Introduction

The pronunciation ‘Jehovah’ is often dismissed as a mistaken form of God’s name, with Yahweh being favoured in academic circles. The debate concerns the pronunciation of the Divine Name containing the four Hebrew letters יְהוָה . This is sometimes called the Tetragrammaton, from the Greek tetra meaning ‘four’ and gramma meaning ‘letter’). The letters are Yod, He, Vav, He which are usually transliterated YHVH. The issue concerns which vowels should be used along with these consonants. The Hebrew language records consonants as letters but vowels are dots and dashes above and below the consonants. (For example, the word yeled יֶלֶד ‘child’ is written with the consonants yld ילד and the vowels e e .ֶ.)

This article argues that Jehovah is the most accurate pronunciation of the Divine Name. This is based on the ancient Hebrew manuscripts, especially the Masoretic Text. Its vowels are not borrowed strictly from Adonai, and the name is never marked as a substitute in the Hebrew text, showing it was meant to be read as written.

Jehovah comes from the Hebrew word for ‘to be’, showing God’s eternal nature, as seen in ‘I AM THAT I AM’ from Exodus 3.14. Many Biblical names also begin with ‘Jeho-’, and the name ‘Yehoshua’ (Jesus) means ‘Jehovah saves’.¹ On the other hand, Yahweh has no manuscript support, is based on a guess about Hebrew grammar, and comes mainly from a fifth-century writer who said that Samaritans used it—possibly in a pagan context. Scholars later promoted Yahweh based on speculation, not solid evidence.

Reformation English translations used the name ‘Jehovah’ as the English form of the Hebrew ‘Yehovah’. The Tyndale translation (1530) transliterated it in Exodus 6.3 and the Great Bible (1539) transliterated the name twice (Psalm 33.12 and 83.18). The Geneva Bible (1560) used Jehovah four times (Exodus 6.3, Psalm 83.18, Jeremiah 16.21 and 32.18). Later, the Authorised (King James) Version transliterated Jehovah four times (Exodus 6.3, Psalm 83.18, Isaiah 12.2 and 26.4) and kept it three times in compound place names (Genesis 22.14, Exodus 17.15, and Judges 6.24).

Manuscript Evidence for ‘Jehovah’

The Old Testament Masoretic Text uniformly and consistently maintains the name Jehovah (Hebrew: Yehovah)—see Exodus 6.3; Psalm 83.18; Isaiah 12.2 and 26.4. The form Jehovah (or ‘Yehovah’) is found in thousands of Hebrew manuscripts dating from the seventh to tenth centuries AD, including highly regarded sources such as the Aleppo Codex and the Codex Leningradensis (Codex B19A). Several medieval manuscripts of the Tiberian Masoretic tradition, notably the British Library’s Codex Or. 4445 (ninth or tenth century), are similar.² These manuscripts consistently include the full vowel pointing of the Divine Name YHVH, suggesting that the pronunciation was not meant to be lost or obscured. For example, in the Aleppo Codex (a key manuscript of the Hebrew Bible) the name appears with the vowels יְהֹוָה (YeHoVaH), indicating an intentional vocalisation pattern (vocalisation is supplying the vowels for the Hebrew consonants of a word).

These manuscripts were copied by trained scribes who were meticulous in their transmission of both consonants and vowels, adding to the credibility and intentionality behind the vocalisation Jehovah. These consistent vowel markings across such a large body of textual evidence support the view that Jehovah reflects a long-standing and reverent tradition of pronouncing the Divine Name as ‘Yehowah’ or ‘Yehovah’. Conversely, no known Hebrew manuscript of the many thousands of Biblical manuscripts contains Yahweh.

Over 1,000 Hebrew Bible manuscripts have been catalogued in which the full vowels are preserved in the Tetragrammaton.³ These occurrences span across various Biblical books and genres, such as in Genesis 2.4, Exodus 6.3, and Isaiah 42.8.

