# Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Jehovah

From volume 8 of the work.
The proper name of God in the Old Testament; hence the Jews called it the name by excellence, the great name, the only name, the glorious and terrible name, the hidden and mysterious name, the name of the substance, the proper name, and most frequently shem hammephorash, i.e. the explicit or the separated name, though the precise meaning of this last expression is a matter of discussion (cf. Buxtorf, "Lexicon", Basle, 1639, col. 2432 sqq.).
Jehovah occurs more frequently than any other Divine name. The Concordances of Furst ("Vet. Test. Concordantiae", Leipzig, 1840) and Mandelkern ("Vet. Test. Concordantiae", Leipzig, 1896) do not exactly agree as to the number of its occurrences; but in round numbers it is found in the Old Testament 6000 times, either alone or in conjunction with another Divine name. The Septuagint and the Vulgate render the name generally by "Lord" (Kyrios, Dominus), a translation of Adonai-usually substituted for Jehovah in reading.
I. PRONUNCIATION OF JEHOVAH
The Fathers and the Rabbinic writers agree in representing Jehovah as an ineffable name. As to the Fathers, we only need draw attention to the following expressions: onoma arreton, aphraston, alekton, aphthegkton, anekphoneton, aporreton kai hrethenai me dynamenon, mystikon. Leusden could not induce a certain Jew, in spite of his poverty, to pronounce the real name of God, though he held out the most alluring promises. The Jew's compliance with Leusden's wishes would not indeed have been of any real advantage to the latter; for the modern Jews are as uncertain of the real pronunciation of the Sacred name as their Christian contemporaries. According to a Rabbinic tradition the real pronunciation of Jehovah ceased to be used at the time of Simeon the Just, who was, according to Maimonides, a contemporary of Alexander the Great. At any rate, it appears that the name was no longer pronounced after the destruction of the Temple. The Mishna refers to our question more than once: Berachoth, ix, 5, allows the use of the Divine name by way of salutation; in Sanhedrin, x, 1, Abba Shaul refuses any share in the future world to those who pronounce it as it is written; according to Thamid, vii, 2, the priests in the Temple (or perhaps in Jerusalem) might employ the true Divine name, while the priests in the country (outside Jerusalem) had to be contented with the name Adonai; according to Maimonides ("More Neb.", i, 61, and "Yad chasaka", xiv, 10) the true Divine name was used only by the priests in the sanctuary who imparted the blessing, and by the high-priest on the Day of Atonement. Phil ["De mut. nom.", n. 2 (ed. Marg., i, 580); "Vita Mos.", iii, 25 (ii, 166)] seems to maintain that even on these occasions the priests had to speak in a low voice. Thus far we have followed the post-Christian Jewish tradition concerning the attitude of the Jews before Simeon the Just.
As to the earlier tradition, Josephus (Antiq., II, xii, 4) declares that he is not allowed to treat of the Divine name; in another place (Antiq., XII, v, 5) he says that the Samaritans erected on Mt. Garizim an anonymon ieron. This extreme veneration for the Divine name must have generally prevailed at the time when the Septuagint version was made, for the translators always substitute Kyrios (Lord) for Jehovah. Ecclus., xxiii, 10, appears to prohibit only a wanton use of the Divine name, though it cannot be denied that Jehovah is not employed as frequently in the more recent canonical books of the Old Testament as in the older books. It would be hard to determine at what time this reverence for the Divine name originated among the Hebrews. Rabbinic writers derive the prohibition of pronouncing the Tetragrammaton, as the name of Jehovah is called, from Lev., xxiv, 16: "And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, dying let him die". The Hebrew participle noqedh, here rendered "blasphemeth", is translated honomazon in the Septuagint, and appears to have the meaning "to determine", "to denote" (by means of its proper vowels) in Gen., xxx, 28; Num., i, 17; Is., lxii, 2. Still, the context of Lev., xxiv, 16 (cf. verses 11 and 15), favours the meaning "to blaspheme". Rabbinic exegetes derive the prohibition also from Ex., iii, 15; but this argument cannot stand the test of the laws of sober hermeneutics (cf. Drusius, "Tetragrammaton", 8-10, in "Critici Sacri", Amsterdam, 1698, I, p. ii, col. 339-42; "De nomine divino", ibid., 512-16; Drach, "Harmonic entre l'Eglise et la Synagogue", I, Paris, 1844, pp. 350-53, and Note 30, pp. 512-16). What has been said explains the so-called qeri perpetuum, according to which the consonants of Jehovah are always accompanied in the Hebrew text by the vowels of Adonai except in the cases in which Adonai stands in apposition to Jehovah: in these cases the vowels of Elohim are substituted. The use of a simple shewa in the first syllable of Jehovah, instead of the compound shewa in the corresponding syllable of Adonai and Elohim, is required by the rules of Hebrew grammar governing the use of shewa. Hence the question: What are the true vowels of the word Jehovah?
