Lord, Language, & Liturgy
Jeff Meyers
In our liturgy we read "Yahweh" when the Hebrew text uses the Tetragrammaton YHWH to refer to God. Most of our English translations continue to translate YHWH as LORD, distinguishing it from the Hebrew word adonay ("lord") by the use of small or large caps formatting. I am convinced that this perpetuates a very unhealthy tradition and makes for a muddled reading of Scripture. It's time to break that tradition and restore the divine covenantal name given to Israel to the public reading of Scripture.
It is better for us to read Yahweh rather than LORD in our
translations, Scripture reading, and preaching for these reasons:
1. Yahweh was given to Israel as God's "memorial
name" (Exod. 3:15). This
personal name of God was revealed to Israel so that they might use it in prayer
and thus remind God of his covenant so he would act for them. God's personal name for Israel was not
"Lord" but "Yahweh."
As Psalm 20 says, "Some trust in chariots and some in horses but we
will memorialize the name of Yahweh our God." The name of the God of Israel was not "Lord" or
"LORD" but Yahweh.
2.
"Lord" is a title not a name. You can make the word "Lord" into all caps,
italicize it, bold it, or whatever, but that doesn't change the fact that it
means "Master" or "Sir" and is not a name, certainly not God's revealed personal
name. So when one translates
passages like "Let them praise the name of Yahweh" as "Let them
praise the name of the LORD" you muck up the meaning badly. His name is not
"Lord" or "LORD" but YHWH.
3. The
abbreviation YAH is not replaced with
LORD in our English translations.
We still say and sing "hallelujah," which means "praise
Yah[weh]." Why don't we sing "hallelu-LORD"? Silly, you say? Just as silly as replacing YHWH with Lord.
If saying the whole name is so spiritually hazardous, why isn't saying
part of the name just as dangerous?
But YAH was not even replaced by superstitious Jews who refused to say
the whole name for fear of judgment.
In addition to Hallelujah we still have all the proper names that
include Yahweh in them, like Joshua (Heb: Yah-shua - "Yahweh saves"). The best we can say is
this is inconsistent; the worst is that it's evidence of how stupid this
superstitious avoidance of the name Yahweh really is.
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4. Later Jews superstitiously refused to vocalize the
name. I'll get to when this
happened in a moment. But the
practice of replacing Yahweh with Lord was an act of rebellion. God gave this name for the Jews to use
in memorial prayers, Psalms, and worship.
Not using it means that they thought they were wiser than God. This is part and parcel with the
Pharisaical "fencing of the law." In order to avoid transgressing the 3rd Word ("taking
the name of Yahweh in vain") the wily Pharisaical Jews decided to just
avoid the word altogether. And we
want to follow that tradition?
5. What modern Jews think about what we do in our
translations is irrelevant. This is a red herring anyway because we have enough
in our Bibles to madden the Jews as it is. But more importantly, we need to remember that post AD 70
Judaism is a different religion than that practiced by OT believers before
Christ. There are no simple "OT
believers" around today.
Adding Yahweh to our translations wouldn't make a difference at
all. The superstitious avoidance
of the vocalization of Yahweh didn't become "official" until after
the first century AD, probably in response to the Christian argument that Jesus
is Yahweh. Even so, why should we
coddle them in their superstitious rebellion anyway? It seems to me that the real offense would be to
Evangelicals who THINK the Jews would be offended. I doubt very much if most Jews would even bother to sigh.
6. Bible
publishers want to make money and making such a widespread change in the way
the OT is translated would mean loss of profit because it would be too much of
a departure from KJV tradition.
Follow the money trail.
Bibles are the most profitable product for publishers. Above all, publishers want to make
money on their new translations.
It's not about accuracy but adding up currency.
7. Isn't it
fascinating to learn that the KJV translators had the sense to know that YHWH absolutely needed its own translation in at least
four places in the OT.
Ex. 6.3 - "And I appeared unto
Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my
name JEHOVAH was I not known to them."
Psa. 83.18 - "That men may
know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the
earth."
Is. 12.2 - "Behold, God is my
salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the LORD JEHOVAH is my strength
and my song; he also is become my salvation."
