In short
It’s YHWH, an acronym of sorts.
Why it is important
It has a life of its own, and there is a huge pun behind that sentence.
Origin
We first learn the name in Exodus 3:13-14, in the burning bush story. Moses asks God (for a friend, of course), What is Your name? God responds, “’I AM WHO I AM.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: “I AM has sent me to you.”’”
So “I AM WHO I AM” is the name. In Hebrew, this is abbreviated as YHWH and scholars call this the Tetragrammaton.
In the Old Testament, the word “YHWH” appears 6,521 times (in the KJV text). In English, we see it written as LORD (all capital letters).
How to pronounce it (or not!)
Moderners will say and write “Yahweh” – that’s “yah way” or if you want to sound really Jewish, “yah VEH” with some throat-clearing in the mix.
The irony in that statement is that later Jews actually abhor the idea of pronouncing this. And many don’t even like to write out “God” and will write “G-d.” Instead, they will say and write “Adonai.” This is a tradition that goes back before Jesus’ day (but after the Old Testament was written).
The other pronunciation you might hear is “Jehovah” (especially in songs). This comes from the King James era. W and V sounds are often interchanged in other languages. But there’s also a connection between J and Y sounds. Spanish speakers will recognize this from regional ways to pronounce the double L (like llave), and Americans may know someone from New York to say “You know what I mean” with a J sound at the beginning. So, Y becomes J and W becomes V and you get “Jehovah” out of YHWH.
You have probably deduced that the vowels are arbitrary – why isn’t it “Jahvay” instead of “Jehovah”? Because whoever invented the “Jehovah” spelling used the vowels from Adonai. Kind of a weird blending of the original name with the substitute.
Is “God” a name of God?
I would say so. It’s used that way starting from the first sentence of the Bible: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1).
The Hebrew word is Elohim, which is really peculiar. It’s a plural noun used as a singular. Though, to make this more complicated, “elohim” *can* be used in the plural, such as “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex 20:3).
In English, it’s like saying “Hand me the scissors.” Scissors is plural*, yet you can mean a single item (a “pair” of scissors).
This is the point where we ponder the idea of a trinity still being one God. Also, this brings up the idea of the divine council. Moving on….
Are there other names of God?
Or titles, anyway? Certainly.
To recap, we had YHWH/Yahweh/Jehovah/LORD (that’s one) and Adonai (meaning Lord, in the sense of “master”). Others include:
- The LORD of Hosts (hosts = armies); see 1Sa 1:11, 17:45
- El Elyon (Most High God), used in the Psalms mostly; see Gen 14:22
- El Shaddai (God Almighty); see Gen 35:11
The name of God as a… being?
Yep. For example:
Neh 1:9, “but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name dwell there.”
Jer 7:11-12, “Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the LORD. Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel”
2Ch 6:5-9, “…I have chosen Jerusalem that my name may be there, and I have chosen David to be over my people Israel…. your son who shall be born to you shall build the house for my name.”
Footnote
* Yes, “scissor” can be singular. There is such a thing as a scissor truss in engineering, for example, or a scissor lift for doing maintenance or renovations. Another example is “pants” (the clothing item). You might have one pant leg inside-out, for example.
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