August 16, 2009

• Jehovah is not a real name for God

  Sometimes “knowledge is power”, but with language, it often feels like ignorance is bliss.  Having studied both Biblical Greek and Hebrew, it is hard for me be a passive learner when Biblical language is mishandled in sermons or worship songs.  I don’t want to be critical but there’s a certain amount of angst that comes with the power of knowledge. 

  Take for example “Jehovah”, a popularly used name for God.  It’s actually not a real name of God but a made-up one.  Its history goes back to a reverence for God and His name.  “Yahweh” is the real, revealed, personal name of God, but because the Jews didn’t want to take Yahweh’s name in vain, they came up with another name to denote His name in the Scriptures.  They used the consonants for “Yahweh” and the vowels of “Adonai” (which means “Lord”) to make a new word…which roughly reads “Yehovah”.  But this was only a code word.  Anybody who actually read the Scriptures knew that when you got to this code word, you wouldn’t read “Yehovah”, you would read “Adonai”, and when everyone heard “Adonai”, they knew you really meant “Yahweh”.  In other words:  pretend we had an abbreviation/code word for Jesus like “J-SOG” (Jesus, Son of God) and then we decided to use “J-SOG” to address him in worship and in prayers.  “Oh, JSOG, we love you….”  Sure, it might work as long as we know who we’re talking about, but it’s still not quite the name of God.  But then again, what’s in a name?  Does it really matter?  We call God by different names in different languages, after all.  I’ve been back and forth on this because of the fact that “Jehovah” has kinda trickled down through the years to become a sort of name for God.  But you can kinda see where my angst is coming from… 

  My conclusion so far?  There is a great need for humility that comes with the privilege of learning.  And I confess I am only a preschooler in the school of humility.

  • 7:10 pm
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