Daily Retreat 07/16/09
2009 Jul 16 Thu
Ex 3:13-20/ Ps 104(105):1 and 5. 8-9. 24-25. 26-27/ Mt 11:28-30
>From today’s readings:“This is what you shall tell the children of Israel: I AM sent me to you.... The Lord remembers His covenant for ever.... Come to Me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. ”
The Name of God
God revealed His Name and identity to Moses in preparation for sending him on the mission of liberating God’s people from the slavery of Egypt. So what, then, is the Name of God? Yahweh? Jehovah? The LORD? Exodus 3:14-15 are clearly the crucial verses, but the translations of these verses vary greatly, for a number of reasons.
The Hebrew alphabet consists only of consonants, so in ancient texts, there were generally no indications of what vowels were to be pronounced. Instead, assumptions had to be made on the basis of context, but that inherent weakness led to many ambiguities in the written Old Testament. We can consider an English analogy to illustrate these difficulties: although when spoken aloud there is no confusion, in purely written form, “I read the book” can be either present or past tense - generally the context will resolve the ambiguity, but not always. Imagine, then, the difficulties in ancient written Hebrew, for which many words with the same spelling have multiple possibilities of pronunciation and meaning.
God’s Name given in Exodus 3:15 is spelled YHWH, and verse 14 explains that spelling as a unique derivative of the Hebrew verb “to be,” meaning “I am who am!” Because this was the sacred revealed Name of God, in their humble piety, the Hebrews soon concluded it would be presumptuously disrespectful to pronounce that word aloud. Some scholars have noted a few clues that suggest the word may have been pronounced for awhile as “Yahweh,” but in any event, the tradition quickly was established that whenever YHWH appeared in the Sacred Scriptures, the reader would conscientiously substitute the Hebrew word “edonai,” meaning “My Lord.”
In the sixth century AD, Jewish scholars known as Massoretes successfully introduced an ingenious system of indicating vowels in the written text as tiny marks inserted under the consonants. For the Name of God, the Massoretes preserved the consonants YHWH, but they would remind the reader to pronounce “edonai” by substituting the vowel points for that word, which thus looks something like “YeHOWaH,” which in western languages is more commonly spelled “Jehovah.” But, as it is clear, the Hebrews never mistook that for the Name of God, because “Jehovah” is merely an anachronistic and nonsensical combination of the consonants of one word (“YHWH”) with the vowels of another word (“Edonai”). Fittingly, then, most Christian Bibles simply translate “YHWH” as “the LORD,” often capitalizing all the letters to distinguish it as the holy Name of God.
Ex 3:13-20/ Ps 104(105):1 and 5. 8-9. 24-25. 26-27/ Mt 11:28-30
>From today’s readings:“This is what you shall tell the children of Israel: I AM sent me to you.... The Lord remembers His covenant for ever.... Come to Me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. ”
The Name of God
God revealed His Name and identity to Moses in preparation for sending him on the mission of liberating God’s people from the slavery of Egypt. So what, then, is the Name of God? Yahweh? Jehovah? The LORD? Exodus 3:14-15 are clearly the crucial verses, but the translations of these verses vary greatly, for a number of reasons.
The Hebrew alphabet consists only of consonants, so in ancient texts, there were generally no indications of what vowels were to be pronounced. Instead, assumptions had to be made on the basis of context, but that inherent weakness led to many ambiguities in the written Old Testament. We can consider an English analogy to illustrate these difficulties: although when spoken aloud there is no confusion, in purely written form, “I read the book” can be either present or past tense - generally the context will resolve the ambiguity, but not always. Imagine, then, the difficulties in ancient written Hebrew, for which many words with the same spelling have multiple possibilities of pronunciation and meaning.
God’s Name given in Exodus 3:15 is spelled YHWH, and verse 14 explains that spelling as a unique derivative of the Hebrew verb “to be,” meaning “I am who am!” Because this was the sacred revealed Name of God, in their humble piety, the Hebrews soon concluded it would be presumptuously disrespectful to pronounce that word aloud. Some scholars have noted a few clues that suggest the word may have been pronounced for awhile as “Yahweh,” but in any event, the tradition quickly was established that whenever YHWH appeared in the Sacred Scriptures, the reader would conscientiously substitute the Hebrew word “edonai,” meaning “My Lord.”
In the sixth century AD, Jewish scholars known as Massoretes successfully introduced an ingenious system of indicating vowels in the written text as tiny marks inserted under the consonants. For the Name of God, the Massoretes preserved the consonants YHWH, but they would remind the reader to pronounce “edonai” by substituting the vowel points for that word, which thus looks something like “YeHOWaH,” which in western languages is more commonly spelled “Jehovah.” But, as it is clear, the Hebrews never mistook that for the Name of God, because “Jehovah” is merely an anachronistic and nonsensical combination of the consonants of one word (“YHWH”) with the vowels of another word (“Edonai”). Fittingly, then, most Christian Bibles simply translate “YHWH” as “the LORD,” often capitalizing all the letters to distinguish it as the holy Name of God.
posted by FrPitstick | 7/11/2009
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