The Masoretes had a system called ‘Qere-Ketiv’ (‘the read and the written’). The Masoretic scribes intended that the word written in the Hebrew text, the Ketiv (meaning ‘written’), would be replaced, particularly in oral readings, with the reading in the margin, the Qere (meaning ‘read’).⁴ This absence implies that the scribes did not consider Jehovah to be a substitute, but rather the correct form to be read aloud. Remarkably, in all 6,828 appearances of the Divine Name not one is identified as a Qere-Ketiv by either a scribal circle or a marginal note.⁵

There is no marginal note in these manuscripts instructing the oral reader to substitute another word such as Adonai for what is written in the text. This shows that the scribes intended the Divine Name to be read with the vowels provided. When YHVH was intended to be read as Elohim, the Masoretes deliberately placed a composite shewa under the initial Yod in YHVH, because Elohim includes one.⁶ This demonstrates they did not simply transfer Adonai’s vowels to YHVH.⁷

Addressing the Adonai Theory

It is commonly claimed that the vowels of Jehovah were artificially created by combining the consonants of YHVH with the vowels of Adonai (meaning ‘my Lord’). However, a close comparison of the vowel points in Jehovah and Adonai shows they are not the same.⁸ The vowels of Jehovah as written in the Masoretic text do not align with those of Adonai (אֲדֹנָי).⁹

Moreover, the consistent and widespread appearance of Jehovah in manuscript tradition suggests intentional preservation, not scribal invention. The evidence points to a real, historical pronunciation that the Masoretes transmitted faithfully. The Masoretes were not Rabbinic Jews who have avoided pronouncing the name of God. They were Karaites, a group within Judaism which has always recognised and openly used the name ‘Yehovah’, as they continue to do today. They knew the true pronunciation from other Karaites (particularly in Persia) who continued to use it.¹⁰

The form ‘YeHVaH’ has a missing vowel after the first he ה. This is interpreted as a deliberate omission by medieval scribes to prevent readers from pronouncing the true name, ‘Yehovah,’ which they knew, having heard it from other Karaites (who preserved the pronunciation from ancient times). The occasional ‘accidental’ inclusion of the ‘o’ vowel (e.g., fifty times in the LenB19a manuscript) supports ‘Yehovah’.

Theological and Linguistic Foundations

Jehovah is linguistically rooted in the Hebrew verb for ‘to be’ (hawah or hayah), linking it directly to God’s self-revealed identity as ‘I AM THAT I AM’ (Exodus 3.14) (Ehjeh asher Ehjeh). This reflects God’s eternal, self-existent nature: ‘He who was, is, and shall be’. The pronunciation Jehovah thus carries profound theological significance, reinforcing the nature of God revealed in Scripture.

Contrary to what is usually claimed, the name Jehovah does have a concrete meaning. It is a noun form (in that it is the proper name of God), but it has as its root the verb ‘to be’ in Hebrew (hāyāh). On the basis of this verbal root, in the first syllable (ye-) the prefix of the third person masculine singular of the imperfect or uncompleted form of the verb is plainly discernible, clearly suggesting the future tense.

The second syllable (-ho-) clearly points to the masculine singular participle form (whose full form would be hoyeh), thus suggesting the present tense of the verb. The third and last syllable (-vah), corresponds to the ending of the third person masculine singular in the perfect or completed form of verbs ending with the consonant he (the ‘h’), which suggests the past tense.

The meaning of the name Jehovah would thus be the compound ‘He shall be, is, was’. The name Jehovah thus conveys the idea of eternity, and this is the reason why French Reformation Bibles translated God’s name as ‘the Eternal’ (rather than transliterating it).

The name Jehovah is God’s essential name which encapsulates all three tenses—future, present, and past—thereby signifying God’s eternity and self-existence as He has being from Himself and sustains all things. Edward Leigh (Critica Sacra) states. ‘The first and most proper name of God is Jehovah (יְהוָה) which sets out the eternity and self-existence of God. (1) His eternity, in that it contains all times, future, present, and past. Je notes the time to come, Ho the time present, Vah the time past.’ ¹¹ This meaning aligns with Christ’s self-declarations in John 8.58 (‘before Abraham was, I am’) and Revelation 1.8 (‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty’) as well as ‘Grace be unto you, and peace, from Him which is, and which was, and which is to come’ (Revelation 1.4).

