Jehovah

Jehovah is the Latinized form of the Hebrew name יְהֹוָה (Yəhōwā), a specific vocalization of the Tetragrammaton—the four-letter name יהוה (YHWH) that serves as the personal name of the God of Israel in the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament. In Judaism, this Tetragrammaton is counted among the seven names of God, and it is also recognized as a form of God’s name in Christianity. The printed form Jehovah emerged in the 17th century, after the letter J developed as a distinct character separate from the consonantal I in printing.

Scholars generally agree that the original pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton at the time the Torah was compiled (around the 6th century BCE) was most likely Yahweh. This historical pronunciation was lost because, during the Second Temple period (3rd to 2nd centuries BCE), Jewish practice avoided speaking the name aloud, substituting it with Adonai (“my Lord”). Later, the Masoretes added the vowel points of Adonai to the Tetragrammaton, and this combination was transliterated around the 12th century as Yehowah. The derived form Iehovah appeared in the 16th century, and Jehovah followed in the 17th.

William Tyndale first used the vocalization Jehovah in his translation of Exodus 6:3, and it appears in several early English Bibles, including the Matthew Bible, the Great Bible, the Bishop’s Bible, the Geneva Bible, and the King James Version. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops notes that to pronounce the Tetragrammaton, vowels must be introduced that alter both the written and spoken forms, resulting in either “Yahweh” or “Jehovah.” Jehovah is used in the Old Testament of some widely circulated translations, such as the American Standard Version (1901) and Young’s Literal Translation (1862, 1899), while the New World Translation (1961, 2013) uses it in both the Old and New Testaments. Most mainstream English translations, however, do not use Jehovah; some prefer Yahweh, but the majority continue to render the Tetragrammaton as “Lord” or “LORD.”

Most scholars view Jehovah (or Yehowah) as a hybrid form, created by combining the Hebrew consonants YHWH with the vowels of Adonai. Some point to evidence from Semitic and Greek texts and artifacts of Late Antiquity that a form similar to Jehovah may have been in use, while others maintain that early Christian and pagan sources testify to the pronunciation Yahweh. Certain Karaite Jews argue that, although the original pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton is obscured by the oral Rabbinic law against speaking it, well-established English transliterations of other Hebrew personal names—like Joshua, Jeremiah, Isaiah, or Jesus—are accepted despite unknown original pronunciations. They note that “Jehovah” is an Anglicized form of Yehovah that preserves the four Hebrew consonants YHVH (with the English “J” sound). Some contend that Jehovah is preferable to Yahweh because the Tetragrammaton was likely tri-syllabic originally, so modern forms should also have three syllables.

Biblical scholar Francis B. Dennio, writing in the Journal of Biblical Literature, argued that “Jehovah misrepresents Yahweh no more than Jeremiah misrepresents Yirmeyahu,” and that the settled connotations of Isaiah and Jeremiah forbid questioning their right. He concluded that Jehovah is not a barbarism but the best English form available, having gathered necessary connotations and associations over centuries of use.

According to a Jewish tradition that developed between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE, the Tetragrammaton is written but not pronounced; substitute terms replace the divine name when יְהֹוָה appears in the text. It is widely assumed, following 19th-century Hebrew scholar Wilhelm Gesenius, that the Masoretes inserted the vowels of the substitutes—Adonai (Lord) and Elohim (God)—to indicate that these substitutes should be read. When the Tetragrammaton precedes or follows Adonai, the Masoretes placed the vowel points of Elohim into it, producing יֱהֹוִה (Yĕhōvī), read as Elohim. Based on this, some have characterized the form יְהֹוָה (Jehovah) as a “hybrid form” and even “a philological impossibility.”

Early modern translators ignored the practice of reading Adonai (or its Greek and Latin equivalents, Kyrios and Dominus) in place of the Tetragrammaton. Instead, they combined the four Hebrew letters with the vowel points that accompanied them (except in synagogue scrolls), producing Jehovah. This form first appeared in works dated 1278 and 1303, and was adopted in Tyndale’s and other Protestant Bible translations. In the 1560 Geneva Bible, Jehovah appears six times—four as a proper name and two in place-names. The 1611 King James Version uses Jehovah seven times, the 1885 English Revised Version twelve times, and the 1901 American Standard Version makes “Je-ho’vah” the regular English rendering of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton throughout, replacing the earlier “the LORD.” It also appears in Christian hymns, such as the 1771 hymn “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah.”

The most widespread theory holds that the Hebrew term יְהֹוָה takes the vowel points of אֲדֹנָי (adonai). When applying these vowels, the composite hataf patah under the guttural alef becomes a sheva under the yod, the holam is placed over the first he, and the qamat is used accordingly.