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The Gods of the Bible
Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.
Yahweh
The personal name of Israel's God, printed as LORD in most English Bibles.
Genesis 2:4, in every translation this tool compares.
Nobody calls their own mother "the woman". Israel's God has an actual name, four Hebrew letters, and almost every English Bible swaps it for the word LORD in small capitals. That substitution is a Jewish habit of reverence that Christian translators inherited. It tells you nothing about what the name means.
The personal name of Israel's God. Almost every English Bible prints LORD in small capitals in its place. The substitution is a Jewish reverence practice that Christian translation carried over, and it says nothing about what the name means. DDD traces the cult south of Israel, to Edom, Seir, and Midian, rather than to Canaan. The earliest evidence anyone puts forward is Egyptian: two topographical lists, one from Amenophis III in the fourteenth century and one from Ramesses II, place "Yahu in the land of the Shasu-bedouin" in that same country, though whether that Yahu is the divine name or a place named after it is argued both ways. Outside Egypt the name does not appear until much later, on the Mesha stele and the Kuntillet Ajrud and Lachish inscriptions, and the biblical theophany texts agree with them: Judges 5:4 and Deuteronomy 33:2 both have Yahweh coming from Seir and Paran.
H3068 (יהוה), 6,513 occ; H3069 (יֱהוִה, the same name pointed with the vowels of elohim), 315 occ; 6,828 together, which is the standard count
Whether the name is a causative form of the verb "to be" is disputed, and Exodus 3:14 is a hard verse to render. Even granting a verbal origin, scholars split between a simple Qal reading ("he is, he shows himself") and a causative Hiphil ("he causes to be, brings into existence"). Knauf argues instead from the Arabic root hwy, "to blow," which would make Yahweh a storm god in origin, and DDD calls that the more plausible reading given where the name comes from. Some of the storm imagery belongs to Yahweh outright and runs alongside the monarchic Baal cult rather than after it: the chariot of clouds, the lightning-voice, Zion cast as "the recesses of Zaphon" (Psalm 48:2-3). DDD also puts a limit on the southern-origin story. It keeps the Kenite hypothesis only in a modified form, faults the classical version for ignoring Israel's Canaanite roots and leaning on a historically problematic Moses, and places the handoff inside Palestine, with Kenite or Midianite traders on the caravan routes, instead of on a desert march.
- Genesis 2:4
- Exodus 3:14-15
- Exodus 6:3
- Deuteronomy 6:4
- Psalm 82:1
- Deuteronomy 33:2
- Judges 5:4-5
- Habakkuk 3:3
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/divine-council-index\/psalm-82\/","n":"Psalm 82","s":"God stands in the divine assembly and passes sentence on the elohim He put in charge.","r":"Psalm 82"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/divine-council-index\/deuteronomy-32-8-9\/","n":"Deuteronomy 32:8-9","s":"The Most High divided the nations, and the number He divided them by is where the whole argument turns.","r":"Deuteronomy 32:8-9"}
- DDD s.v. "Yahweh," 910-919
- LSB preface on the divine name