It has been maintained by some recent scholars that the word Jehovah dates only from the year 1520 (cf. Hastings, "Dictionary of the Bible", II, 1899, p. 199: Gesenius-Buhl, "Handwörterbuch", 13th ed., 1899, p. 311). Drusius (loc. cit., 344) represents Peter Galatinus as the inventor of the word Jehovah, and Fagius as it propagator in the world of scholars and commentators. But the writers of the sixteenth century, Catholic and Protestant (e.g. Cajetan and Théodore de Bèze), are perfectly familiar with the word. Galatinus himself ("Areana cathol. veritatis", I, Bari, 1516, a, p. 77) represents the form as known and received in his time. Besides, Drusius (loc. cit., 351) discovered it in Porchetus, a theologian of the fourteenth century. Finally, the word is found even in the "Pugio fidei" of Raymund Martin, a work written about 1270 (ed. Paris, 1651, pt. III, dist. ii, cap. iii, p. 448, and Note, p. 745). Probably the introduction of the name Jehovah antedates even R. Martin.
No wonder then that this form has been regarded as the true pronunciation of the Divine name by such scholars as Michaelis ("Supplementa ad lexica hebraica", I, 1792, p. 524), Drach (loc. cit., I, 469-98), Stier (Lehrgebäude der hebr. Sprache, 327), and others.
To take up the ancient writers:
The judicious reader will peceive that the Samaritan pronunciation Jabe probably approaches the real sound of the Divine name closest; the other early writers transmit only abbreviations or corruptions of the sacred name. Inserting the vowels of Jabe into the original Hebrew consonant text, we obtain the form Jahveh (Yahweh), which has been generally accepted by modern scholars as the true pronunciation of the Divine name. It is not merely closely connected with the pronunciation of the ancient synagogue by means of the Samaritan tradition, but it also allows the legitimate derivation of all the abbreviations of the sacred name in the Old Testament.
II. MEANING OF THE DIVINE NAME
Jahveh (Yahweh) is one of the archaic Hebrew nouns, such as Jacob, Joseph, Israel, etc. (cf. Ewald, "Lehrbuch der hebr. Sprache", 7th ed., 1863, p. 664), derived from the third person imperfect in such a way as to attribute to a person or a thing the action of the quality expressed by the verb after the manner of a verbal adjective or a participle. Furst has collected most of these nouns, and calls the form forma participialis imperfectiva. As the Divine name is an imperfect form of the archaic Hebrew verb "to be", Jahveh means "He Who is", Whose characteristic note consists in being, or The Being simply.
Here we are confronted with the question, whether Jahveh is the imperfect hiphil or the imperfect qal. Calmet and Le Clere believe that the Divine name is a hiphil form; hence it signifies, according to Schrader (Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, 2nd ed., p. 25), He Who brings into existence, the Creator; and according to Lagarde (Psalterium Hieronymi, 153), He Who causes to arrive, Who realizes His promises, the God of Providence. But this opinion is not in keeping with Ex., iii, 14, nor is there any trace in Hebrew of a hiphil form of the verb meaning "to be"; moreover, this hiphil form is supplied in the cognate languages by the pi'el form, except in Syriac where the hiphil is rare and of late occurrence.
On the other hand, Jehveh may be an imperfect qal from a grammatical point of view, and the traditional exegesis of Ex., iii, 6-16, seems to necessitate the form Jahveh. Moses asks God: "If they should say to me: What is his [God's] name? What shall I say to them?" In reply, God returns three several times to the determination of His name. First, He uses the first person imperfect of the Hebrew verb "to be"; here the Vulgate, the Septuagint, Aquila, Theodotion, and the Arabic version suppose that God uses the imperfect qal; only the Targums of Jonathan and of Jerusalem imply the imperfect hiphil. Hence we have the renderings: "I am who am" (Vulg.), "I am who is" (Sept.), "I shall be {who] shall be" (Aquila, Theodotion), "the Eternal who does not cease" (Ar.); only the above-mentioned Targums see any reference to the creation of the world. The second time, God uses again the first person imperfect of the Hebrew verb "to be"; here the Syriac, the Sumaritan, the Persian versions, and the Targums of Onkelos and Jerusalem retain the Hebrew word, so that one cannot tell whether they regard the imperfect as a qal or a hiphil form; the Arabic version omits the whole clause; but the Septuagint, the Vulgate, and the Targum of Jonathan suppose here the imperfect qal: "He Who Is, hath sent me to you" instead of "I Am, hath sent me to you: (Vulg.); "ho on sent me to you" (Sept.); "I am who am, and who shall be, hath sent me to you" (Targ. Jon.). Finally, the third time, God uses the third person of the imperfect, or the form of the sacred name itself; here the Samaritan version and the Targum of Onkelos retain the Hebrew form; the Septuagint, the Vulgate, and the Syriac version render "Lord", though, according to the analogy of the former two passages, they should have translated, "He Is, the God of your fathers, . . . hath sent me to you"; the Arabic version substitutes "God". Classical exegesis, therefore, regards Jahveh as the imperfect qal of the Hebrew verb "to be".
