Who Is 'Yah'?
Question: Who is 'Yah' and what does it mean in Hebrew? In the olden days, people found it too sacred to pronounce the name of the God of Israel. But my question is, do we see this concept in the Scriptures or it is just a tradition that has blinded people?
Answer: Greetings in Jesus wonderful name!
I believe that God wants his name to be pronounced in all the earth and that is why He said, "But indeed for this purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth." (Exodus 9:16). This was told to Pharoah the king of Egypt by Moses as directed by God as a prophesy, which means God desires his name to be reverently spoken with fear and respect in all the earth.
Exodus 20:7 reads: "Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." This means in other words, do not use the Lord's name as a cuss word or a curse word which are not polite words that some one speaks when they are feeling angry.
Actually people of Old have taken this out of context to the extent, that they have totally prohibited the use of the name of the God of Israel totally. The scribes and teachers of the Law of Moses interpreted the Scripture with their own commentaries which were used as authoritative and equal to the authority of the Scripture. Jesus rebuked all such tradition and said, "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God." (Matt 22:29). And further to the religious Jews He pointed out their error saying that by disobeying the sole authority of the Scripture by adding traditional commentaries of the teachers of the law of Moses to it, "... [they] ignored God's commands in order to follow [their...] own teaching. [They...] did a lot of other things just as bad." (Mark 7:13, CEV).
Thus the very belief that it is too sacred to pronounce the name of the God of Israel in itself, is a misinterpreted belief from Exo 20:7, which made the religious keepers of the Law live a powerless life of tradition, rather than live by the power of God over sin through the power of the authority of the Scriptures, through which only true faith gets born in the heart within to connect to God and please Him by hearing His voice to thus walk in obedience to his direction to be blessed and be a blessing to many others around us (Rom 10:17; Heb 11:6). As for the righteous in all generations of all time who live by faith in God, the name of the Lord is their strong tower who run in to its protection and stay safe from all danger unlike the traditional religious zealots who do not even pronounce the great name and go nuts to stop people from pronouncing that great name (Prov 18:10).
'Yah' the name of the biblical God of Israel can be called as 'THE LORD' or 'THE UNIVERSAL MASTER CREATOR' or 'THE RULER OF THE UNIVERSE' or 'I will be' who is the self-existent One. It is an exclusive name for the one and only God who claims all things as his creation and Himself as the ruler over it all in the Bible. The first occurance of the Name YAH occurs in Exodus 15:2, where Moses and Israel sing a song regarding their deliverance from Pharoah's horsemen.
The Septuagint translates 'Yah' as 'Kyrios', meaning "the LORD", because of the Jewish custom of replacing the sacred name with 'Adonai' which also mean 'the Lord' in Hebrew that has been commonly done for milleniums, which many Jews do even to this day. Jesus used the Greek word kurios ("lord") to translate YHWH which gives us a idea that these writers were inspired of God.
'Yahh' was an abbreviation for YHWH (the first two letters) of tetragrammaton, which means it is the four-letter Hebrew word, the name of the biblical God of Israel. The four letters, read from right to left, are yodh, he, waw and he. While there is no consensus about the structure and etymology of the name, the form Yahweh is now accepted almost universally.
Regarding the pronounciation of 'YHWH', we have clues to the pronunciation because YHWH was incorporated into other words. For example, "hallelujah" comes from "hallelu Yah" or "praise (ye) Yah," where yahh was an abbreviation for YHWH (the first two letters). You can see it at the end of many Hebrew names: Isaiah (YHWH has saved) or Hezekiah (YHWH has strengthened). It can appear at the beginning of names, such as Jehoshaphat (YHWH has judged) or Joash (YHWH has come to help). Clement of Alexandria born in Athens, who later became the Christian Apologist, missionary theologian to the Hellenistic (Greek cultural) world, and second known leader and teacher of the catechetical school of Alexandria, writing about 200 AD, transliterated YHWH into Greek as 'iaoue', which would be pronounced "yahweh" in English today.
In the Bible, God has a personal name. It was revealed to Moses at the time when he delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt (Ex. 3:15; 6:2-9). According to Exodus 6:3, even Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not know God by that name. On this passage, Josephus the Jewish priest, scholar, and historian (born in Jerusalem around ad 37/38 — died AD 100, Rome) wrote, "God declared to him [Moses] His holy name, which had never been discovered to man before, and concerning which it is not lawful for me to speak" (Antiquities of the Jews II.12.4). In Hebrew it has four consonants: Y-H-V-H. The original vowels are now unknown. The form Yahveh or Yahweh is a conjectural scholarly reconstruction, but no complete certainty attaches to it.
Jesus used the word 'LORD' to call YHWH, that is enough for us as Christians to throw away all our concern regarding the unknow original vowels whose phonetic has been claimed as lost, and instead do as Jesus did, which is to listen to the voice of God through the Scipture and obey it perfectly for the Glory of God. This is what will please the God who has saved us by His own works and for His Glory.
