The Most Significant and Sacred Name for God: JEHOVAH

 

by REV. JOHN C. GRANBERRY, JR., BODLEY, VA.

From The Bible Student, Volume 7, 1903

Unhappy circumstance it is that has long deprived us of the most significant and sacred name for God in the Old Testament: a name inseparably bound up with the history and religion of Israel, summing up the highest ideas of God that Old Testament prophet or psalmist or saint ever conceived, and as the Memorial name laden with all the wealth of dearest association of the people of Revelation. It is the Hebrew's personal name for his God-the Covenant name—the name that designates him as the God of righteousness and revelation, the Deliverer of his people and Helper of the needy. Without this name we must lose much of what is meaningful in the Old Testament, and of prime importance to religion in the progressive revelation through the life of Israel.

We are familiar with the fact that in the Bible personal names have a significance and importance that they do not have with us. 'The name of Jehovah' does not refer primarily to the name Jehovah or to any other one name, but to the divine nature and character as manifested among men. Jehovah's name is good and pleasant, and his people love it (Ps. liv. 6; cxxxv. 3; v. II; Ixix. 36). “Jehovah is great in Zion; and he is high above all the peoples. Let them praise thy great and terrible name: Holy is he' (Ps. xcix. 2, 3).

'He hath sent redemption unto his people; he hath commanded his covenant forever: Holy and reverend is his name, (Ps. cxi. 9). Moreover, it refers not simply to actual manifestations of God, but to all that he is in the hidden resources of his being.

'So, these are but the outskirts of his ways: and how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand?' (Job xxvi. 14).

'Wherefore askest thou after my name,' says Jehovah in manifestation to Manoah,' seeing it is wonderful?' (Judg. xiii. 18).

But while the divine name or essence cannot be shut up in a single word, and therefore every human name for God must be imperfect, still the devout worshipper cannot dispense with a name for the Being to whom he prays, and the name Jehovah represents the highest intuitions and thoughts of the Hebrew race about God, standing thus for the Hebrew's complete sense and knowledge of his God. To him Jehovah was indeed the eternal and self-existent, whose face no man had seen, unchangeable in his essence; but he had broken his long silence and spoken to man: he is the God of revelation.

But when the time of new revelation was past, and men had singularly forgotten the old prophetic ideas of inspiration and substituted for them external, mechanical conceptions, then all revelation was supposed to be contained in the Torah (or the Pentateuch), while the Books of the Prophets, the Psalms and the other books of the Old Testament were but inspired interpretations of the Law of Moses. Among the teachers and expositors of the Law a literalistic principle of interpretation obtained. The Pentateuch discouraged a thoughtless use of the sacred name: 'Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain' (Ex. xx. 20-7);† then, based upon this: 'Therefore shall ye keep my commandments and do them. I am Jehovah. And ye shall not profane my holy name; but I will be hallowed among the children of Israel; I am Jehovah who halloweth you, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God; I am Jehovah' (Lev. xxii. 31-33). Aaron and his sons (i. e., the priesthood) are enjoined to utter a blessing over the children of Israel, using the name Jehovah (Num. vi. 22-27), but there is no express sanction for its use by laymen in ordinary life. In this way a hedge was made about the Law, and the pronunciation of the name Jehovah was finally prohibited altogether, and ultimately forgotten.

In the later books of the Bible we can see those influences already at work which caused the name ultimately never to be pronounced by the Jews. There is a growing tendency to avoid the name. For instance, while in most of the Psalms “Jehovah' is the prevailing name, in other Psalms the name Jehovah is rare and Elohim (God) common. In Ex. xx. 2, we have as a preface to the Decalogue, 'I am Jehovah, thy God,' and based upon this we have the oft-recurring phrases, ‘Jehovah, thy God,' and 'Jehovah, my God!' Some of the later Psalmists say simply, 'my God, leaving out “Jehovah. In other Psalms, however, and nowhere else in the Old Testament, we have the peculiar phrase, 'God, my God, which is evidently written in place of “Jehovah my God.' For example, in Ps. 1. 7 we have an apparent quotation from Ex. xx. 2 (which, we have just seen, reads, 'I am Jehovah, thy God,') the quotation reading, 'I am God, thy God.' Comparing Ps. liii. with Ps. xiv., and Ps. lxx. with a part of Ps. xl., we find that they are mostly identical, except that in several instances “Jehovah' has been changed to 'Elohim.' The conviction is forced upon us that sometimes it was not the original authors of the Psalms that are responsible for the usage, but the collector or editor, who wished to suppress, as far as possible, the name Jehovah.

Justification for this change in the Levitical Psalms, for the partial or complete avoidance of the name in certain late books of the Bible, and for the substitution for it of Adonai (Lord), has been sought in the sense of inadequacy of any personal name for him who is above every name. It is supposed that the name had a mythic origin and was a badge of particularism, and that its use was therefore wisely discouraged in the interest of spiritual monotheism. But spiritual monotheism rose to its purity and height in the prophets, and how much the name Jehovah meant to them! Take as an example the great Prophet of the Exile, and see also how the writer of Ps. cii. combines what was precious to the Hebrew in the name with a broad universalism and catholic ideal (vv. 11-22).

'Salvation is from the Jews' (Jno. iv. 22); the Christian religion—the perfect religion—the religion of humanity—has a history, and we make recognition and confession of it by taking the Hebrew's covenant name for his God upon our lips. We cannot separate our own spiritual life from that of the fathers, nor would we wish to do so; rather we cling with affection to those sacred bonds that unite us with the past, and in this instance with the Old Testament Church. He that said, 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,' is the God of the living and is our God (Mt. xxii. 32). There is only one name for God that is worthy of comparison with “Jehovah,' and that is his greatest name— 'Father.' Happily the American Revised Version restores to the sacred text the name Jehovah. 

See also 200 PDF Books on the Divine Name Jehovah/YHWH on DVDrom (Tetragrammaton)

and 145 Rare Divine Name Bibles on DVDrom (Jehovah, Yahweh, YHWH) PDF Format