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YAHWEH

The God of Israel. Shortened forms occur in Israelite names (yĕhô and yô at the beginning and yāhû and yâ at the end), and in “Hallelujah” (“Praise Yah”). The precise pronunciation is uncertain, since from the Persian period onward the sacred name was replaced by various titles and epithets. The most common alternative was ʾăḏōnāy (“my Lord”); its vowels were eventually added to the consonantal text (allowing for a shift in the initial vowel because of the yodh rather than an aleph) and the resultant hybrid was transliterated by Christians as Jehovah. The pronunciation yahwēh is based upon Hebrew grammatical rules and supported by the suffixed forms in names and Greek renderings such as iaō, iaou, and especially iaē.

The initial yodh suggests a 3rd masculine singular verbal form, and the vocalization yahwēh points to the causative form, but of what verb? Despite appeals to the Arabic root hwy, meaning “to fall,” “to blow,” or “to love/be passionate,” the scholarly consensus still favors derivation from the Hebrew root hwh (later hyh), “to be.” Thus, yahwēh alludes to the deity’s creative activity.

Yahweh is linked with ṣĕḇāʾôṯ (“armies/hosts”) 284 times in the Hebrew Bible. Frank M. Cross sees this as a shortened title of El, the head of the Canaanite pantheon (originally, il ḏu yahwî ṣĕbāôt, “El who creates the [heavenly] armies”) and equates Yahweh and El. The two do share many characteristics (wisdom, kindness, great age, a cherubim throne, rule over the divine council), but there are important differences. First, Yahweh is a divine warrior (e.g., Exod. 15:3) whereas El is not; in the Ugaritic corpus it is Baal, the storm-god, who does battle. Second, unlike El, Yahweh originates in the far south. In various war theophanies he marches forth from southern locations: Sinai (Deut. 33:2; cf. “the one of Sinai,” Judg. 5:5; Ps. 68:8[MT 9]), Seir (Deut. 33:2; Judg. 5:4), Paran (Deut. 33:2; Hab. 3:3), Edom (Judg. 5:4), and Teman (Hab. 3:3). The invocation of “Yahweh of Teman” alongside “Yahweh of Samaria” in an 8th-century inscription from Kuntillet {Ajrûd/µorvat Teman shows Yahweh’s southern associations survived well after the settlement in the north. Finally, Yahweh and El are distinguished in Deut. 32:8-9; since “the Most High” (ʾelyôn) is an epithet of El, Yahweh must be one of the “sons of God” (thus LXX, Qumran, Symmachus, and Old Latin) to whom El gives Israel. Any common characteristics should be explained as assimilation, not identification.

Yahweh’s southern origin leads to the hypothesis that he was the god of the Kenites, a Midianite clan, and was mediated to Moses by his father-in-law, a Midianite priest. He was brought to Canaan by Moses’ group of escaped Egyptian slaves, and eventually took on most of El’s characteristics.

Bibliography. F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), 44-75; H. H. Rowley, From Joseph to Joshua (Oxford, 1950), 149-63; K. van der Toorn, “Yahweh hwhy,” DDD, 910-19.

John L. McLaughlin

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

YAHWEH

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)