Yahweh
Yahweh (יְהוָֹה) (ya·'we), is the primary Hewbrew name of God in the Bible. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — though using different names for him — all affirm that Yahweh alone is God. Jews normally do not pronounce this name of God, considering it too holy to verbalize. Instead they refer either to Adonai, Elohim, or Hashem (see below). In Christian Bibles, Yawheh is usually translated as "the Lord," a rough equivalent to the Hebrew "Adonai." Muslims refer to God as "Allah," which originates from the same etymological root as "Elohim."
"Jehovah" (also spelled Yahovah) is a modern mispronunciation of the Hebrew word, YHWH (formerly transcribed "JHVH"), inserting the vowels from the word Adonai.
While the original concept of Yahweh may not have been monotheistic, the Hebrew prophets insisted that the people of Israel must worship him alone. Yahweh-centered Monotheism eventually became the normative Jewish religion, and this in turn was inherited by both Christianity and Islam. Yahwist monotheism has also come to inflluence other religions through the centuries, both as the result of missionary activity and interreligious dialogue.
The historical contribution of Yahwism is a mixed one. As mentioned, it is the origin of all three great Abrahamic faiths. Also, the prophetic tradition emphasized that true belief in Yahweh is incompatible with evils as human sacrifice, fertility cults, idolatry, priestly corruption, and superstition. On the other hand, Yahwism and its montheistic offspring have also been used to justify tribal warfare, the repression of rival religions, male chauvinism, the persecution and murder of "pagans," terrorism, and even genocide.
Origins
Biblical Tradition
The Bible presents several stories regarding the revelation of God's true name, Yahweh. The best known is the story of Moses and the burning bush of Exodus 3. Shortly after this, God makes it clear that Moses is the first to know the secret of the divine name:
- God also said to Moses, "I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself known to them. (Ex. 6:2-3)
In this sentence three names of God are used: Elohim (God), the Lord (YHWH), and El Shaddai (God Almighty). El Shaddai appears more than 30 times in the Hebrew Bible — Gen. 28:3; 35:11, etc.). Elohim (a plural form of El — Gen. 1:1, etc.) is used many hundreds of times. YHWH, or Yahweh, is used more than any other name for God in the Bible. In most editions, whenever the words "The Lord" are used, ancient Hebrew manuscripts have a form of YHWH.
A problem for biblical scholars is the fact that the Book of Genesis appears to contradict the story in Exodus regarding the first time that humans came to known God's true name. Gen 2:19 says that it was in the days of Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve. Gen. 12:8 specifies that at Bethel (the "place of El") Abraham called on the name of the Lord some 400 years before Moses. The first woman mentioned as calling on the name of the Lord is Abraham's wife Sarah. (Gen. 16:13)
The Catholic scholar A.J. Maas suggested one way of resolving the seeming contradiction between Exodus and Genesis regarding the revelation of Yahweh's name: that people knew at least a syllable of God's true name, and began calling themselves after it, long before the whole name was revealed to Moses:
- Among the 163 proper [biblical] names which bear an element of the sacred name in their composition, 48 have yeho or yo at the beginning, and 115 have yahu or yah and the end, while the form Jahveh [Yahweh] never occurs in any such composition. Perhaps it might be assumed that these shortened forms yeho, yo, yahu, yah, represent the Divine name as it existed among the Isralites before the full name Jahveh was revealed on Mt. Horeb. [1]
A more fundamental question is whether the name Yahweh originated among the Israelites or was adopted by them from some other people and language. Biblical archaeologist Amihai Mazar, in Archaeology of the Land of the Bible Volume I, suggests that the association of Yahweh with the desert may be the product of his origins in the dry lands to the south of Israel. A more specific suggestion mentioned by biblical scholar Mark S. Smith in The Origins of Biblical Monotheism, is that Yahweh originated with the Shasu, Canaanite nomads from southern transjordan. An Egyptian inscription at Karnak from the time of Pharaoh Amenhotep III (1390-1352 B.C.E.) refers to the "Shasu of Yhw," evidence that this god was worshipped among some of the Shasu tribes at this time. Egyptologist Donald Redford, in Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, suggests that the Israelites may have been a group of Shasu who migrated northward into Canaan in the 13th century b.c.e.. Archaelologist Israel Finkelstein has shown in The Bible Unearthed that some of the Shasu indeed settled in the Samarian and Judean hills at this time, thus forming one of the proto-Israelite peoples.