Is. 26.4 - "Trust ye in the
LORD for ever: for in the LORD JEHOVAH is everlasting strength."
Interesting, huh?
In Isa. 12:2 and 26:4 they are evidently trying to get the reader to
link LORD and JEHOVAH since the Hebrew text has only YHWH and not adonay. Even though that's an
odd way to translate these verses, they at least recognized here that one had
to alert the reader to the presence of YHWH for a proper understanding of the text. I would argue the same for just about
every occurrence of YHWH in the
text. What's the difference
between these five passages and all the passages in the Psalms that say,
"Praise the name of Yahweh"?
If you don't put the actually name of Israel's God where it belongs, you
end up with a translation that makes a completely different statement than the
original.
8. Now here's
something you may not know. The
old Calvinistic Standard, the 1901 American Standard Version (ASV), is the only
version to consistently translate YHWH
as Jehovah throughout the entire OT.
Check it out. I differ, of
course, about the vocalization of Yahweh. It's not "Jehovah," but I
would take that any day over the LORD/Lord lunacy we have now. Check out the ASV sometime:
http://www.bible-researcher.com/asv.html
9. The fact that we don't know the precise vocalization
doesn't matter. How can this be
used as an argument? Just as we
say "Jesus" in English instead of the Greek "Iesous," there
is no reason not to say Jehovah, Yahweh, Jahve, or something else similar. Getting the exact vocalization right is
immaterial. The important thing is
that we hear and see the personal, covenantal name of God in the text. From Hebrew, it seems clear that it was
sometimes vocalized "yeho" or "yehu" from the names of the
kings. So I don't think tonal precision to ancient Hebrew usage has any
importance.
10. So what do
we do with the fact that "the Jews did not pronounce the name YHWH"?
When I read statements like that I ask, "Which Jews?" Too often, when these kinds of
statements are made people think of the Jews living during the time of the
OT. But there is very little
evidence to suggest that Isrealites and later Jews living before the
inter-Testamental period consistently practiced this superstition. In fact, there's lots of solid evidence
to contradict such speculation.
Doing a little research on this uncovers the fact that the
Jews were still pronouncing YHWH at the
end of the OT period. Indeed,
there is no solid evidence to suggest that the Jews did not pronounce this name
at the time of Jesus. Most
evidence points to the conclusion that the development of this superstitious
avoidance of vocalizing the name of Yahweh comes after the destruction of the
Temple. That doesn't mean that
nobody was doing it before this time.
But the practice doesnŐt appear to be the official policy of Judaism
until after the destruction of the Temple. The superstitious avoidance of Yahweh is associated with the
transformation of Judaism into a new religion after the NT period, an extension
and intensification of apostate, Pharisaical Judaism.
And what about the Septuagint (LXX) translators? Well, it appears that the writers of
the LXX were not yet under the spell of this stupid superstition.
The New International Dictionary of New Testament
Theology notes: ""Recent textual
discoveries cast doubt on the idea that the compilers of the LXX translated the
etragrammaton YHWH by kyrios. The
oldest LXX MSS (fragments) now available to us have the tetragrammaton written
in Heb. characters in the Gk. text.
This custom was retained by later Jewish translators of the OT in the
first centuries A.D. One LXX MS
from Qumram even represents the tetragrammaton by IAO. these instances have given support to
the theory that the thorough-going use of kyrios for the tetragrammaton in the text of the LXX was
primarily the work of Christian scribes. . . On the other hand, the Jews would
have already replaced the tetragrammaton by kyrios in the oral transmission of the Gk. OT text (Vol. 2,
p. 512).
"In pre-Christian Greek [manuscripts] of the OT, the
divine name was not rendered by 'kyrios' as has often been thought. Usually the
Tetragram was written out in Aramaic or in paleo-Hebrew letters. . . . At a
later time, surrogates such as 'theos' [God] and 'kyrios' replaced the
Tetragram . . . There is good reason to believe that a similar pattern evolved
in the NT, i.e. the divine name was originally written in the NT quotations of
and allusions to the OT, but in the course of time it was replaced by
surrogates" (New Testament Abstracts,
March 1977, p. 306).
