A-E-I-O-U and Sometimes Adonai (III)

There are three Hebrew words used to refer to God in the Old Testament: Elohim, Adonai and Yahweh.

Elohim means simply “God” and is found in Gen 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Sometimes it is shortened to “El” and put next to a verbal form. E.g. El Shaddai (God our nourisher) or El Elyon (God the most High). It appears around 2,800 times in the Old Testament.

Adonai is used 439 times in the Old Testament and means Lord. It is a word applied to both human leaders and to God, just like in English.

The most important divine name for God is Yahweh. This is the name of God revealed to Moses at the burning bush. It is a form of the verb “to be” and is translated as I AM. In many contemporary translations it is rendered into English in all capital letters (LORD) in order to distinguish it from Adonai (Lord). It is used around 6,800 times in the Bible and it the most common name attributed to God.

In order to avoid misusing the name of the Lord (and shattering the third commandment), observant Jews decided that it was easier to simply not speak the revealed name of the Lord at all. So instead of saying the word Yahweh, they would replace it with the word Adonai (also translated Lord). That way they could never misuse the name of the Lord because they never used it.

But they soon had a problem. As noted above, the Old Testament includes frequent references to Yahweh. So how could they read the biblical text aloud without pronouncing the most divine name of God?

In order to continue to read the text aloud, they would simply substitute the term Adonai (Lord) for Yahweh (LORD) as they read. In order to remind themselves to say “Adonai” as they read “Yahweh” they altered the vowels of the text. THey changed the vowels to provide a visual triggere to remind them not to speak the name of Yahweh.

Specifically, they would take the consonants of Yahweh (YHWH) and combine it with the vowels of Adonai (a-o-a). This resulting Frankenstein of a word would read “Yahovah” or Jahovah. When transliterated into English, the result is Jehovah—again, a misreading of the text. The point was simply to remind them to read Adonai.

But later translators did not pick up on this nuance and simply read Jehovah instead.

And tomorrow --> Does it really matter?