A Midianite Diety?
One biblically-derived theory somewhat consistent with the above scenario holds that Yahweh was originally a deity of the Midianites and other desert tribes. The Exodus story tells us that the Israelites had not been worshippers of Yahweh — at least by that name — before the time of Moses. The revelation of the name to Moses was made at Sinai/Horeb, a mountain sacred to Yahweh, south of Canaan in a region where the forefathers of the Israelites were never reported to have roamed. Long after the Israelite settlement in Canaan this region continued to be regarded as the abode of Yahweh (Judges 5:4; Deut. 33:2; I Kings 19:8, etc). Moses is closely connected with the tribes in the vicinity of this holy mountain.
According to one account, Moses' wife was a daughter of Jethro, a priest of Midian (Ex. 18). When Moses led the Israelites to the mountain after their deliverance from Egypt, Jethro came to meet him, extolling Yahweh as greater than all other gods. The Midianite priest "brought a burnt offering and other sacrifices to God," and the chief men of the Israelites were guests at his sacrificial feast. Thus, the tribes in the region of Sinai/Horeb may already have been worshippers of Yahweh — although not exclusively — before the time of Moses.
Another theory which has had considerable currency is that Yahweh, or Yahu, Yaho,3 is the name of a god worshipped throughout a great part of the area occupied by the Western Semites. Adherents of this theory point to the occurrence in various parts of this territory of proper names of persons.2
The divergent Judæan tradition of Genesis, according to which the forefathers had worshipped Yahweh from time immemorial, may indicate that Judah and the kindred clans had in fact been worshippers of Yahweh before the time of Moses.
Many attempts have been made to trace the West Semitic Yahu back to Babylonia. Thus the Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch believed the name derived from an Akkadian god, Ia. A relation between Yahweh with Ea, also called Enki, one of the great Babylonian gods, has also been mentioned occasionally. However, scholars are now gemerally agreed that, so far as Yahu or Yah occurs in Babylonian texts, it is as the name of a foreign West Semitic deity.
Finally we should mention the theory first propounded by Sigmund Freud that Moses brought the One God idea with him from Egypt, havig learned it from the Egyptian King Akenaten, who attempt to make Egypt into a monotheistic society centering on the sun god.
Meaning
- Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?" God said to Moses, "I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.' " (Ex. 3:13-14)
The symbolic or spiritual meaning of God's name is the subject of several traditions. In one of these, Yahweh is related to the Hebrew verb הוה (ha·wah, "to be, to become"), meaning "He will cause to become." In Arabic Yahyâ means "He [who] lives".
A related tradition regards the name as coming from three different verb forms sharing the same root YWH. The three words are: HYH (היה —haya, He was"); HWH (הוה — howê,"He is"); and YHYH (יהיה — yihiyê, "He will be"). This is believed to show that God is timeless. This formula has also been used by Christians to demonstrate the supposed trinitarian basis of God's existence.
Another interpretation is that the name means "I am the One Who Is." This can be seen in the traditional account of God commanding Moses to tell the sons of Israel that "I AM (אהיה) has sent you." (Exodus 3:13-14)
Some also suggest: "I AM the One I AM" (אהיה אשר אהיה), or "I AM what I need to become". This may also fit the interpretation of "He Causes to Become." Many scholars believe that the most proper meaning may be "He Brings Into Existence Whatever Exists" or "He who causes to exist".
