Jehovah

Jehovah is the traditional English rendering of the sacred four-letter name of God in Hebrew (YHWH, the Tetragrammaton). It is the distinctive, personal name of the God of Israel — not a mere title or appellative — by which he revealed himself to the patriarchs and, more fully, to Moses: "I am the LORD [YHWH]. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD [YHWH] I did not make myself fully known to them" (Exodus 6:2-3). The name is connected with the verb "to be" (hayah): God revealed it at the burning bush as "I AM WHO I AM" (Exodus 3:14), expressing his self-existence, absolute being, and covenant faithfulness.

Because of the prohibition against taking God's name in vain (Leviticus 24:16), Jewish tradition ceased pronouncing YHWH and substituted Adonai (Lord) when reading. The form "Jehovah" arose in the Middle Ages by combining the consonants of YHWH with the vowels of Adonai. Modern scholarship generally reconstructs the pronunciation as "Yahweh." The name expresses God's eternal, unchanging nature: "I the LORD do not change" (Malachi 3:6).