Jehovah in Biblical Names

Many Old Testament names begin with ‘Jeho-’ (יְהוֹ-) (e.g., Jehoadah, Jehoash, Jehoshaphat) or end with ‘-iah’ (e.g., Amaziah, Jeremiah); these are called theophoric names because they bear the Divine Name. The prefix ‘Jeho-’ in compound names strongly indicates the beginning of the pronunciation Jehovah, making Yahweh an impossibility because ‘Jeho could not fit into the shortened form of Jah’. Bernardinus de Moor explains that the ‘Jeho-’ portion retains its own proper vowel points (shewa and cholam) at the beginning of words, unlike names using the shortened ‘-yahu’ (יָהוּ) at the end, which coalesces differently. This strongly argues for Jehovah as the starting pronunciation of the full name.

The example of Jehoiakim (2 Kings 23.34) helps clarify this further. Eliakim means ‘God raises up’, and since Jehoiakim also means ‘God raises up’ ‘Jeho’ here functions as ‘God’. The inclusion of the ‘waw’ (O-sound) in Jehoiakim makes no sense if God’s name were Yahweh. The ending form ‘-yahu’ (e.g., in Yeshayahu/Isaiah) is also not consistent with Yahweh, as their vowels are different. No theophoric names in Scripture end with an ‘eh’, which would be the expected ending if the Name were pronounced Yahweh. Words like ‘Hallelujah’ and the Greek ‘Alleluia’ validate the ‘ah’ sound at the end of the Divine Name.

The name of God in the Old Testament, Jehovah, is eminently confirmed by the name of our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus, both in Hebrew (‘Yehoshua’) and in Greek (‘Iesous’), a name that has an absolutely glorious meaning: ‘Jehovah saves’.

Problems with the ‘Yahweh’ Theory

By contrast, the form Yahweh lacks direct manuscript support. It is notably absent from all extant Hebrew Biblical manuscripts, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Masoretic Text, and various Targums, and early Hebrew inscriptions. This absence is significant because it contrasts sharply with the widespread appearance of Jehovah (or its variants) in the same manuscript traditions.

The Anchor Bible Dictionary observes: ‘The pronunciation of yhwh as Yahweh is a scholarly guess.’¹² Austin Surls, in his PhD analysis of the Divine Name in Exodus concludes: ‘Though the form Yahweh has taken hold as the consensus view in scholarly circles, it is based on very little hard evidence’.¹³ It seems reasonable to conclude that ‘the only evidence produced in its favour is conjecture’.¹⁴

Many scholars base this pronunciation on a presumed archaic verbal form of the Hebrew verb ‘to be’ (HYH), yet the form Yahweh does not match any known or grammatically viable conjugation within Biblical Hebrew. This hypothesis assumes a qal imperfect third person masculine singular form that would result in a pronunciation like ‘Yihyeh’, not Yahweh. Moreover, the form Yahweh presupposes a waw-medial stem—a feature inconsistent with the grammar of the Divine Name YHVH. Forcing a grammatical verb form on a name goes against the rules of the Hebrew language, as verbs incorporated into names often have modified vowels (e.g., Nehemiah, Joshua). In contrast, forms like howeh (Ecclesiastes 2.22) and howah (Ezekiel 7.26) demonstrate that the Hebrew letter waw can double as both a consonant and a vowel, similar to its function in Jehovah, indicating that Jehovah is an unusual, but not an impossible, Hebrew form. Yahweh is therefore a non-existent verbal form in Biblical Hebrew.