Yahweh's Characteristics
In its mature form, the concept of Yahweh is simply that of Jewish God: the absolute, eternal, unchanging Creator of the universe who is also a personal being who cares intensely for mankind as a father does for his child or a husband does for his wife. Among his divine attributes are mercy, wisdom, righteouness, lovingkindness, justice, compassion, patience, and beauty. However he is also a jealous deity. Although he is slow to anger, he will harshly punish those who betray him in order to bring about their eventual repentance and reconciliation. The classical expression of this theology is found in Exodus 34, in the scene in which God appears to Moses just after Moses ascends Sinai to received the Ten Commandments a second time:
- Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord [YHWH]. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "YHWH, YHWH, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation." (Ex. 34:6-7)
Sections of the Bible thought to be among the earliest, however, also portray Yahweh in a more primitive way. One such example is Psalm 18, in which Yahweh, far from being a transcendant being abounding in love, could easily be confused with a pagan storm deity:
- The earth trembled and quaked, and the foundations of the mountains shook; they trembled because he was angry. Smoke rose from his nostrils; consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it. He parted the heavens and came down; dark clouds were under his feet. He mounted the cherubim and flew; he soared on the wings of the wind. He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him — the dark rain clouds of the sky. Out of the brightness of his presence clouds advanced, with hailstones and bolts of lightning. YHWH thundered from heaven; the voice of the Most High resounded. He shot his arrows and scattered the enemies, great bolts of lightning and routed them. (Psalm 8:7-14)
Assuming that Yahweh was once thought of as a nature god, scholars in the 19th century discussed the question of what sphere of nature he originally presided. According to some he was the god of consuming fire; others saw in him the bright sky, or the heaven; still others recognized in him a storm god, a theory with which the derivation of the name from Hebrew hawah well accords. The association of Yahweh with storm and fire is frequent in the Old Testament; the thunder is the voice of Yahweh, the lightning his arrows, the rainbow his bow. The revelation at Sinai is amid the awe-inspiring phenomena of tempests. Scholars have also noted that many of these primitive characteristics of Yahweh are seen in hymns and inscriptions devoted to Baal of the Canaanites and Marduk of Mesopotamia.
Relatationship to Other Dieties
In the "Song of Moses," the great prophet asks:
- "Who among the gods is like you, O Lord? Who is like you — majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?" (Ex. 15:11)
A great deal of discussion has been devoted to the relationship of Yahweh to the other deities of the region. We have already mentioned the fact that the Hebrews worshipped their God as El Shaddai, Elohim, etc. Outside the Bible, El is known as the chief diety of the Canaanite religion. He was the father of the Canaanite god Baal and the husband of the mother goddess Ashera. (Interestingly, the word "Baal" also means "Lord.") In fact Archaelogists and language experts indicate that it is difficult to distinguish Israelite and Canaanite culture until the early Early Iron Age, around the time of King David. We can imagine a situation in which some of the proto-Israelites worshipped a variety of gods, or worshipped God in a variety of forms using many names. Eventually, some of the characteristics of Yahweh, El, and Baal merged into Yahweh/Elohim. Baal, on the other hand, was denigrated and excluded, just as the serpent icon associated with Moses was eventually destroyed as an idol. So too was the goddess Ashera disowned. Yet Jeru-baal (Gideon) — was named for both Yahweh and Baal; while the Judge Shamgar ben Anath was named after the war goddess Anat. King Saul, anointed by the Yawhist prophet Samuel as Israel's first king, nevertheless named his sons Ish-baal and Meri-baal.
The issue is complicated by the question of whether the Israelites were truly one distinct people descended from Abraham who migrated en masse from Egypt to Canaan, rather than a confederation of previously unrelated people who came to accept a common national identity, religious mythology, and origin story. In any case, there is much evidence that the Yahweh-only ideology did not come to the fore among the Israelites until well into the period of Kings, and it was not until after the Babylonian exile that monotheism took firm root among the Jews.
