About jehovah.help — an independent lexicon of the name

Not affiliated with Jehovah’s Witnesses

This site is independent and is not affiliated with Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Watch Tower Society. The name Jehovah is older than any modern organisation and belongs to the whole English-speaking church, which has sung it in hymns since the eighteenth century and printed it in Bibles since 1530. Where the teachings of Jehovah’s Witnesses come up, they are described accurately and answered from a mainstream, Nicene Christian position, without mockery. The entry Is this site connected to Jehovah’s Witnesses? sets out the main differences.

What this site believes

The entries are written from the historic Christian faith as the Nicene Creed confesses it: one God in three persons; Jesus Christ fully God and fully man, crucified and risen; salvation by grace through faith in him; and the Scriptures as the final authority for what we believe. On secondary matters that faithful Christians read differently — the pronunciation of the name, the choice between “Jehovah” and “Yahweh”, questions of translation — the main views are set out and the site’s own leaning is noted gently.

Which Bibles are quoted

Three public-domain translations are used, and every quotation is checked word for word against the text before it is published.

American Standard Version (1901) — quoted wherever the point is the name itself, because the ASV prints “Jehovah” in every one of its roughly 6,800 Old Testament occurrences.
King James Version — quoted for the seven places where the King James translators kept the Hebrew name.
Berean Standard Bible — quoted for the New Testament and elsewhere.

Where an English Bible prints LORD in small capitals, it is standing in for the four Hebrew letters YHWH; the entry Why most English Bibles print LORD explains the convention.

How the entries are written

Each entry answers its question in the first paragraph, then works through the Hebrew, the passage in context, and how the name has been rendered from Hebrew into Greek, Latin and English. Historical claims are limited to what is well established, and each entry closes with a short list of the reference works behind it. Nothing on this site is a statistic, a survey or a testimony; the entries are exposition.

Lexicon, the assistant

The “Ask about the Name” box is a study aid. Lexicon answers from the Bible and public-domain reference works. It is a study aid and is not affiliated with any organisation. It is not a person, it does not speak for God, and it is no substitute for a pastor, a congregation or the reading of Scripture itself.

Contact

Corrections to a quotation or a historical detail are welcome at contact@jehovah.help. The site has no accounts, no newsletter and no tracking; see the privacy page.