This, then, raises the question of whether the NT writers really
were accommodating themselves to the Jews when they translated YHWH as kyrios. They must have had some other reason
for doing it. What might that have
been?
Notice that the divine name YHWH was given to Israel. The name of God used by non-Israelite believers was most
often "God Most High" or the "Most High God." Just do a concordance search and you'll
see this, from Melchizedek in Gen. 14 to King Nebuchadnezzar in Dan. 4. With the exile, however, God does a new
thing in the world. He sent the Jews
(short for Judahites) into the whole world to be witness for him. They no longer have their own Davidic
King. Now they are subject, by
God's own decree, to the world emperors of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and
Rome.
This new world order is different than the old tribal and
kingdom arrangement of the past.
Now God begins a new work of international significance. Of course, this culminates in the work
of Jesus and his apostles. I don't
have time to go into all the details here. But interestingly, at this time God begins to speak in
tongues (non-Hebrew languages), specifically Aramaic. And the name Yahweh is not used in the Aramaic sections of
the OT.
It seems best to understand that the name YHWH was given specifically to Israel and the Jews and is
particularly associated with the Mosaic and kingdom phases of their
history. God is for the Israelites
peculiarly Yahweh. The name YHWH is not used in the Aramaic and later in the Greek
Scriptures because YHWH is for
Israel and the Jews. Yahweh is
"the name of the God of Israel" (Ezra 5:1, in Aramaic).
Even if the evidence seems to indicate that the people of God did not use the name Yahweh as much in the exilic and post-exilic period - a time when the kingdom of God expanded to include the world emperors as guardians of his seed people - that does not imply that they refused to say the name Yahweh anymore at all. Writing new things for a new situation is one thing, reading the received Scriptures is something else. In other words, when they read the Torah in their assembly they read Yahweh, but when they wrote and spoke to their Gentile neighbors in the wider world they used more generic titles for the true God.
If the NT writers, continuing the trajectory of the new covenantal arrangement after the exile, did not use the name Yahweh in their translation of OT texts, this does not necessarily imply that they refused to vocalize the world when they read the Scriptures publicly in their services. The revelation of God's name corresponded with the increasing revelation of his character and purposes so that finally God is revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and the specific "memorial name" for worship and prayer is now the name of God incarnate, Jesus.
This does not mean, however, that we should just go back and erase all the previous names of God and put Jesus or Lord in their place. Even if we don't use the name of Yahweh in the same way as the Israelites did, we need to be able to read the Scriptures in such a way that we can learn how that name functioned for them. After all, these things were written for our instruction. If hearers of the Scripture cannot discern the difference between God's personal name and the title "Master/Lord," then they will miss an important dimension of instruction concerning how the people relate to their covenant God.
The bottom line is the LORD/Lord business in English is
confusing, especially when heard/sung in church and not simply in one's private
reading. Even by making that
distinction (LORD/Lord) the translators are conceding the battle. Why even do this? It just raises questions. When people read this odd translation
they will look in the margin or in the explanation in front of their Bibles and
see "Yahweh" anyway, so why not go the whole nine yards?
Moreover, the distinction is completely lost when the text
is publicly read out loud and not just "studied." You see, for liturgical use the modern
way of translation utterly fails.
Hearers will have no idea when LORD or Lord is being used. Well, this is just par for the
course. Not many in our tradition
think about corporate/liturgical use when they do these translations. It's all about private reading and
study. If we insist on not vocalizing YHWH, then we must at least do something to make the
distinction audible in public reading - maybe if we use "Lord" for
Yahweh, then "Master" should be used for adonay. At
least the distinction could be heard. But again, why go through such
linguistic contortions? Why not
rather translate the text faithfully and allow God's people to hear and thereby
understand the proper difference between the title Lord and the name Yahweh?
In conclusion, for reading the text in Church and for use in
study Yahweh should be used. It is, after all, the unique name God revealed to Israel, and to say "by my name
LORD I was not known by them" (Ex. 3:15) is grotesque and dangerously
misleading.