That some of the Israelites honored a serpent deity is implied in the story of Moses erecting a bronze serpent during the exodus (Num 21:9). This same serpent icon — certainly a "graven image" — was later set up in Jerusalem, where it was venerated until King Hezekiah had it destroyed as idolatrous. (2 Kings 18:4) The serpent icon is found in both Egyptian and Canaanite religion.
Yahweh himself was sometimes worshipped in a way that later generations would consider idolatrous. Judges 17-18 tells the story of a wealthy Ephraimite woman who consecrates 1100 pieces of silver to Yahweh to be cast into an image and put into the family shrine along with other idols. Her son then hires a Levite who serves as priest at the family's altar, successfully inquiring there of Yahweh on behalf of passing travelers from the tribe of Dan. The Danites later steal the idols and take them along with the priest to settle in the north. A grandson of Moses named Jonathan becomes their chief priest.
The tale serves as a precursor later story of the northern King Jeroboam I erecting idolatrous bull-calf altars at Dan and Bethel. (Bull calves were associated with the worship of El, and bulls were routinely offered to Yahweh on a horned altar at the Temple in Jerusalem.)
The question then becomes: did Yawhist monotheism evolve out an earlier situation in which Yawheh was known as one god among many? Or did the early Israelites sin by acknowledging other gods alongside of Yahweh? An indication that Baal and Yahweh were sometimes identified is evidenced in the words of the prophet Hosea, who says: "In that day," declares the Lord, [YHWH] "you will call me 'my husband'; you will no longer call me 'my master [Baal].' (Hosea 2:16) William Dever discusses an intriguing question in his book Did God Have a Wife? He presents archaeological evidence suggesting that Ashera was seen as Yahweh's consort in certain times and places, and the Bible is clear that the Queen of Heaven was worshipped by families who also honored Yahweh in Jeremiah's day. (Je. 7:17–18) Dever suggests that Ashera worship remained widespread among the common folk, while the elites, centering on the male priesthood, fought to exclude any femine portrayals of God. Eventually, many of the characteristics of Ashera were included in the rabbinic concept of the Shekhinah.
The Bible seems to indicate that even though the Israelites were forbidden to worship other deities, Yahweh was not considered as only god who actually existed. The prophet Micah declared: "All the nations may walk in the name of their gods; we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever." (Micah 4:5) Yahweh is often referred to in the Bible as "the god of the hebrews" (there being no capitalization in the Hebrew text), thus portrayed as one of several tribal deities rather than as the only God in existence.
Psalm 82, on the other hand, seems to mark a transition point, in which God will no longer accept coexistence with other deities:
- God [elohim] standeth in the congregation of God [or the gods: "elohim"]; He judgeth among the gods [elohim]... They know not, neither do they understand; They walk to and fro in darkness: All the foundations of the earth are shaken. I said, Ye are gods, And all of you sons of the Most High. Nevertheless ye shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes. (Psalm 82:1-7 — ASV)
The portrait of God acting as judge in the assembly of the gods has obvious parallels in other religious traditions: El is the chief of the divine assembly in Canaanite religion, just as Zeus is the head of the court at Olympus. Here, however, God has pronounced a sentence of capital punishment on the other gods. This interpretation of Psalm 82, although not universally accepted, is instructive as an insight into the transition from the concept of Yahweh as the chief god to that of Yahweh/Elohim as the only true deity, with other gods in the position of either demons or creatures of man's imagination.
The Tetragrammaton
The for consonants of the Hebrew spelling of Yahweh are referred to as theTetragrammaton (Greek: τετραγράμματον; "word with four letters"). It is spelled (in the Hebrew alphabet): י (yodh) ה (heh) ו (vav) ה (heh) or יהוה (YHWH). Of all the names of God, the one which occurs most frequently in the Hebrew Bible is the Tetragrammaton, appearing 6,823 times, according to the Jewish Encyclopedia.