Here another question presents itself: Is the being predicated of God in His name, the metaphysical being denoting nothing but existence itself, or is it an historical being, a passing manifestation of God in time? Most Protestant writers regard the being implied in the name Jahveh as an historical one, though some do not wholly exclude such metaphysical ideas as God's independence, absolute constancy, and fidelity to His promises, and immutability in His plans (cf. Driver, "Hebrew Tenses", 1892, p. 17). The following are the reasons alleged for the historical meaning of the "being" implied in the Divine name:
Since then the Hebrew imperfect is admittedly not to be considered as a future, and since the nature of the language does not force us to see in it the expression of transition or of becoming, and since, moreover, early tradition is quite fixed and the absolute character of the verb hayah has induced even the most ardent patrons of its historical sense to admit in the texts a description of God's nature, the rules of hermeneutics urge us to take the expressions in Ex., iii, 13-15, for what they are worth. Jahveh is He Who Is, i.e., His nature is best characterized by Being, if indeed it must be designated by a personal proper name distinct from the term God (Revue biblique, 1893, p. 338). The scholastic theories as to the depth of meaning latent in Yahveh (Yahweh) rest, therefore, on a solid foundation. Finite beings are defined by their essence: God can be defined only be being, pure and simple, nothing less and nothing more; not be abstract being common to everything, and characteristic of nothing in particular, but by concrete being, absolute being, the ocean of all substantial being, independent of any cause, incapable of change, exceeding all duration, because He is infinite: "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, . . . who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty" (Apoc., i, 8). Cf. St. Thomas, I, qu. xiii, a. 14; Franzelin, "De Deo Uno" (3rd ed., 1883, thesis XXIII, pp. 279-86.
III. ORIGIN OF THE NAME JAHVEH (YAHWEH)
The opinion that the name Jahveh was adopted by the Jews from the Chanaanites, has been defended by von Bohlen (Genesis, 1835, p. civ), Von der Alm (Theol. Briefe, I, 1862, pp. 524-27), Colenso (The Pentateuch, V, 1865, pp. 269-84), Goldziher (Der Mythus bei den Hebräern, 1867, p. 327), but has been rejected by Kuenen ("De Godsdienst van Israel", I, Haarlem, 1869, pp. 379-401) and Baudissin (Studien, I, pp. 213-18). It is antecedently improbable that Jahveh, the irreconcilable enemy of the Chanaanites, should be originally a Chanaanite god.
It has been said by Vatke (Die Religion des Alten Test., 1835, p. 672) and J.G. Müller (Die Semiten in ihrem Verhältniss zu Chamiten und Japhetiten, 1872, p. 163) that the name Jahveh is of Indo-European origin. But the transition of the Sanscrit root, div-the Latin Jupiter-Jovis (Diovis), the Greek Zeus-Dios, the Indo-European Dyaus into the Hebrew form Jahveh has never been satisfactorily explained. Hitzig's contention (Vorlesungen über bibl. Theol., p. 38) that the Indo-Europeans furnished at least the idea contained in the name Jahveh, even if they did not originate the name itself, is without any value.
The theory that Jahveh is of Egyptian origin may have a certain amount of a priori probability, as Moses was educated in Egypt. Still, the proofs are not convincing:
As to the theory that Jahveh has a Chaldean or an Accadian origin, its foundation is not very solid:
Cheyne (Traditions and Beliefs of Ancient Israel, 1907, pp. 63 sqq.) connects the origin of Jahveh with his Yerahme'el theory; but even the most advanced critics regard Cheyne's theory as a discredit to modern criticism. Other singular opinions as to the origin of the sacred name may be safely omitted. The view that Jahveh is of Hebrew origin is the most satisfactory. Arguing from Ex., vi, 2-8, such commentators as Nicholas of Lyra, Tostatus, Cajetan, Bonfrère, etc., maintain that the name was revealed for the first time to Moses on Mount Horeb. God declares in this vision that he "appeared to Abraham . . . by the name of God Almighty; and my name Adonai [Jahveh] I did not shew them". But the phrase "to appear by a name" does not necessarily imply the first revelation of that name; it rather signifies the explanation of the name, or a manner of acting conformable to the meaning of the name (cf. Robion in "la Science cathol.", 1888, pp. 618-24; Delattre, ibid., 1892, pp. 673-87; van Kasteren, ibid., 1894, pp. 296-315; Robert in "Revue biblique", 1894, pp. 161-81). On Mt. Horeb God told Moses that He had not acted with the Patriarchs as the God of the Covenant, Jahveh, but as God Almighty. Perhaps it is preferable to say that the sacred name, though perhaps in a somewhat modified form, had been in use in the patriarchal family before the time of Moses. On Mt. Horeb God revealed and explained the accurate form of His name, Jahveh.
Besides the works referred to in the text, the reader may consult: RELAND, Deeds Excreitationum (Utrecht, 1707); SCHRADER in SCHENKEL'S Bibel Lexicon, s. v. Jahve; PHAT, Dict. de la Bible, s.v. Jehovah; ROBERTSON SMITH in Brit. and Foreign Evan. Review (January, 1876), gives a summary of recent discussion of the subject; OEHLER, Real-Encyclopadie, S.V. Jehova.
A.J. MAAS