Essays on Bible words

with important theological meanings

(Sometimes called ‘Key Terms’)

Yahweh

The Open English Translation (OET) translators maintain that the tradition of replacing God’s name with the substitution ‘LORD’ is not the most helpful for most English readers, and in fact can be quite misleading. Sadly, it’s become such a well-established tradition in both English Bible translations and in English-speaking church services, that fixing it now will feel odd for a time (but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t make the effort).

What’s more in ‘The Messianic Update’ (the New Testament), our Readers’ Version considers ‘Yahweh’ to be one perfectly valid translation of the Greek ‘κύριος’ (kurios), especially when it occurs without a preceeding article (no ‘the’) in the Greek, or when it’s quoting the Hebrew scriptures where it contains ‘Yahweh’. In most modern English translations, that’s automatically translated as ‘the Lord’ without any apparent consideration for the missing Greek article. See Mark 11:9 for a good example of this. (Only the Lutheran German translation and the Coverdale Bible used the equivalent of ‘LORD’ at that point—all the others just have ‘Lord’ which was a title which could be given to any man in Yeshua’s time.)

We believe that these decisions are a good step forward in helping ‘average Joe Bible-reader’ to get a good understanding into what the original authors were expressing in their own words/languages.

The following notes are adapted and expanded (with permission) from unfoldingWord’s notes for translators.

Facts:

The term ‘Yahweh’ is God’s personal name in the Old Testament. The specific origin of this name is unknown, but it’s probably derived from the Hebrew verb meaning, ‘to be’ (hence can be considered to mean ‘I am’).

Following tradition, many older Bible translations (and even more recent ones that place tradition above accuracy and common sense) use the term ‘LORD’ or (by adding an article that’s not in the original languages) ‘the LORD’ to represent ‘Yahweh’. This old-fashioned tradition resulted from the fact that historically, the Jewish people became afraid of mispronouncing Yahweh’s name and started saying ‘Lord’ (Hebrew ‘Adonai’) every time the term ‘Yahweh’ appeared in the text. Modern English translations write ‘LORD’ with all capital letters out of tradition and to distinguish it from ‘Lord’ which is a different Hebrew word and is translated as ‘master’ in the OET.
The OET Readers’ Version and Literal Version always translate this term as ‘Yahweh’ in agreement with the text of the Hebrew scriptures.
English translations that use ‘LORD’ in place of ‘Yahweh’ get into trouble when the Hebrew text also contains the Hebrew word for ‘master/lord’ (‘adonai’), and rather than have the ridiculous ‘lord LORD’, many of them are forced to add ‘God’ to get ‘LORD God’ even where there’s no word for God in the verse, e.g., see Zeph 1:7.
The not-uncommon ‘Praise the name of the LORD’ exhortation from the Hebrew scriptures (e.g., Psa 148:13) doesn’t really make a lot of sense if you stop and think about it. How can you praise a name that you aren’t told in the translation (and many readers don’t even know, even though it’s right there in the original over and over again)?
The term ‘Yahweh’ never occurs in the original text of the New Testament Messianic update—only the Greek term for ‘Master/Lord’ is used, even when quoting the Hebrew scriptures. (This makes it difficult for us to know sometimes if the Greek term ‘κύριος’ is referring to ‘Yahweh’ or ‘Yeshua’/‘Jesus’. However, the presence or absence of the article ‘the’ gives us a big clue.)
In the Hebrew scriptures, when God spoke about himself, he would often use his own name instead of a pronoun like ‘I’ or ‘me’. (In our Readers’ Version, we adjust this to the way that modern English naturally uses pronouns.)
‘Yah’ is a shortened form of the name Yahweh that occurs in poetry and praise (e.g. Hallelu^yah (Hallelujah) = ‘Praise Yah’), and in some Hebrew names (e.g. Zekar^yah (Zechariah) = ‘Yah remembers’).
Many current English translations use the word ‘God’ in their section headings (especially in the Psalms/Songs) even when the word ‘God’ (‘Elohim’) doesn’t even appear once within the section (because the section or song uses ‘Yahweh’ throughout). This demonstrates quite a sad (unconscious?) bias against the use of God’s name ‘Yahweh’ by many contemporary Christian groups.
Some traditions have used ‘Jehovah’ rather than ‘Yahweh’ for God’s name. Although we understand this to be much less likely to be correct (or to put it more strongly, it appears to be a historical mistake), we would consider that to still be better than replacing God’s name with ‘LORD’ (although we’d at least prefer the more helpful spelling ‘Yehovah’ or ‘Yehowah’).
You should also note that in their zeal to not offend God, Jewish people also don’t use the term God/Elohim, but instead call him ‘Ha Shem’ (which means ‘The Name’).