Much Blessings....
Answer: Greetings in Jesus wonderful name!
I believe that God wants his name to be pronounced in all the earth and that is why He said, "But indeed for this purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth." (Exodus 9:16). This was told to Pharoah the king of Egypt by Moses as directed by God as a prophesy, which means God desires his name to be reverently spoken with fear and respect in all the earth.
Exodus 20:7 reads: "Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." This means in other words, do not use the Lord's name as a cuss word or a curse word which are not polite words that some one speaks when they are feeling angry.
Actually people of Old have taken this out of context to the extent, that they have totally prohibited the use of the name of the God of Israel totally. The scribes and teachers of the Law of Moses interpreted the Scripture with their own commentaries which were used as authoritative and equal to the authority of the Scripture. Jesus rebuked all such tradition and said, "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God." (Matt 22:29). And further to the religious Jews He pointed out their error saying that by disobeying the sole authority of the Scripture by adding traditional commentaries of the teachers of the law of Moses to it, "... [they] ignored God's commands in order to follow [their...] own teaching. [They...] did a lot of other things just as bad." (Mark 7:13, CEV).
Thus the very belief that it is too sacred to pronounce the name of the God of Israel in itself, is a misinterpreted belief from Exo 20:7, which made the religious keepers of the Law live a powerless life of tradition, rather than live by the power of God over sin through the power of the authority of the Scriptures, through which only true faith gets born in the heart within to connect to God and please Him by hearing His voice to thus walk in obedience to his direction to be blessed and be a blessing to many others around us (Rom 10:17; Heb 11:6). As for the righteous in all generations of all time who live by faith in God, the name of the Lord is their strong tower who run in to its protection and stay safe from all danger unlike the traditional religious zealots who do not even pronounce the great name and go nuts to stop people from pronouncing that great name (Prov 18:10).
Who is 'Yah'?
'Yah' the name of the biblical God of Israel can be called as 'THE LORD' or 'THE UNIVERSAL MASTER CREATOR' or 'THE RULER OF THE UNIVERSE' or 'I will be' who is the self-existent One. It is an exclusive name for the one and only God who claims all things as his creation and Himself as the ruler over it all in the Bible. The first occurance of the Name YAH occurs in Exodus 15:2, where Moses and Israel sing a song regarding their deliverance from Pharoah's horsemen.
The Septuagint translates 'Yah' as 'Kyrios', meaning "the LORD", because of the Jewish custom of replacing the sacred name with 'Adonai' which also mean 'the Lord' in Hebrew that has been commonly done for milleniums, which many Jews do even to this day. Jesus used the Greek word kurios ("lord") to translate YHWH which gives us a idea that these writers were inspired of God.
'Yahh' was an abbreviation for YHWH (the first two letters) of tetragrammaton, which means it is the four-letter Hebrew word, the name of the biblical God of Israel. The four letters, read from right to left, are yodh, he, waw and he. While there is no consensus about the structure and etymology of the name, the form Yahweh is now accepted almost universally.
Regarding the pronounciation of 'YHWH', we have clues to the pronunciation because YHWH was incorporated into other words. For example, "hallelujah" comes from "hallelu Yah" or "praise (ye) Yah," where yahh was an abbreviation for YHWH (the first two letters). You can see it at the end of many Hebrew names: Isaiah (YHWH has saved) or Hezekiah (YHWH has strengthened). It can appear at the beginning of names, such as Jehoshaphat (YHWH has judged) or Joash (YHWH has come to help). Clement of Alexandria born in Athens, who later became the Christian Apologist, missionary theologian to the Hellenistic (Greek cultural) world, and second known leader and teacher of the catechetical school of Alexandria, writing about 200 AD, transliterated YHWH into Greek as 'iaoue', which would be pronounced "yahweh" in English today.
In the Bible, God has a personal name. It was revealed to Moses at the time when he delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt (Ex. 3:15; 6:2-9). According to Exodus 6:3, even Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not know God by that name. On this passage, Josephus the Jewish priest, scholar, and historian (born in Jerusalem around ad 37/38 — died AD 100, Rome) wrote, "God declared to him [Moses] His holy name, which had never been discovered to man before, and concerning which it is not lawful for me to speak" (Antiquities of the Jews II.12.4). In Hebrew it has four consonants: Y-H-V-H. The original vowels are now unknown. The form Yahveh or Yahweh is a conjectural scholarly reconstruction, but no complete certainty attaches to it.
Jesus used the word 'LORD' to call YHWH, that is enough for us as Christians to throw away all our concern regarding the unknow original vowels whose phonetic has been claimed as lost, and instead do as Jesus did, which is to listen to the voice of God through the Scipture and obey it perfectly for the Glory of God. This is what will please the God who has saved us by His own works and for His Glory.
Much Blessings....
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