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As I write this article, we are only six chapters into our study of Genesis. God has already been referred to several times as “the LORD” and I want to do more than say something about it in one of the chapter discussions or include a note on the next chapter post.

When you see the LORD written in all caps in the Old Testament, or less commonly GOD in all caps, they are translating the Hebrew name of God. If you were reading the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew it would look like יהוה. The Hebrew letters correlate to YHWH (or YHVH, or sometimes JHVH) but those consonant letters are unpronounceable without any vowels. Hebrews is an ancient language and the first written Hebrew had no characters for vowel sounds. Eventually, as other languages evolved, Hebrew speaking people went back and added pronunciation marks so readers would know which vowel sounds to make. But it was too late to fix YHWH.

Written Hebrew did not have any symbols for vowels but the people who spoke it knew what the words sounded like. In the case of YHWH no one alive today knows what the spoken word should sound like, not exactly, because in antiquity they never spoke God’s name out loud. The problem is that God never gave them such a command. God told Moses his name in Genesis 3. “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” When God made his covenant with the children of Israel a few chapters later, he says “I will be your God and you will be my people.” He pledges to make his dwelling place among them and tells them to call on his name. In time the pronunciation was lost because what they perceived to be piety led to them never being able to do what he wished, and that was know his name.

God said “I AM WHO I AM” to Moses at the burning bush. When Jesus was reprimanding the Pharisees in John 8, he said “Before Abraham was, I am” and they picked up stones to put him to death. He wasn’t just saying that he was really old; it was a play on words in which he used the name of God to describe himself. The Hebrew letters יהוה are referred to as the tetragrammaton, a Greek word which simply means four letters. Some use Yahweh as the name of God because it’s kind of the best we can do. You may also hear Jehovah as the name of God. To my surprise, the American Standard Bible uses Jehovah in Genesis 7:1 while every other English translation I looked at (at least 10 or 12 different ones) all say “The LORD said to Noah….” We would have to get into a longer discussion of the Greek Septuagint, Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible into German, and go further down the rabbit hole than I would like to in order to explain the origins of Jehovah. I will summarize: Usually the Tetragammaton is rendered YHWH in English but JHVH are the German letters. The Catholic Church had the Bible tied up in Latin for a thousand years and the first Protestants, Lutherans, could read Martin Luther’s German translation in their own language. There was a time late in the Middle Ages when Catholics and Protestants formed armies and literally went to war against each other.

It’s a shame that the pronunciation of YHWH was lost to history. It’s a shame that thousands of Catholics and Protestants died fighting over religious freedom. Human nature is sinful; it started in Genesis 3 and has only gotten worse since then. Don’t be mislead to believe otherwise. But there is good news. The perfect world God created will be made right again. We will be his people, he will be our God. And he (Jesus) came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. (Ephesians 2:17-18)