Ehjeh is "I will be".

If you put these together, future-to-past, you’d get Ehjeh-Hoveh-Hayah, or eh-jeh-hoveh-hayah: Jehovah.

Here is Leigh again (Critica Sacra):

“The first and most proper name of God is Jehovah (יְהוָה) which sets out the eternity and self-existence of God. (1) His eternity, in that it contains all times, future, present, and past. Je notes the time to come, Ho the time present, Vah the time past. (2) His self-existence, it comes from a root, which signifies to be, GOD has his being in and from himself, and giveth being to all creatures.”

This is confirmed by the analogy of faith.

Christ seems to indicate his name is Jehovah in John 8:58 by invoking Ehjeh.

In Hebrews 13:8, we read that Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.

In Revelation 1:8, Christ says:

“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.”

James Durham comments that, in doing so, Christ was:

“setting out the immutability and unchangeableness of His being, that He is from Eternity to Eternity the same, and, as we shew, the title Jehovah takes in these three words”.

This builds up a good case for the name Jehovah having respect to a specific meaning, of God’s attributes of being and eternity, and not simply a consonantal word with guessed vocalisation.

It is often (disparagingly) said that holding to Jehovah as the name of God is a KJV-only, or a Jehovah’s Witness position. Yet the AV was published in 1611, and the founder of the cult of the false witnesses of Jehovah, Charles Taze Russell, was born in 1852.

John Calvin, who died in 1564, could not have possibly been either of these, when he wrote, on Exodus 6, in support of Jehovah being the name of God:

“It is certainly a foul superstition of the Jews that they dare not speak, or write it, but substitute the name "Adonai;" nor do I any more approve of their teaching, who say that it is ineffable, because it is not written according to grammatical rule.

Without controversy, it is derived from the word hyh, [hayah], or hvh, havah [hoveh], and therefore it is rightly said by learned commentators to be the essential name of God, whereas others are, as it were, epithets. Since, then, nothing is more peculiar to God than eternity, He is called Jehovah, because He has existence from Himself, and sustains all things by His secret inspiration.

Nor do I agree with the grammarians, who will not have it pronounced, because its inflection is irregular; because its etymology, of which all confess that God is the author, is more to me than an hundred rules.”

We can strengthen the case for Jehovah being the proper name of God, by the fact that several Old Testament names carry the “Jeho” of Jehovah in them, specifically: Jehoadah, Jehoaddan, Jehoahaz, Jehoash, Jehoiachin, Jehoiada, Jehoiakim, Jehoiarib, Jehonadab, Jehoram, Jehoshaphat, and Jehosheba.

De Moor explains:

γ. Those points are received in the compounds יְהוֹנָתָן/ Jehonathan, יְהוֹיָדָע/Jehoiada, יְהוֹשָׁפָט/Jehoshaphat, etc., that some Jews incorrectly deny to proceed from the Tetragrammaton, namely, under that pretext, which BUXTORF, Dissertatione de Nominibus Dei Hebraicis, § 24, adduced out of Ibn Ezra on Joel 3, that it is not appropriate that the glorious Divine Name enter a human name by composition. Of course, in compound human names, the first and last part of the Name יְהוָֹה/ Jehovah is pointed differently, when it is annexed to the end of words, thus to coalesce more suitably with them, and to end them appropriately; for then it is wont to be read יָהוּ/yahu: but at the beginning, where the same reason for that change is not found, but it is able best to retain its own proper Points with which it begins, it is absolutely pointed by ְ and וֹ, and so is read by all as יְהוֹ/Yeho. Which ought to furnish for all free of prejudice the greatest argument for the same pointing of the simple Name יהוה.

Even the Legacy Standard Bible (the MacArthurite version of the NASB that makes such a stress on calling Jehovah “Yahweh”) has many such names with “Jeho” included, such as in 1 Chronicles 3:10-16 (emphasis mine):

Now Solomon’s son was Rehoboam, Abijah was his son, Asa his son, JEHOshaphat his son, Joram his son, Ahaziah his son, Joash his son, Amaziah his son, Azariah his son, Jotham his son, Ahaz his son, Hezekiah his son, Manasseh his son, Amon his son, Josiah his son. The sons of Josiah were Johanan the firstborn, and the second was JEHOiakim, the third Zedekiah, the fourth Shallum. The sons of JEHOiakim were Jeconiah his son, Zedekiah his son.

Yet as Jeho could not fit into the shortened form of Jah, it must be the start of the pronunciation of Jehovah, which eliminates “Yahweh” as a possibility.

The verse that may most confirm this is 2 Kings 23:34. It reads (here I’m using the Legacy Standard Bible):

“Then Pharaoh Neco made Eliakim the son of Josiah king in the place of Josiah his father and changed his name to Jehoiakim.”

Iakim comes from the same root as kum to raise up. The name Eliakim means “God raises up”, as does the name Jehoiakim.

So if Eli here means God, then so does Jeho, and that is reflected in the name יְהוֹיָקִ֑ים .

It would make no sense to include the waw (the O-sound) if God’s name were “Yahweh”, and yet pronounce it “Jeho”.

~~~

The positive case for "Yahweh" (not merely the negative case for Jehovah) appears to come from the Romish scholar Gilbert Genebrard, 1599, who used the "yah" from "Hallelujah" as a justification for the “Yah” of “Yahweh”. But this doesn’t prove anything.

For example, the name James can be shortened to Jim, but if you saw J-m-s without the vowels, then the I in Jim doesn’t prove this name to be Jimes or Jimas.

Genebrard’s second reason is that Theodoret of Cyrus in the 5th century claimed that the Samaritans pronounced God’s name as Yahweh.

The problem with this is that the Samaritans themselves wrote to Antiochus Ephiphanes (who had profaned the Jewish temple with the worship of Jupiter, a god of fortresses, see Daniel 11:38), asking him to leave their temple alone.

The Samaritans said:

“We therefore beseech thee our benefactor and savior, to give order to Apollonius, the governor of this part of the country, and to Nicanor, the procurator of thy affairs, to give us no disturbance, nor to lay to our charge what the Jews are accused for, since we are aliens from their nation and from their customs; but let our temple which at present hath no name at all, be named the Temple of Jupiter Hellenius.” (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 12 5:261)

But if:

• (a) their temple was to be named after Jupiter, and,

• (b) Jupiter in Latin is Jove, and,

• (c) The V is pronounced like a W among the Samaritans.

Then the pronunciation you end up with of Jupiter is Joh-weh, which more makes the case for Yahweh being the Samaritan name for Jupiter, and not the Scriptural name for God.

We can also cite the manuscript evidence. While we have over 1000 manuscripts identifying the reading “Jehovah” cited by the Karaite scholar Nehemiah Gordon (whom, it must be advised, denies Christ); there aren’t any I’m aware of that actually read Yahweh - the closest you’d get is simply the Tetragrammaton without vowel markings.

Wikipedia tells us:

“Yahweh is also invoked in Papyrus Amherst 63, and in Jewish or Jewish-influenced Greco-Egyptian magical texts from the 1st to 5th century CE.”

This is hardly reassuring for scholars. Papyrus Amherst 63 does not correspond to Scripture precisely, at all.

When all this is considered — along with the authority, antiquity, and inspiration of the Hebrew vowel points — there are clearly compelling reasons to understand God’s name to be Jehovah, and not Yahweh.