Yahweh is the proper personal name of the Judeo-Christian God as plainly stated in the Hebrew Scriptures, e.g. “God said moreover to Moses, ‘You shall tell the children of Israel this, ‘Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and this is my memorial to all generations.” (Ex. 3:15, WEB) or “God spoke to Moses, and said to him, ‘I am Yahweh; and I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty; but by my name Yahweh I was not known to them.” (Ex. 6:2-3, WEB).[1]
“The name YHWH specifies an immediacy, a presence. Central to the word is the verb form ‘to be,’ which points in the Mosaic context to a ‘being present,’ and may in Israel’s later history, as some suggest, have come to mean ‘I (and no other [god]) Am’ (Isa. 4:14’ 43:10).”[2]
Lawrence O. Richards said:
“Yahweh is the personal, not descriptive, name of the God of the Old Testament. It is his covenant name by which he chooses to be known by those to whom he has made commitments. Yahweh means, ‘The One Who Is Always Present.’ It is the name God’s people are always to remember. The God who has made himself known to us in so many ways is with us now.”[3]
Religious Jews have such reverence for the name of God that they do not speak it aloud or write it down except in prayer or religious study, oftentimes opting to say ‘Hashem’ (Heb. ‘the name’) in its place.[4] This is significant because it highlights the fact that Yahweh is a personal name rather than a ‘nickname’ or ‘title’ as some Muslims claim.[5]
…to be continued
[1] Cf.; Ex. 15:3 (יְהוָה שְׁמוֹ) lit. ‘Yahweh is his name’; Ps. 83:18 (אַתָּה שִׁמְךָ יְהוָה לְבַדֶּךָ) lit. ‘Thou alone whose name is Yahweh’; Is. 42:8 (אֲנִי יְהוָה, הוּא שְׁמִי) lit. ‘I am Yahweh, that is my name’; Deut. 4:35; Jos. 22:34 (יְהוָה הוּא הָאֱלֹהִים) lit. ‘Yahweh, He is the God’; etc…
[2] Martens, Elmer A. “God, Names of” in Baker Theological Dictionary of the Bible, Walter A. Elwell, ed., (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1996), 298.
[3] Richards, Lawrence O., ed., “God’s Names” in Richard’s Complete Bible Dictionary, (Iowa Falls, IA: World Bible, 2002), 441.
[4] See English translations of either the Stone Edition Tanakh or the Stone Edition Chumash, ed. Nosson Scherman, (New York: Mesorah Publishers, 1998, 2001) for ‘Hashem’ as a substitute for the divine name. Note that this practice is not derived from the commandment not to take the name of Yahweh in vain (Ex. 20:7), but rather from a rabbinic interpretation of Deut. 12:3-4 where the Israelites were commanded to destroy everything pertaining to idolatry in the land they were inhabiting, but to never do this to Yahweh their God—therefore “Jews are forbidden to erase the name of God” (Scherman, Nosson, et al. eds. The Chumash Travel-Size Edition – With Complete Sabbath Prayers, (New York: Mesorah, 2001), 1000, note 4).
[5] See the article entitled “The Original name for GOD in the Bible is not ‘Yahweh’, it is ‘Allah’” available at: http://www.answering-christianity.com/allah1.htm
Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth 