In ancient Israel, paganism flourished for many centuries. Some rulers were true worshippers of God, tearing down pagan alters and eliminating child sacrifices to pagan gods. Others were complacent in their rulership, allowing pagan worship to continue. Some even partook themselves!

 

Borne out of these pagan ideologies came the notion that we are not to use God’s Name. Some thought it was too disrespectful to speak a god’s name aloud, while others thought it would invoke God’s wrath to use His Name (Britannica, 2024). Due to this perception, the use of God’s Name fell out of favor. Eventually, copyist thought it too dangerous to even include the Name in the official written text, choosing instead to put in vowel points for “Adonai” (meaning Lord) instead of the vowels used in God’s Name.

 

What we are left with is called the tetragrammaton. These are the consonants of God’s Name, and the only letters we know for certain were used. These letters are Yod (י), Heh (ה), Waw (ו), and Heh (ה), which appears as YHWH (י ה ו ה). Without vowel points, it is impossible to know for sure how this Name was originally pronounced…or is it?

 

An examination of Amoritic texts concurrent at the time of ancient Israel reveal how the Amorites pronounced the names of theirs and nearby gods. One of the gods, the God of Israel, was named Yahwi (Freedman et al., 2000). This name, meaning “I am the Existing One”, is recorded in other near-Israel texts that refer to the God of Israel, as Yawi (Freedman et al., 2000). These findings reveal how near-Israeli cultures pronounced the Name of God, and can be used to inference a close pronunciation to how the Name was originally said.

 

To know a more accurate Israeli pronunciation of the Name, we can study the consonants left to us more thoroughly. The first letter, Yod (י) was pronounced in multiple ways. The first was, when placed at the beginning of the word, to sound most similar to the English letter Y, such as in “yes” or “yam”. It was also used as a vowel, like I in English. Most commonly, it was used as a dipthong /aj/ which, in English, would be most similar to the vowel i-e-a or y-e-a in that order.

 

The second and fourth letter are both the same - Heh (ה). Its pronunciation depended on where in the word it is placed. In its second position behind the Yod, it is used to refer to a long a-vowel, pronounced like in the word ‘father’. At the end of the word, it refers to a guttural stop, which in English can be very hard to pronounce. The most common pronunciation would be that of -eh, rhyming here with ‘way’.

 

The third letter of the tetragrammaton is Waw (ו). This is pronounced as a voiced labial-velar approximant /w/ at the beginning and other parts of a word. This sound is best described as the sound in the beginning of the words ‘what’, ‘water’, and ‘weight’. It is most similar to the English letter W.

 

Each of these signs points to the pronunciation of the Holy Name – YHWH – as Yahweh. Furthermore, it proves that the Name could not have been Jehovah as some claim. The letters simply were not pronounced in the way that would have produced the consonants of Jehovah. Concurrent records also point to the Name being pronounced as Yahweh, with no indication that anyone at any place in that era referred to Him as Jehovah.