What's in a name? Part II

                                                            

This is a Tetragrammaton written in Paleo-Hebrew, Aramaic, and Hebrew.  Tetragrammaton is from the Greek  Τετραγράμματον, meaning "(consisting) of four letters".  We more commonly see it as "YHWH".  It IS the name of GOD.  The name of God is not THE LORD as we see in many of our Bibles today, nor was it ever meant to be removed by man's tradition.  Psalm 68:4 says, "Sing to God, sing in praise of His NAME, extol him who rides on the clouds; rejoice before Him, His name is... THE LORD?  The Lord is simply a title, not His name!  YaHWeH (or YaHuWaH, but most scholars believe the former is the more correct form), this is the name of the one true GOD!  Long ago it became a Jewish tradition not to speak the name of God but either to use a title (Adonai, Elohim) or simply Ha-shem which translates to "The Name".  When the modern Bible was written, Biblical scholars simply continued the Jewish tradition.  But this is not how it was supposed to be but rather Psalm 68:4 should say, "Sing to God, sing in praise of His NAME, extol him who rides on the clouds; rejoice before Him, His name is YAHWEH.  

What about Jehovah you may ask?  Let's first look again at the Tetragrammaton YHWH.  There are, right off the bat, two problems with coming to the word "Jehovah" from the above letters.  First, there is no "J" and second, there is no "V".  As a matter of fact the letter J did not exist in any language until 16th century and wasn't common in modern English until a century later!  Even the earliest versions of the King James used the letter "I" for words like, oh you know "Iesus".  Now as for the "W" versus the "V", well that is the difference between ancient (W) and modern Hebrew (V).  Now I don't suppose that going back to the time of Moses encompasses "modern" Hebrew!  Even if we were to impose the modern version you still would not get Jehovah, but rather Yahveh or Yahovah.  But there is yet another problem with even Yahovah.  Words and names are all about meaning in Hebrew, and a break down of Jehovah or Yahovah may be very telling on whom these words truly represent. Hovah is a word that has meaning and is listed in Strong's Concordance as #1943 and it's meaning is "a ruin or disaster" and is another form for the word at #1942 Havvah which means "destruction".  Strong's Exhaustive Concordance goes even further with these wonderful meanings...calamity, iniquity, mischief, mischievous thing, naughtiness, naughty, perverse thing.   So... does that sound like the correct name for the God of the Bible?   Maybe for the god of this world, but not for the one who made the heavens and the earth and all there within!  I have made it a point, especially when reading the Old Testament, to substitute "YAHWEH" where ever I see "THE LORD", and I hope more and more will do the same.  

God bless and Godspeed.