Some side notes for the sermon for the 2nd Sunday in Lent - Yahweh

Hi all,

Here's a few comments about last Sunday's sermon.

Yahweh, the personal name of God, is represented in the Hebrew Bible as YHWH. Years ago one of my professors said it is a strange name in any language, and that observation holds true.

First of all I will dispense with the "Jehovah" business right now. The rendition of YHWH as "Jehovah" originates with Medieval Hebrew, coming from the late 1400's. I don't care about Medieval Hebrew because the Old Testament was not written in Medieval Hebrew. So I have no interest in the name "Jehovah" and I think any claim that "Jehovah" is the one and only way to read YHWH is just bogus and quack scholarship at best, not to mention that its the mantra of a few cults. Now let's go on to the real thing.

When we talk about the name YHWH we're talking about a name from ancient Hebrew here, usually called Classical Hebrew or Biblical Hebrew. It is NOT to be confused with modern Hebrew! Biblical Hebrew is an archaic form of what is spoken today in Israel, and dates to about the time of the Babylonian Captivity. If you're wondering about what was actually spoken before then, what David and Solomon spoke, for example, then you're asking about an even more archaic form of Hebrew than Biblical Hebrew! I think ancient Hebrew is fun because it is literally a couple of steps removed from the Stone Age.

Ancient Hebrew had only three tenses: past perfect (the deed is done and it is over with), past imperfect (you started doing something yesterday but haven't finished doing it), and a present participle (you are doing something now). If you counted the imperative (a command - do this!) then there were four tenses. [Yup, there was NO real future tense in ancient Hebrew!] Ancient Hebrew also had a number of forms we would call voices or moods, although that is not how they are known in Hebrew grammar. And, to complicate all this further (you'll just love this!), ancient Hebrew verbs also had gender (male or female) as well as number!

Why is that important? Because the name of God is formed from a verb, the irregular verb "to be."

Ha-yah means "to be" or "to happen" or "to become." Its pretty much all the same in the ancient Hebrew mind. Actually, if you want to be technical, ha-yah means "it was," "it happened," "it became," and you would conjugate it as a 1st person-singular-masculine-perfect-Qal form.

The name of God, YHWH, is understood by many to be a 3rd person-masculine-imperfect form of ha-yah. That could be written y'h-weh. But most scholars write YHWH as a 3rd person-singular-masculine-imperfect-Hiph'il form: yah-weh.

[NO, it is NOT a 1st person present form, meaning "I am." That would be eh-yeh (see below). Beware of anyone claiming Yahweh means "I am." They don't know what they're talking about.]

Either way, remember that the imperfect tense refers to action that was begun in the past but is on-going, a work in progress, and that it is a 3rd person masculine. For those reasons I render Yahweh as "He who was - he who is", although I admit that is keeping it simple for the sake of story telling in sermons.

Because Yahweh is written as a Hiph'il form, a causative form, the name can be read in other ways. The late great scholar William F. Albright translated the name as "caused things to happen, causes things to happen, and will keep on causing things to happen." That's one way to do it, but a little too long to use easily in sermons.

Some scholars believe the name Yahweh developed from the phrase eh-yeh a-sher eh-yeh in Exodus 3:14-15. That means "I am who I am," or "I am that I am," or "I am what I am." One then has to accept that the phrase was condensed and for some unexplained reason morphed into the single word: yah-weh. I prefer the interpretation that Yahweh is a natural form of ha-yah.

And Yahweh is still a strange name. It incorporates an element of the mysterious. One has the sense that there is someone, or some power, some force, some indescribable thing lurking behind a name like that, something basic, elemental, primal, powerful, intelligent, not-exactly-human, and yet very, very interested in human affairs. Don't forget that it is not until Jesus, the Son, that we get the incarnation of God in human form and then we can say we have a human face to put on God. Moses and Abraham didn't have that. They had to deal with God who was not wearing the face of Jesus. Yahweh must have seemed very alien to Abraham and Moses! - the kind of God that you don't want to think too much about because it will keep you awake far into the night.

This is why I will always be reminded of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" when thinking about the name Yahweh. That's a neat movie for a few reasons, not least because at a few points in the movie the music performed by John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra captures the sense of what Yahweh is like: a God who is self-moving, powerful, primal, intelligent, weird, a force with a mind of its own, not-exactly-human, but very interested in human affairs for reasons of its own.

Also - please note that kosher Jews DO NOT say the name Yahweh. This is a prohibition of their religious law. They will substitute titles like A-don-ai (literally, "our Lord") for the name Yahweh rather than say it. The Talmud teaches that when the Old Testament was edited that sometimes the name of God was actually intentionally mispelled, changed from YHWH to things like YY in order to keep the reader from accidentally saying the name Yahweh aloud. I disagree with Jewish Law on this; I think the name was meant to be said, I think Jesus used the name when he gave blessings for healing and I think he taught his disciples to use the name (these are in fact accusations leveled against him in the older editions of the Talmud), and I will say the name, but not in a situation where I think it will offend and hurt my Jewish brothers and sisters. I only ask that you respect the Jews and their practices even as we ask that they respect us and our practices. We are, after all, all spiritual offshoots from the same tree.

I might also add that there is an awful lot of hype out there about the name of God, and a lot of that hype is just plain odd ball. It seems a lot of people have a vested interest in "wrenching the Hebrew", as one of my professors called it, or back-engineering their own peculiar theologies, agendas, and loaded interpretations into the name YHWH, and so one can find all kinds of lunatic fringe and cult stuff on the internet and in bookstores both secular and religious claiming to be authoritative on the subject and yet offering up nothing better than sensationalism and pseudo-intellectual mush that easily makes the head spin. And that, I think, is the ultimate objective of some. Discernment is called for. Let the reader beware.

Peace be with you,

Pr. J.