In Judaism, pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton is a [[taboo]}Usually, Adonai ("the Lord") is used as a substitute in prayers or readings from the Torah. When used in everyday speaking the Tetragrammaton is often replaced by HaShem ("the Name").
According to rabbinic tradition, the name was pronounced by the high priest on Yom Kippur, the only day when the Holy of Holies of the Temple would be entered. With the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70 C.E., this use also vanished, also explaining the loss of the correct pronunciation.
Beginning in the middle ages, the Tetragrammaton was widely contemplated as a tool in mystical enlightenment, especially in kabbalistic literature, as well is in magical encantations and spells.
In one mystical tradition, the sacred name is actually 72 letters long. The name was written out on a long strip of parchment, then folded and slipped inside the fold of the high priest's bejeweled breastplate. When someone would ask the high priest a question of Jewish law, the high priest could invoke the name, wherein the 12 jewels, representing the 12 tribes of the Israelites, would light up in a certain order whose meaning the high priest could discern. Through the power of the 72-letter name of God, the high priest communed with the Almighty. Each letter of the 4-letter form of the Name represents a metaphoric symbol of the living power of God. Also, when the letters of the Tetragrammaton are arranged in a Kabbalistic tetractys formation, the sum of all the letters is 72 by Gematria — a rabbinic system of assigning a numerical value to each letter of the alphabet — as shown in the diagram.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
See a collection and critical estimate of this evidence by Zimmern, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, 465 seq.
1. Babel and Bibel, 1902. The enormous, and for the most part ephemeral, literature provoked by Delitzschs lecture cannot be cited here.
2. Denkschriften d. Wien. Akad., L. iv. p. 115 seq. (1904).
3. Wolagdas Paradies (1881), pp. 158-166.
William G. Dever: Did God Have A Wife? Archaeology And Folk Religion In Ancient Israel (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company 2005)
Judith M.Hadley: The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judaism (U of Cambridge 2000)
Raphael Patai: The Hebrew Goddess (Wayne State University Press 1990 and earlier editions)
Footnotes
- 1. Galatin, Peter - De Arcanis Catholicæ Veritatis, 1518, folio xliii
- 2. See pages 128 and 236 of the book "Who Were the Early Israelites?" by archeologist William G. Dever, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI, 2003.
- 3.Wilhelm Gesenius is noted for being one of the greatest Hebrew and biblical scholars.
- 4. Wilhelm Gesenius' Hebrew Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament was first translated into English in 1824,
- 5. Smith's "A Dictionary of the Bible"
- 6. Encyclopedia Britannica of 1910-1911 Page 312
- 7.Smith's "A Dictionary of the Bible": Clement of Alexandria wrote "Iaou" not "Iaoue" at Stromata Book V.
- 8. Smith's "A Dictionary of the Bible": Yahweh supposed to have been derived from Samaritan "IaBe"
- 9. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1910 under the sub-heading: To take up the ancient writers
- 10. The online Jewish Encyclopedia of 1901-1906
External links
- Arbel, Ilil. "Yahweh." Encyclopedia Mythica. 2004.
- "Jehovah." Easton's Bible Dictionary (3rd ed.) 1887.
- "Jehovah (Yahweh)." Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 8. 1910.
- Jewish Encyclopedia count of number of times the Tetragrammation is used
- Nazarenes and the Name of YHWH, an article by James Trimm
- The Historical Evolution of the Hebrew God
- The Rise of God
- The Sacred Name Yahweh, a publication by Qadesh La Yahweh Press
- Biblaridion magazine: Phanerosis Theology: The Tetragrammaton and God's manifestation.
- HaVaYaH the Tetragrammation in the Jewish Knowledge Base on chabad.org
- Titles of Deity, a Christadelphian view
- YHWH/YHVH — Tetragrammaton
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