Much of the modern support for Yahweh traces back to the testimony of Theodoret of Cyrus, a fifth-century Christian bishop who claimed that the Samaritans pronounced the Divine Name as ‘Iabe’ or ‘Yabe’ while the Jews used ‘Aia’ or ‘A-Yah’ (an abbreviated form of God’s name). The Samaritan ‘Iabe’ is thought to be a distortion of ‘Yafeh’ (יָפֶה), (meaning ‘the beautiful one’), a poetic Samaritan name for God, or linked to their worship of the pagan god ‘Ashema’ (אֲשִׁימָֽא) as mentioned in 2 Kings 17.30. ¹⁵

Theodoret did not understand Hebrew, and his testimony must be treated cautiously. Ancient Greek transliteration issues (no ‘H’ in middle of words, no ‘W’ or ‘V’ sound, different vowel system) make precise reconstruction from ‘Iabe’ to Yahweh unreliable.

A Samaritan pronunciation diverging from Jewish tradition is not necessarily reliable, especially given the Samaritans’ syncretistic religious practices, which sometimes merged Israelite worship with pagan elements. The Samaritans asked Antiochus Epiphanes to rename their temple the ‘Temple of Jupiter Hellenius’. Given that Jupiter in Latin is ‘Jove’ and the Samaritan ‘V’ are pronounced like a ‘W’, Yahweh could more accurately represent the Samaritan pronunciation of Jupiter (‘Joh-weh’), rather than the Scriptural name for God. This may indicate that the Samaritans identified their deity with Zeus or Jupiter, raising the possibility that Yahweh may reflect a corrupted or paganised form of the name.

Additionally, instances of the name Yahweh appear in magical papyri (e.g., in Papyrus Amherst 63) and non-biblical incantation texts, often in the context of Greco-Roman mysticism. These are Jewish or Jewish-influenced Greco-Egyptian magical texts from the first to fifth century AD. This association further clouds its reliability as a representation of the sacred Tetragrammaton. The pagan use of Yahweh in such contexts likely reflects foreign appropriation rather than authentic Hebrew tradition.

Speculation and Popularisation

The rise of Yahweh in modern scholarship owes more to speculation than to evidence. The Jewish writer Elias Levita was the first to question Jehovah in his work Massoret ha-Massoret (1538). It caused great outrage, but Levita was followed soon after by the Roman Catholic theologian Gilbert Génébrard in his Chronologia (1567), who first proposed the pronunciation ‘Yahve’, based on the testimony of Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus, who noted that the Jews did not pronounce the name in its full form, but that the Samaritans pronounced it Yahweh, and the Jews ‘Yah’.¹⁶ Génébrard used ‘Yah’ from ‘Hallelujah’ as justification yet this is insufficient evidence for Yahweh since shortened names do not always correspond to the letters of the full version, e.g., James and Jim.

Notwithstanding these two writers, the position in favour of Yahweh would remain a minority among scholars until the ninteenth century. The German Hebraist Wilhem Gesenius (1786–1842), in his work Thesaurus, would become the first to present the idea that the vowels of the name Jehovah are those of the name Adonai (‘Lord’, in Hebrew, and in agreement with the Jewish practice of pronouncing Adonai instead of reading the Tetragrammaton with its vocalisation Jehovah). This prompted the question as to what was the original name of God. Among other possibilities, Gesenius proposed the name Yahweh, based on the testimony of Theodoret. However, Gesenius did not completely rule out the name Jehovah:

Also those who consider that יְהֹוָה was the actual pronunciation (Michaëlis in Supplem. p. 524), are not altogether without ground on which to defend their opinion. In this way can the abbreviated syllables יְהֹ and וָֹ, with which many proper names begin, be more satisfactorily explained.¹⁷

Curiously, Gesenius also made reference to the resemblance between the name Jehovah and the primary Latin god, ‘Iove’. The explanation he gave was the opposite of that given by Valera, who had stated that it was the pagans who influenced the Israelites and not the other way around. Later, Gesenius would completely retract this idea, considering it a ‘waste of time’.¹⁸ Through the influence of Gesenius, German theologians such as Heinrich Ewald (1803–1875) and Ernst Hengstenberg (1802–1862) popularized the use of the name ‘Jahweh’.¹⁹ Its continued popularity rests on repeated academic assumptions and conjectural reconstruction rather than concrete data.

