In English, going in our direction, the four Hebrew consonants are YHWH.
This is a verb form: first person, pual (causative mode), present tense. It is variously rendered in translation: "I AM" or "I am Who am." It seems to me that the piel/pual forms of Hebrew verbs can have causitive connotations, so it may not be amiss to think that there may be an echo of creation in the Divine Name: "I am the one Who causes being." The rabbis who translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek used ego eimi, "I AM," as the fundamental meaning of the word.
The consonants came first. Vowels (a, e, i, o, u, y in English) did not exist in Biblical Hebrew. The creation of a system of "vowel points" originated around 600 AD among the Masoretes in Tiberias, Jerusalem, and Iraq. Much controversy about the Hebrew text revolves around the question of vocalization--which vowels to insert into the sacred consonants so as to render them into words that can be spoken.
The second form of the divine name on this page has the vowels for Adonai, not the vowels for the original verb form.
Jehovah is a nonsense word!
"The first recorded use of this spelling was made by a Spanish Dominican monk, Raymundus Martini, in 1270."
In order to explain some features of Hebrew, it is necessary, as on this page, to write out the sacred consonants and to explain their proper and improper vocalization--"Yahweh" vs. "Jehovah." Since 2008, Catholics have been forbidden to use the proper vocalization in liturgy. The Israelites had built a "fence around the Law" in their tradition. The best way not to take the Name of the LORD in vain is never to say it, so they ceased to say the word itself and instead routinely substituted "Adonai," "the Mighty One," when they saw the tetragrammaton in their Scriptures.
To the best of my ability, I have avoided spelling out the Divine Name in this wiki and, as in the tradition of the Israelites, use "Divine Name" or "Adonai" or "LORD" as surrogates for the properly vocalized consonants.
↑ Jimmy Akin, "Is God's Name Yahweh or Jehovah?"
This page was last edited on 28 October 2016, at 17:14.