Other translation possibilities:

‘Yahweh’ could be translated by a word or phrase that means ‘I am’ or ‘existing one’ or ‘the one who is’ or ‘he who is present’.
This term could also be written in a way that is similar to how ‘Yahweh’ is spelt.
Some church denominations around the world prefer not to use the term ‘Yahweh’ and instead use the traditional rendering, ‘LORD’. An important consideration is that this may be confusing when read aloud because it will sound the same as the title ‘Lord’. Some languages may have an affix or other grammatical marker that could be added to distinguish ‘LORD’ as a name (Yahweh) from ‘Lord’ or ‘master’ as a title.
Some might consider it best, if possible, to keep the name Yahweh where it literally occurs in the text, but other translations may decide to use only a pronoun in some places to make the text more natural and clear.
Introduce the quote with something like, ‘This is what Yahweh says’.

(Translation suggestions: How to Translate Names)

(See also: God, Lord)

Bible References:

Examples from the Open Bible stories:

9:14 God said, “I AM WHO I AM. Tell them, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ Also tell them, ‘I am Yahweh, the God of your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is my name forever.’”
13:4 Then God gave them the covenant and said, “I am Yahweh, your God, who saved you from slavery in Egypt. Do not worship other gods.”
13:5 “Do not make idols or worship them, for I, Yahweh, am a jealous God.”
16:1 The Israelites began to worship the Canaanite gods instead of Yahweh, the true God.
19:10 Then Elijah prayed, “O Yahweh, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, show us today that you are the God of Israel and that I am your servant.”

Word Data:

Strong’s: H3068, H3069, H3050, H136, H113u, G2962.

God

It’s not necessarily straight-forward to know how to translate Hebrew ‘אֱלהִים’ (Elohim). For a start, it’s a plural word but it’s often used (unexpectedly) with a singular verb, so there’s some mystery here of the plural also being singular, or the singular also having a plural aspect. (Christians, of course, believe that that’s part of the mystery of what’s known as ‘the trinity’ (expressed right from the very first verse in the Hebrew scriptures).

In some places, it clearly refers to idols and suchlike, and in this case, it‘s often translated as ‘gods’.

In most other cases, modern English translations would usually translate it as the singlar ‘God’ (always written with a capital letter, although Hebrew has no such thing as capital letters).

The OET-RV has made the decision to follow these traditions. However, we’d just like to note here that we strongly considered using less capitalisation, e.g., in terms like ‘Yahweh your god’ (rather than ‘Yahweh your God’). Although we think the lower-case ‘god’ might make more sense in that context, we didn’t proceed in that direction as we felt it might confuse our readers used to the traditional form.

You should also note that in their zeal to not offend God, Jewish people don’t use the term God/Elohim, but instead call him ‘Ha Shem’ (which means ‘The Name’).

Name of God

Psa 69:30 from the Hebrew: ‘I will praise the name of God …’

Why praise God’s name instead of just praising God directly?

More coming …

Loving-kindness

Essay on Loyal commitment coming …

Fear of Yahweh

Essay on Respect++ coming …