The word “Jehovah” entered English through William Tyndale, whose translation of the Pentateuch, printed in 1530, gave the name in the spelling of his day, “Iehouah”, at Exodus 6:3 and a few other places. The form itself was older than Tyndale. It arose because the Hebrew text of the Old Testament writes God’s personal name with four consonants, YHWH, and marks them with the vowels of Adonai, “my Lord”, as a signal to the reader to say Adonai instead. Christian scholars of the later Middle Ages read the consonants and the borrowed vowels together as one word, and Latin writers, most influentially Petrus Galatinus in 1518, spread the result. From Tyndale the word passed into the Geneva Bible, into the King James Version of 1611, which prints it seven times, and into the American Standard Version of 1901, which uses it throughout. Most later translations returned to LORD, but by then the word had settled deep into English prayer and song.
The letters of the name and the vowels beside them
The Hebrew Bible writes the personal name of God with four consonants, usually transliterated YHWH and known as the Tetragrammaton. Ancient Hebrew recorded consonants only, and by the time of Christ Jewish readers had long ceased to pronounce this name aloud, reading Adonai in its place. When the Masoretes, the Jewish scholars who between roughly the sixth and tenth centuries added vowel signs to the text, reached the four letters, they supplied the vowels of Adonai rather than the vowels of the name itself. Scholars call this a qere perpetuum, a standing instruction about what is to be read aloud.
To a reader trained in the synagogue the signal was clear. To a reader who met the pointed text only on the page, it looked like a single word. Take the consonants Y-H-W-H, add the vowels of Adonai (the first of them shortened, as Hebrew grammar requires under the letter Y), and the result reads roughly Yehowah. That is the origin of “Jehovah”. The entry How to pronounce Jehovah, and why no one is certain explains why most Hebrew scholars now reconstruct the ancient sound as “Yahweh”.
None of this makes the name itself uncertain. The name is the one God gave to Moses, and Scripture calls it his memorial:
And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Jehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.
— Exodus 3:15 (ASV)
Medieval Latin scholars and the printed page
The combined reading appears in Christian Latin writing of the later Middle Ages. A spelling of the name with the vowels of Adonai is found in manuscripts of the Pugio Fidei, a work completed around 1270 by the Dominican scholar Raymond Martini, though scholars debate how far those spellings go back to the author rather than to later copyists. The form became widely known through Petrus Galatinus, a Franciscan whose De Arcanis Catholicae Veritatis was printed in 1518. He wrote the name as Iehoua and treated the reading as natural, and the printing press carried his book to readers across Europe.
Christian Hebraists of the sixteenth century were not unanimous about it. Some defended the new reading; others pointed out that the vowels belonged to Adonai and that the combined form had never been a Jewish pronunciation. The debate over the word is almost as old as the word itself.
Tyndale’s Iehouah and the English Bible
Tyndale translated the Pentateuch directly from the Hebrew. For most occurrences of the name he followed the long practice of the Greek and Latin Bibles and wrote “Lorde”. In a handful of places, most notably Exodus 6:3, where the sense of the passage turns on the name, he printed it, and he explained the word for his readers. English printing did not yet distinguish the letters I and J, or U and V, consistently. As those letters settled into their modern forms, “Iehouah” became “Jehovah”, and English speakers came to pronounce the first letter as the J of “joy”.
The verse Tyndale chose remains the classic place for the name in English:
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.
— Exodus 6:3 (KJV)
and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as God Almighty; but by my name Jehovah I was not known to them.
— Exodus 6:3 (ASV)
The two renderings differ only slightly, but they show two policies. The King James translators kept Tyndale’s decision to print the name at this verse and set it in capital letters. The American revisers of 1901 printed “Jehovah” not only here but at every place where the four letters stand in the Hebrew.
Geneva, King James and the seven places
The Geneva Bible of 1560, the Bible of the Puritans and of Shakespeare’s generation, followed Tyndale’s pattern, printing the name in a small number of places where the name itself was the point and “the Lord” elsewhere. The King James Version of 1611 did the same. It prints the name on its own four times, at Exodus 6:3, Psalm 83:18, Isaiah 12:2 and Isaiah 26:4, and within three place-names formed from it, at Genesis 22:14, Exodus 17:15 and Judges 6:24. Everywhere else it renders the name as LORD in capital and small capital letters, a printing convention that quietly tells the reader that the Hebrew has the name here and not Adonai.
That men may know that thou, whose name alone is Jehovah, art the most high over all the earth.
— Psalm 83:18 (KJV)
The entry The seven places the KJV prints JEHOVAH looks at each of them in turn. Because the King James Version shaped English speech for three centuries, those seven verses were enough to make “Jehovah” a familiar word. Preachers and hymn writers used it freely.
From the American Standard Version to the return of LORD
The high point of the word in English Bibles came in 1901, when the American Standard Version printed “Jehovah” wherever the Hebrew has the name. Its preface explained that the committee did not think a Jewish reading custom should decide how an English version renders the name, and that a personal name carries a meaning and a nearness that a title cannot. The entry The name in the American Standard Version of 1901 tells that story more fully.
The twentieth century moved the other way. The Revised Standard Version of 1952, itself a revision of the American Standard Version, returned to LORD, giving two main reasons: that “Jehovah” does not accurately represent any form of the name used in Hebrew, and that a title better suits the worship of the universal church. Most major English translations since have followed that course, for reasons set out in Why most English Bibles print “LORD”.
Yet the word has not disappeared. It lives on in the King James Version, which is still widely read, in the compound names such as Jehovah-Jireh, and in hymns sung every Sunday. Jehovah’s Witnesses have made it central to their worship, and many other Christians continue to use it gladly in prayer and song. Faithful Christians still differ here. Some regard “Jehovah” as a historical accident best retired in favour of “Yahweh” or LORD. Others value it as the form in which English-speaking Christians have known and sung the name for five centuries. This site uses it as a headword because it is the form most English readers recognise, while treating “Yahweh” as the probable ancient sound.
For reflection
Read Exodus 6:1–8 slowly, noticing how God ties his name to his promises and his acts of rescue. Then consider that the word you may use for that name reached you through centuries of careful scholars, translators and printers. Give thanks for the gift of the Bible in your own language, pray that God’s name would be hallowed in your life, and join a church where the Scriptures are read aloud and the name of the Lord is honoured.
References
- William Tyndale, The Pentateuch (1530).
- Petrus Galatinus, De Arcanis Catholicae Veritatis (1518).
- Raymond Martini, Pugio Fidei (c. 1270).
- The Geneva Bible (1560).
- The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version (1611).
- The Preface to the American Standard Version (1901).
Lexicon answers from the Bible and public-domain reference works. It is a study aid and is not affiliated with any organisation.