English readers meet the personal name of God in four forms, and all four refer to the same name. YHWH is the name as the Hebrew text writes it: four consonants with no vowels, often called the Tetragrammaton (“four letters”). Yahweh is the modern scholarly reconstruction of how those consonants were probably pronounced in ancient Israel. Jehovah is the traditional English form, produced when Christian readers combined the four consonants with the vowel signs that Jewish scribes had written beneath them, and used in English Bibles since 1530. LORD, in small capitals, is not a form of the name at all but a substitute for it, following the ancient Jewish custom of saying Adonai (“my Lord”) wherever the name appears. Knowing which form you are looking at, and why, removes most of the confusion that surrounds this word.
YHWH: the name as the Hebrew text writes it
Hebrew was written with consonants only. The name of God is spelled with four of them, transliterated into Latin letters as Y-H-W-H (older books write J-H-V-H, because of how those letters were once pronounced in Latin and German). It occurs about 6,800 times in the Old Testament, far more often than any other word for God. Scripture connects it with the Hebrew verb “to be” (see What does the name Jehovah mean?).
Because the name was written without vowels, and because Jewish readers stopped saying it aloud in the centuries before Christ, the original pronunciation was not passed down. The consonants survived perfectly; the sound between them did not. Every other form on this page is an attempt to put the sound back.
Yahweh: the scholarly reconstruction
“Yahweh” is the pronunciation most scholars regard as the likeliest. It rests on three kinds of evidence. Early Christian writers who knew Hebrew or Samaritan usage recorded Greek transcriptions of the name: Clement of Alexandria gives a form usually read as Iaoue, and Theodoret reports that the Samaritans said Iabe. Hebrew personal names that contain the divine name begin with Yeho- or Yo- (Jehoshaphat, Jonathan) and end with -yahu or -yah (Elijah, Isaiah), which point to a first syllable Yah-. And the grammar of the verb “to be” fits a form pronounced roughly Yahweh. The short form Yah is certain; it is the last syllable of “Hallelujah”, and the ASV prints it once as a name in its own right:
Sing unto God, sing praises to his name: Cast up a highway for him that rideth through the deserts; His name is Jehovah; and exult ye before him.
— Psalm 68:4 (ASV)
The ASV translators rendered even that short form as Jehovah; the Hebrew there is Yah. Yahweh is a reconstruction, not a recording, and honest scholarship says “probably” rather than “certainly”.
Jehovah: the traditional English form
Jewish scribes known as the Masoretes, working between roughly the sixth and tenth centuries after Christ, added vowel signs to the consonantal text so that the traditional pronunciation of every word would not be lost. For the four letters of the name they did something deliberate: instead of writing the name’s own vowels, they wrote the vowels of Adonai, the word the reader was to say instead. A Jewish reader saw YHWH with those vowels and said Adonai.
Christian readers in the later Middle Ages, learning Hebrew from the pointed text, read the consonants and the borrowed vowels together as one word. The result in Latin was Iehouah; in English, “Jehovah”. It appears in Tyndale’s Pentateuch of 1530, in the Geneva Bible of 1560, in seven places in the King James Version, and throughout the American Standard Version of 1901. The word is, strictly, a hybrid, but it has been the English church’s form of the name for five centuries, and the entries on this site use it for that reason. The history is told in How the word Jehovah entered English.
LORD: the substitute, in small capitals
Most English Bibles do not print the name at all. Following the Jewish practice of reading Adonai, and the Greek Septuagint’s rendering of the name as Kyrios (“Lord”), the King James translators wrote “the LORD” wherever the Hebrew has YHWH, and set the word in small capitals so that a careful reader could tell it apart from Adonai, which they printed as “Lord”. Nearly every English version since has kept that convention. The Berean Standard Bible does; the ASV is the great exception.
Set side by side, the same verse shows the difference at once. The King James chose this verse as one of the seven places to keep the name; the ASV prints it everywhere; the BSB substitutes.
That they may know that thou alone, whose name is Jehovah, Art the Most High over all the earth.
— Psalm 83:18 (ASV)
May they know that You alone, whose name is the LORD, are Most High over all the earth.
— Psalm 83:18 (BSB)
The BSB is not hiding anything; its small capitals are a signal to the reader that the name stands behind the word. But the verse reads more naturally when the name is a name, which is why the King James translators themselves made an exception here. The convention is explained in Why most English Bibles print LORD.
Which form should a reader use?
All four are legitimate, provided a reader knows what each one is. A few practical notes:
- When you see LORD in small capitals, read it as the name. When you see “Lord” in ordinary type, the Hebrew is Adonai, a title.
- “God” in small capitals (GOD) marks the name when it follows Adonai, so that the text does not read “Lord LORD”.
- Jehovah and Yahweh are the same name in two English dresses. Neither is wrong; one is older in English, the other probably older in Hebrew.
- The name itself is what matters. God says of it, through Isaiah:
I am Jehovah, that is my name; and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise unto graven images.
— Isaiah 42:8 (ASV)
Where Christians differ
Faithful Christians differ on which form to prefer. Many scholars and some newer translations favour Yahweh. The wider English church has mostly kept either the traditional Jehovah, in hymns and older Bibles, or the LORD convention, out of respect for the Jewish reticence and because that is what the apostles’ Greek Bible did. Some Christians feel that printing the name is more faithful to the text; others that the substitute is more faithful to the way the text has always been read. This site leans towards using the name, in its traditional English form, while explaining the convention rather than dismissing it.
For reflection
Take one psalm in an English Bible that prints LORD and read it again with the name in place. Notice how a title becomes an address. Then pray, using whatever form your church uses, and thank God that he gave a name at all, so that he could be called upon. Reading the Psalms aloud in a congregation is the oldest way of learning to say this name well.
References
- Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906).
- Gesenius, Hebrew Grammar (ed. Kautzsch, 1910).
- Clement of Alexandria, Stromata.
- Theodoret of Cyrus, Quaestiones in Exodum.
- The Preface to the American Standard Version (1901).
- The Preface (“The Translators to the Reader”) of the King James Version (1611).
Lexicon answers from the Bible and public-domain reference works. It is a study aid and is not affiliated with any organisation.