What is God’s name? Is it really Jehovah or is this just what the Jehovah’s Witnesses want us to believe?
There are many names for God in the Bible and Jehovah is just one of them. Nowhere in Scripture are we told that we must use the name of Jehovah only.
In the Old Testament there are 4 Hebrew Consonants YHWH which is called the tetragrammaton. There are no vowels in the Hebrew and probably the most accurate way to pronounce it in English is Yahweh. Jehovah is a bad Anglicisation of the Hebrew.
Psalm 83:19 reads in the King James Version,
“That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth.”
However, in the New American Standard it reads,
“That they may know that You alone, whose name is the LORD, Are the Most High over all the earth.”
It is not saying that YHWH is God’s only name but that the term YHWH can only be ascribed to God because the meaning of the name can only describe God – the self-existent Being, the everlasting I AM, the immutable God.
In the New Testament Jesus said that He had made the Father’s name known but we find no record of Him using the name of Jehovah. Indeed if He had used the name Jehovah, He would have been stoned because the Jews never pronounced the name because they thought it too holy.
In Greek and Hebrew the word translated ‘name’ means more than just what you are called it refers to the whole character of the person. Therefore when we read “Hallowed be thy name” it is referring to the whole being of God – all that He is – and not just a particular title that we give Him.
To summarise, the name YHWH is shown as the name of God in the Hebrew Scriptures and emphasied to them of the greatness, uniqueness, and holiness of God who was unapproachable by sinful man. as illustrated by Exodus 19.12.
Jesus however taught His followers to call God by the name of Father. This was only possible by His sacrificial death and is depicted by the veil of the temple being torn in two, signifying that the way to God was now open. Now those who come to God by Jesus (John 1:12) come into a more intimate relationship with His Father.
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