The Story of a Name: "YHWH" or "LORD" in Christian Worship?

 

*NOTE: This post was originally written in Fall of 2024. It is a "first pass" at the topic from my viewpoint as a teaching pastor, and is open to revision in the future as time (and interest) allows.

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There seems to be a trend lately to try and reclaim the Old Testament’s covenant name for God in Christian worship. Vineyard worship triumphantly declares “He is Yahweh” in their 2008 song of the same name. More recently, Elevation worship’s 2016 release Yahweh also includes the lyrics: “Holy, holy is the Lord; Worthy to be praised—Yahweh.” This is even reflected in many recent Bible translations, as the Lexham English Bible, World English Bible, and Legacy Standard Bible all use the rendering “Yahweh” instead of the more traditional rendering “the LORD.” In the last case, the official website for the Legacy Standard Bible -a revision of the NASB- claims that “Exodus 3:14-15 shows that God Himself considered it important for His people to know His name. The effect of revealing God’s name is His distinction from other gods and His expression of intimacy with the nation of Israel.” This justification for their translation choice gives the impression that other translations are obscuring or doing an injustice by hiding away the covenant name of God, which that translation is then claiming to correct.

Is it really the case, though, that rendering God’s covenant name as “LORD” is just a bit of traditionalism that obscures God’s name and that needs to be done away with? Could it be that there are good reasons to prefer the traditional rendering instead? The best way to explore the answer might be to look at the story of the name of God, and what that story tells us about how we can approach him.

EARLY DAYS: THE FREQUENT USE OF GOD’S NAME

From its first use in Genesis 2:4, to its definitive use in Exodus 3:14-15, down throughout the rest of the Old Testament, we see a regular use of God’s covenant name all the way from the Exodus to the Persian period of Israel's history (Nehemiah 10:35). Other contemporary sources outside of the Old Testament, such as the Lachish Ostraca (approx. 587 BC), the Al-Yahudu Tablets (approx. 587-477 BC), and the Elephantine Papyri (approx. 419-402 BC) all demonstrate a fairly free approach to the use of God’s name. It appears that God’s name was frequently used, without embarrassment, both by biblical writers and by other Judeans outside of the Bible up into the Persian period.

INTERTESTAMENTAL TIMES: THE UNPRONOUNCEABLE NAME

At some point between the Persian period and the time of Christ, however, the pronunciation of God’s name seems to have fallen out of regular use. The Jewish Encyclopedia, using the term “Tetragrammaton” for the four-letter spelling of God’s name in Hebrew (יהוה or YHWH), claims that “it may well be that such a reluctance [to pronounce God’s name] first arose in a foreign, and hence in an ‘unclean’ land, very possibly, therefore, in Babylonia… the Rabbis forbade the utterance of the Tetragrammaton, to guard against desecration of the Sacred Name; but such an ordinance could not have been effectual unless it had met with popular approval… the Divine Name was not pronounced lest it should be desecrated by the heathen.” There actually was some abuse of the divine name, which we know, historically, extended even to its use in magic spells and rituals (where it is often rendered as ιαω or Iao - another possible vocalization of the Tetragrammaton, though the form ιαωουηε or Iaoouee also exists, which may be pronounced more like the familiar rendering Yahweh).

By the time of Jesus, we see the increasing use of the word “Lord” in place of God’s name in Biblical manuscripts in Greek. Greg Lanier writes, “Perhaps surprisingly, some Jewish manuscripts found at Qumran dating from before the birth of Jesus translated YHWH using the Greek term kyrios [Lord]... the Jewish philosopher Philo (20 BC - 50 AD) also used kyrios for YHWH, even though he died likely before the bulk of the NT was written.” It should be pointed out that our oldest physical copies of Greek Old Testament manuscripts do have God’s name written as יהוה written in Hebrew letters, but University of Toronto professor Albert Pietersma -who is also one of the editors of the New English Translation of the Septuagint- has convincingly shown that these manuscripts are Hebraizing corrections of still-earlier Greek manuscripts, and not the original form of the Old Testament in Greek. Thus, the original Greek copies of the Old Testament likely translated God’s name with the Greek word for “Lord,” as did later Greek manuscripts. Even in the case of Greek manuscripts that use Hebrew letters for the name of God, it should be pointed out that this is still an effort to avoid the actual pronunciation of God’s name—it isn’t an equivalent transliteration of God’s name using Greek consonants and vowels, which would have rendered the name pronounceable, but instead it obscures God’s name by continuing to represent it in Hebrew or even Paleo-Hebrew letters.

