The Mysterious Meaning of the Tetragrammaton: The Exact Words and Meaning of the Name of the God of the Jews Revealed At Last
“Therefore my people shall know my name: therefore they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak: behold, it is I.” [Isaiah chapter 52 verse 6 KJV]
“So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more…” [Ezekiel chapter 39 verse 7]
HaShem means “the Name” in Hebrew language. But in ancient Hebrew manuscripts, it is represented by four letters called the Tetragrammaton. The ancient Hebrew language is written in consonants only— no vowels. And in other not to abuse the name, ancient Hebrew leaders forbid the use of it. Therefore, during those ancient days, whenever Jews read Scripture aloud and encountered the Tetragrammaton, they substituted another Hebrew word, “Adonai” (which means “Lord” or “my Lord”), in its place.
In the Hebrew Bible, the Tetragrammaton occurs 6828 times, as can be seen in Kittel’s Biblia Hebraica and the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. In addition, the marginal notes or masorah indicate that in another 134 places, where the received text has the word Adonai, an earlier text had the Tetragrammaton.
Eventually, Hebrews developed written vowels, which appeared as small marks called vowel points and were placed above and below the consonants of a word. In the sixth or seventh century some Jews began to place the vowel points for “Adonai” over the consonants for the Tetragrammaton to remind the reader of Scripture to say “Adonai” whenever he reads the Tetragrammaton.
Acoirding to the website, Catholic.com, the term “Jehovah” first appeared in the 13th century C.E., when Christian scholars transliterated the Tetragrammaton as “YHWH” and, ignorant of the Jewish custom mentioned above, took the consonants “YHWH” and pronounced it with the vowels of “Adonai.” This resulted in the sound “Yahowah”, which was abbreviated as “Yahweh”.
After then, a Spanish Dominican monk, Raymundus Martini, latinized the word “Yahowah” when he pronounced it as “Jehovah” in 1270 C.E., even though scholars at the time know very much that the Hebrew Alphabet have no letter that can be pronounced as “J”. Even the name Jesus was originally pronounced by the Hebrews as Yeshua or Yehoshua.
What Is the Tetragrammaton?
Over thousands of years of Jewish history, many have asked the same question. Now pay full attention to the following analysis. Here lies the answer.
Let us start with this Statement: “The One whose Name ‘Ehyeh’ shall reveal”.
When you translate this statement into Hebrew, this is what you get:
את אשר יגלה שמו אהיה
If you put the underlined letters together, starting from your right, as Hebrew is written from right to left, you get יהוה
Could the Tetragrammaton be a stenographic expression, a shorthand form, for a full sentence? The answer is a very big “YES!” In fact, as we have discussed above, the ancient Hebrew language has no vowels. Therefore, anything written in ancient Hebrew can be considered as a shorthand form of the original.
We read in the book of John chapter 17 from verse 3 that Jesus revealed the Name of “the God of the Jews” as
האל האמיתי היחיד
which means “the Only True God” when transliterated into English.
In other words, HaShem, “the Name” of the God of the Jews is “the Only True God” or “the Only God”— He bears no other name. His name is one [Zechariah chapter 14 verse 9].
Who Is Ehyeh?
We read in the book of Exodus chapter 3 from verse 13 that Moses asked the one who appeared to him as a burning fire in the midst of the bush, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name? ‘ what shall I say to them?”
Exodus 3 chapter 14 reads: “ ‘Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh has sent you to them.”
The Represented And the Representative Are Two Distinct Entities
The one who appeared to Moses as a burning fire identified himself as “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” which means, “ Either I am or I will be”. He went further in verses 15 and 16 to explain to Moses that he is the representative of “the One whose Name he (Ehyeh) shall reveal (in the future) ”. He explained to Moses that the one who is being represented is “the God of your fathers”. This means that Ehyeh is the Representative and “the God of your fathers” is the Represented.
Ehyeh clearly explained to Moses that he is, at best, the representative of the “God of your fathers”, and not “the God of your fathers”.
Why?
Because the Only True God can never be seen. It is logical to conclude that God cannot be a part of the multiverse because the multiverse came out of God. For example, a carpenter cannot be a part of the chair he constructed; an engineer cannot be a part of the engine he invented; a mason cannot be a part of the monolith he built. That is why we know that God is not , and can never be, anything which is part of our existence (Numbers 23:23).
Hence John writes, “No one has seen God at anytime” (John 1 verse 18). And that is why we conclude that God exists as a separate essence from our collective existence. That is exactly what we mean when we say that God is “holy”. The word “holy” means “separate”.
Moses wrote that he saw God and he was right only in the sense that he saw the Representative of God, who, indeed, is a personality distinguishable from God. And it is this Representative that appeared to Moses.
In summary, now we know that the Tetragrammaton is stenographic expression, a shorthand form of a full statement. The complete statement is “The One Whose Name ‘’Ehyeh’ Shall Reveal”. Since, we know the one who revealed the name as Jesus, then Jesus is Ehyeh, or Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh.