Lexicon

H3068 - YHWH

Strong's: H3068 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: yeh-ho-vaw' (Masoretic vowel pointing), original pronunciation lost; scholarly reconstruction: Yahweh. Part of speech: proper noun referring to deity (the Tetragrammaton, "four letters") Root: related to / derived from H1961 - hayah ("to be"); see Exodus 3.14 for the etymological self-disclosure.

Frequency & rendering

The most common divine name in the Hebrew Bible, 6,519 occurrences (per Strong's). Almost universally rendered:

the LORD (small caps) in English Christian translations, the KJV and the major modern versions alike, convention preserved from the LXX (κύριος, kyrios) and the Vulgate (Dominus).
GOD (small caps) when juxtaposed with Adonai (אֲדֹנָי) to avoid the redundancy "Lord LORD."
Jehovah, historic English transliteration, now generally regarded as a hybrid of YHWH consonants with Adonai vowels (the Masoretic qere perpetuum).
Yahweh, modern scholarly reconstruction.
HASHEM ("the Name"), traditional Jewish substitute.
ADONAI, Jewish reading-tradition substitute (avoids vocalizing the Tetragrammaton).

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Semantic / theological range

The proper personal name of the God of Israel, distinct from generic elohim (H0430 - elohim) and from the title Adonai (lord/master).
Covenant name, the name par excellence under which YHWH binds Himself to Israel (Exodus 6:2-8; Deuteronomy 7:9).
Self-existence / eternality, by etymological connection to hayah: "He IS / He will be / He is the One who is."
Holy and unutterable, Jewish post-exilic tradition treats the name as too holy to pronounce; the qere/ketiv convention reads Adonai aloud.

Theological force

Three claims converge in the name:

Aseity / self-existence. The connection to hayah (see Exodus 3.14) means YHWH names the only being whose existence is intrinsic, not derived. All else is contingent; YHWH alone is in the absolute sense.
Covenantal presence. YHWH is not a generic deity but the One who entered covenant with Abraham (Genesis 12), revealed His name to Moses (Exodus 3, 6), and bound Himself to Israel. The name carries covenant-faithfulness (hesed).
Personal name vs generic title. In a polytheistic ancient near-eastern context, every god had a proper name. Elohim is a generic category ("god" or "gods"); YHWH is which God specifically.

The NT writers identify Jesus with YHWH through programmatic citation: OT YHWH passages are applied to Christ, and Jesus's egō eimi sayings (John 8:24, 58; 13:19; 18:5-6) self-identify with the LXX rendering of ehyeh / YHWH (cf. H1961 - hayah). Romans 10.13 applies Joel 2:32 ("everyone who calls on the name of YHWH will be saved") directly to Jesus.

Notable verses

Revelation of the name

Exodus 3.14-15, ehyeh asher ehyeh, then YHWH given as the third-person form
Exodus 6:2-3, "I am YHWH; I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but by My name YHWH I was not known to them"
Deuteronomy 6:4, Shema: "YHWH our God, YHWH is one"

Covenant context

Genesis 15:7, "I am YHWH who brought you out of Ur"
Exodus 20:2, "I am YHWH your God, who brought you out of Egypt"
Deuteronomy 7:9, "YHWH your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant"

Holiness / uniqueness

Isaiah 42:8, "I am YHWH, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another"
Isaiah 45:5, "I am YHWH, and there is no other; besides Me there is no God"
Joel 2:32, "everyone who calls on the name of YHWH will be saved" (cited of Christ in Romans 10.13)

Identifications applied to Christ in NT

Zechariah 12:10, "they will look on Me whom they have pierced" (YHWH speaking; applied to Christ in John 19:37)
Isaiah 6:1-10, Isaiah's vision of YHWH (applied to Christ in John 12:41)
Isaiah 40:3, "prepare the way of YHWH" (applied to John the Baptist preparing for Christ in Matthew 3:3, Mark 1:3)
Psalm 102:25, applied to the Son in Hebrews 1:10-12

Patristic / scholarly note

The pre-Christian LXX rendering of YHWH as kyrios (G2962 - kyrios) is the linguistic foundation for the NT confession "Jesus is kyrios" (Romans 10:9; Philippians 2:11), confessing Jesus as YHWH. Tertullian (Against Praxeas 13-17, c. AD 213) and Athanasius both rely on this LXX equivalence to ground the deity of Christ from the OT. Modern scholarship (Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, 2003; Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel, 2008) develops the same point: NT Christology is grounded in the kyrios-YHWH identification.