Later translations of the Old Testament into Greek also inserted יהוה in original Hebrew letters, but this practice was eventually dropped because of an unfortunate mispronunciation of God’s name that resulted. Jerome writes in his 25th letter to Marcella, written at Rome in 384 AD, that “The ninth [name of God] is a tetragrammaton, which they [the Jews] considered anekphoneton, that is, unspeakable, which is written with these letters, Iod, He, Vau, He. Which certain ignorant ones, because of the similarity of the characters [to the Greek letters PIPI], when they would find them in Greek books, were accustomed to pronounce ‘Pipi.’”

It seems, then, that providentially, leading up to the time of Jesus, and then in the centuries that followed, the use of God’s covenant name fell out of use. This came to the point that the name’s true pronunciation was eventually lost, and is still today a matter of debate. But it is worthwhile to ask: why would God allow his name to fall into disuse?

THE TIME OF CHRIST: THE NEW NAME OF GOD

The New Testament repeatedly shows, in its quotations from the Old Testament, that the earliest Christians knew and accepted a Greek translation which substituted “Lord” for יהוה. And Jesus, arriving at a time in history when God’s name was beginning to fall into disuse, did nothing to correct that trend. Instead he taught his disciples to pray “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” in Matthew 6:9. Jesus also says in a prayer to God the Father, “Holy Father, keep them [the disciples] in your name… While I was with them, I kept them in your name… I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known” (John 17:26). This is interesting, because nowhere do we actually see Jesus use the Old Testament covenant name for God. All of the New Testament manuscripts that we have, many of which are quite early, uniformly show the same thing. So how exactly did Jesus make the name of God known? The answer seems to be that in the person of Jesus, the identity of God is more fully revealed: יהיה represented God’s irreducible identity as simply “the one who is.” But the name Father represents the first member of the Trinity in relation to God the Son, and his relationship to us through Jesus. And Lord becomes a shared title of God in the Old Testament, and of Jesus in the New Testament (Matthew 7:22, 23:39). This disuse of God’s covenant name both in the New Testament and historically outside of it, combined with Jesus’ revelation of himself as the one through whom a relationship with God is possible, makes it possible for the Apostle Peter to make a fascinating declaration in Acts 4:11-12. He says in front of the high-priestly family of that time, “This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

OUR TIME: IMPLICATIONS FOR TODAY

So, in our worship and Bible readings, should we use the names Yahweh or Jehovah? Or, possibly, Iao, though I haven’t seen that one pop up in any translations or worship songs? Should we do what some before and after Jesus did, and bring the covenant name of God back, but using Hebrew letters? If we did, it might cause an unfortunate mispronunciation of God’s name by English-speaking worshippers as was the case in Jerome’s day among Greek-speakers, where some might start to pronounce God’s name יהוה as “Nini.” Or should we stick with the Jewish tradition, which was accepted and used by Jesus, to declare his own identity, of rendering the divine name as “LORD”?

Personally, I don’t see any problem with the use of “Yahweh” in Christian worship, as long as those who use it are aware that may not be the actual pronunciation, and as long as they do not feel that this is evidence of some kind of higher spiritual awareness or knowledge on their part. We do not need more reasons to be divided, and I think that the temptation to use God’s name to mark a division between Christians or sense of superiority over other “less-informed” Christians in their worship songs, preferred translations, and liturgy would amount to a certain kind of dark irony. For me, though, I believe that the providential fall into disuse of God’s name leading up to the time of Jesus, as well as Jesus’ own practice, and his own use of the term “Lord” to refer to himself, as well as the New Testament’s focus on “the name” of Jesus, all amount to a certain happy acceptance of the idea that God is now known by different names -Lord, Father- which are understood most fully through the revelation of Jesus Christ. He is not simply “the one who exists” anymore; but he is the one whose name “Lord” is also used of Jesus, and the one whose identity as Father is revealed to us by the Son.

Grace and Peace,

-Pastor Sean