Conclusion

The name Jehovah is not a linguistic accident or a mistaken tradition. It is rooted in a rich and consistent manuscript tradition, including thousands of ancient Hebrew texts where the full Divine Name appears with vowel markings. These manuscripts demonstrate that Jehovah was intended to be read and pronounced, not merely substituted with Adonai. Linguistically, Jehovah aligns with the Hebrew verb for ‘to be’, echoing God’s self-revealed name in Exodus 3.14 and reinforcing His eternal nature as ‘He who was, is, and shall be’.

Additionally, the prevalence of Jehovah in Biblical names—especially those starting with ‘Jeho-’, such as Jehoiakim and Jehoshaphat—further supports this pronunciation. The name ‘Yehoshua’ (Jesus), meaning ‘Jehovah saves’, bridges Old and New Testament theology and testifies to the continuity and significance of the Divine Name.

In contrast, the pronunciation Yahweh is not found in any Hebrew manuscript. It is a speculative reconstruction based on questionable linguistic theory and a single ancient reference from a non-Hebrew-speaking source. While widely accepted in modern scholarship, its foundation is largely theoretical and lacks historical support.

Taken together, the manuscript evidence, linguistic consistency, theological resonance, and historical usage all point decisively to Jehovah as the most accurate and meaningful pronunciation of the Divine Name. Recovering and respecting this name enriches our understanding of Scripture and honours the legacy of God’s self-revelation to His people. Jehovah is supported by a vast manuscript tradition, sound linguistic reasoning, theological meaning, and evidence from Biblical names. In contrast, Yahweh is a modern reconstruction with no ancient textual basis. For these reasons, Jehovah remains the most accurate and meaningful pronunciation of the Divine Name.

Appendix: List of Hebrew theophoric names

The following is a list of Hebrew theophoric names in the Bible that begin or end as the name Jehovah. This list presents the transliteration; you can see how they are written in the English Bible by consulting the quotations.²⁰

• Jehoadah (1 Chronicles 8.36)
• Jehoaddan (2 Chronicles 25.1)
• Jehoachaz (2 Kings 10.35)
• Jehoash (2 Kings 11.21)
• Jehochanan (1 Chronicles 26.3)
• Jehoiakin (2Kings 24.6)
• Jehoiada (2 Samuel 8.18)
• Jehoiakim (2 Kings 23.34)
• Jehoiarib (1 Chronicles 9.10)
• Jehonadab (2 Kings 10.15)
• Jehonatan (1 Chronicles 27.25)
• Jehoram (1 Kings 22.50)
• Jehosef (Psalm 81.5 – Hebrew verse 6)
• Jehoshabeat (2 Chronicles 22.11)
• Jehoshafat (2 Samuel 8.16)
• Jehosheba (2 Kings 11.2)
• Jehoshua (Numbers 13.16)
• Jehozabad (2 Kings 12.21)
• Jehozadak (1 Chronicles 6.14)

There are also theophoric names that end with the same final syllable as the name Jehovah.

• Abiah (1 Samuel 8.2)
• Ahiah (1 Samuel 14.3)
• Amaziah (2 Kings 12.21)
• Athaliah (2 Kings 11.3)
• Jizkiah (2 Kings 18.1)
• Jilkiah (2 Kings 18.37)
• Jedidiah (2 Samuel 12.25)
• Jesaiah (1 Chronicles 3.21)
• Jeremiah (Jeremiah 27.1)
• Josiah (1 Kings 13.2)
• Micaiah (2 Kings 22.12)
• Moriah (Genesis 22.2)
• Obadiah (1 Chronicles 3.21)
• Pekahiah (2 Kings15.22)
• Seraiah (2 Samuel 8.17)
• Shemaiah (1 Kings 12.22)
• Uriah (2 Samuel 11.3)
• Uzziah (2 Kings 12.21)
• Zachariah (2 Kings 14.29)
• Zedekiah (1 Kings 22.11)