The original pronunciation has been lost. The Masoretic Tetragrammaton is pointed with the vowels of Adonai (shewa + cholam + qamatz) as a reading instruction, not as the actual pronunciation. The hybrid "Jehovah" (J for Y, V for W) is a Latin-mediated artifact. Yahweh is the standard scholarly reconstruction based on Greek transliterations in early Christian sources (e.g., Clement of Alexandria's Ἰαουέ).

The short form Yah and the name inside names

The divine name also appears in a two-letter short form, Yah (Strong's H3050), tagged in 45 KJV verses (measured). The KJV prints it once as "JAH" ("extol him ... by his name JAH", Psalm 68:4) and otherwise renders it "the LORD": in the Song of the Sea, "The LORD is my strength and song" (Exodus 15:2); in the closing halelu-yah of the Psalter, "Praise ye the LORD" (Psalm 150:6); and doubled with the full name in "the LORD JEHOVAH" (Isaiah 12:2, Yah YHWH).

The name is also built into personal names. At the start of a name it takes the form Yeho- or Yo-: Yehoshua, Joshua, "Yahweh is salvation" (H3091 - Yehoshua). At the end it takes the form -yahu or -yah: the KJV margin at 1 Kings 17:1 reads "Elijah: Heb. Elijahu: Gr. Elias" (measured), and Isaiah is Yeshayahu. These forms, with Yah itself, are the main internal evidence for the name's vowels.

Earliest attestation outside the Bible

The name appears in inscriptions well before the Masoretic manuscripts:

Soleb and Amarah-West, Egyptian temple lists of Amenhotep III (c. 1400 BC) and Ramesses II (c. 1250 BC), name "the land of the Shasu of Yhw", nomads of the Edom and Seir region. This is the earliest extra-biblical occurrence of the name, as a place or people name. It is sometimes heard or repeated online as "the Shasu (or Sashu) of Yah" and presented as the "origin" of the name or of Israel; what it records is a name in a list, early and southern. The origin arguments built on it are answered at Yahweh Borrowed From the Canaanites Objection Defeater.
The Mesha Stele (c. 840 BC), where the king of Moab boasts of taking "the vessels of YHWH" from Israel's sanctuary at Nebo.
Kuntillet Ajrud (c. 800 BC), inscriptions naming "YHWH of Teman" and "YHWH of Samaria".
The Ketef Hinnom silver amulets (c. 600 BC), inscribed with the priestly blessing of Numbers 6:24-26, the name included.
The Elephantine Papyri (fifth century BC), Aramaic letters from a Jewish garrison in Upper Egypt with its own temple of the God it wrote as YHW, a three-letter spelling of the name.

None of these supplies the vowels; they attest the consonants and the name's use.

The Sacred Name vocalizations

Because the consonantal text does not preserve the vowels and the Masoretic pointing carries the vowels of the substitute Adonai, every vocalization is a reconstruction or a convention:

Yahweh, the majority scholarly reconstruction, weighing Yah, the name-elements, and early Greek transcriptions such as Clement of Alexandria's Iaoue.
Yehovah / Jehovah, the consonants read with the vowels of Adonai; a historical hybrid, not a recovery of the original.
Yahuah, Yahawah, modern forms taught in some Sacred Name and Hebrew Israelite groups. The -yahu ending of names like Elijahu shows a name-element, not a full form, and nothing in the text supplies a further syllable.

The forms, and the claim that one of them is required for salvation, are compared at Sacred Names Movement and answered at Sacred Name Yahawah Yahawashi Required for Salvation Objection Defeater.

Verses in this codex

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