#3 - Is God's Name Really Jehovah?

How does the Bible answer this question? "And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you....this is my name for ever" (Exodus 3:13-15, KJV). God told Moses on Mount Horeb that His name is I AM. I AM, in Hebrew, is a four-consonant word called the Tetragrammaton, which when translated into English is YHWH. The most accurate spelling of the most proper pronunciation of YHWH is Yahweh. But what about 'Jehovah'?

The ancient Israelites removed the name YHWH from their prayers so that they would not offend God by mispronouncing His name during their prayer services. They replaced this name with the word Adonay, which means ‘My Lord.’ The word ‘Jehovah’ is a hybrid combination of the consonants of the holy name of God, YHWH, with the vowels of the word ADONAY. This combination produced the word YaHoWah, which later became JaHoVaH, which is known today as Jehovah.

How do the world’s scholars answer this question? Look up the word YAHWEH and you will read: “The full and proper name of the Lord of Israel” (NEW CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA, pg. 1065), “the personal name of the God of the Israelites” (ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA – MICROPAEDIA, pg. 786), “THE TRUE PRONUNCIATION OF THE NAME YHWH WAS NEVER LOST….The personal name of God of Israel” (ENCYCLOPEDIA JUDAICA (Jerusalem), pg. 680, Vol. 7)

Look up the word JEHOVAH, and you will read: “false form of the divine name Yahweh” (NEW CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA, pg. 863), “ False reading of Hebrew YAHWEH.” (WEBSTER’S COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY), “recognized to be a late hybrid form never used by the Jews.” (WEBSTER’S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY), “an erroneous form of the name of the God of Israel.” (ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA), “the pronunciation ‘Jehovah’ is an error” (ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA), “a mispronunciation of the Hebrew YHWH the name of God” (THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA, pg. 160), “an erroneous pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton” (THE UNIVERSAL JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA), “the vowels of one word with the consonants of the other were misread as ‘Jehovah’” (ENCYCLOPEDIA INTERNATIONAL), “an inaccurate reconstruction of the name of God” (MERITS STUDENT ENCYCLOPEDIA). And finally, WEBSTER’S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY defines JEHOVAH GOD as “a supreme deity recognized and the only deity worshipped by Jehovah’s Witnesses.” In truth, you may call God Jehovah, but you can’t say Jehovah is God’s name, just as you may call Jesus Christ, Emmanuel (meaning God with us), but you can’t say Emmanuel is Christ’s name.

DON’T BE FOOLED by the babbling of brainwashed Jehovah’s Witnesses who believe that they must pray to ‘Jehovah’. The word Jehovah did not exist until around the year 1520 A.D. God’s name is Yahweh, and He gave His Son Jesus Christ “a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow” (Philippians 2:10) and “there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). We should bow to Jesus Christ and pray to Him for strength and enlightenment, and for His protection against the type of heresies pushed upon Christians by the Watchtower cult!