The Name of God: Revere or Reclaim?

Scot McKnight brought up an interesting thing on his blog that I had been chewing on some months ago.

He asks: “Should we pronounce the Sacred Name?“

Apparently, the Vatican has made a decision to remove the name of God, ‘Yahweh,’ from public readings and worship.  This prompts him to list some of his thoughts on the subject.

The biggest thing that compelled me (those months ago, privately) on this issue is the realization at how prolific the name is in scripture.  Most readers of any English translation would never know it, but the name of God is peppered throughout scripture and is constantly in our face.  However, it is covert.  You know whenever you read the Bible and it says in all capitol letters, “And the LORD said…”?  Well, actually, the Hebrew word there is not “Lord” (Adonia).  The word in Hebrew is the name of God, YHWH.  But it has traditionally been revered in holiness and never spoken.

In Jewish public worship, during scripture readings, the name of God was so sacred that it was forbidden to be uttered.  Whenever the reader would come across the name of God, it became convention to simply say the word “Lord,” instead.

During Jesus’ day, he and his disciples read and quoted from their contemporary translation of the Old Testament, which was called the Septuagint.  This was a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.  The Septuagint translators decided that whenever the divine name appeared in the Hebrew, YHWH, they would simply follow the tradition of public reading, and put “Lord” there, instead (in Greek, “kyrios”).

Our contemporary translations have followed the pattern, and whenever the name of God is in the OT, we read “the LORD” instead.  In my personal study on this subject, I was shocked at just how often YHWH appeared in the OT, and we simply put “the LORD” in its place.  I was so struck by it, that I realized what an intimate thing it is that God so frequently condescends to us and offers us his personal name, and it is used so very frequently and personally throughout the scriptures by God’s people.

This has led me to a personal position where I ironically stand ancient tradition on its head.  Wherever I see the written words “the LORD” in my Bible, I mentally read “Yahweh” in its place, instead.  I have found that this genuinely deepens my understanding of the revelation of God himself, and how his people relate to him in the Bible.

And I also decided that if I ever get to be on a team or chairman of a translation committee of the Bible itself (which is one of my personal dreams!), I would like to retain “Yahweh” in the Old Testament, as God himself revealed it.

However, Scot did point out a great point that in any setting where we may have Jewish readers, it is more appropriate to offer respect and not speak the divine name.

-ACR