The vast majority of Hebrew scholars are in agreement that the name יהוה is an instance of kri perpetuum. The vowels that are written on the name belong to the word אדני and not to the letters of the name יהוה. Nehemia Gordon disagrees, though, and here is why he’s wrong.
In the above video, you can see Nehemia giving a good explanation of the ktiv-kri (or kri-ktiv) system as it appears in the Hebrew Bible. At 1:14:45 in the video, you hear him turn to the name יהוה and say that it is not only “not true” that this is an instance of kri perpetuum, but he goes on to say that it’s an outright lie based on the fact that there is no Masorah circle over the word at any point in the text (יְה֯וָה) or a kri notation in the margin of the text and since יהוה doesn’t really have the vowels of אדני. Why? In most instances (there are some exceptions – which gets Nehemia really excited) of the name יהוה in the handwritten manuscripts, it appears without the cholam. Compare יְהוָֹה (which has the cholam) with יְהוָה (which is missing the cholam).
Gordon argues that if it were an instance of kri-ktiv, we would see the full form as יֲהוָֹה and not יְהוָה in the manuscripts. He argues that the missing cholam is the scribes’ attempt to keep people from reading the name as Yehovah, since they didn’t allow people to read the name according to its letters.
I will turn this over, though, and say that this is actually the falsehood and that the vast majority of Hebrew scholars are correct. This is certainly an instance of kri perpetuum. On the one hand, he is right that the cholam is missing and the word as pointed would stop a student in his tracks if he were just learning to read Hebrew. The form יְהוָה is, after all, not really pronounceable as written.
The Vowels of Elohim
Let’s start by looking at the name יהוה when it is to be read as אֱלֹהִים (ʾĕlōhîm). This happens when the Tetragrammaton appears after the name אֲדֹנָי (ʾăḏōnāy) because reading אֲדֹנָי יְהוָה would result in ʾăḏōnāy ʾăḏōnāy. The tradition tells us, then, that we should read it as ʾăḏōnāy ʾĕlōhîm instead. The vowel on the Name is shifted to i (chirik) to remind us to read it differently.
The chataf-segol in the first syllable of ʾĕlōhîm reduces to regular sheva, but the rest of the vowels are copied directly onto the Name. This is the same thing that happens when the vowels of ʾăḏōnāy are carried over to the Name; the chataf-patach is reduced to sheva and the rest of the vowels are copied directly. (This will be demonstrated below.)
The Vowels of Adonai
Examine the words in the picture:
The name אדני יהוה appears twice in the image, once in the black letters and once in the bottom left of the picture. Notice that the cholam is missing from the name אֲדנָי. It is written as if it were ʾăḏ-nāy, which is an impossible form in Hebrew. In fact, if you look up every instance of ʾăḏōnāy in the Aleppo Codex, you will find that it was the convention of the scribe to leave the cholam off of the name ʾăḏōnāy. A survey of the instances of אדני as a name of God (that is, of אֲדֹנָי [with kamats] and not either אֲדֹנַי or אֲדֹנִי) shows that 97% of instances lack the cholam while only 3% (that is, 11 occurrences) have the cholam. The missing cholam on יְהוָה suddenly makes sense when this is taken into account. It is an instance of the exact vowels of ʾăḏōnāy being copied onto the Name. It is not the case that the full vowels are יְהוָֹה and that the cholam is just left off. The full vowels of ʾăḏōnāy are generally not written, so when the vowels are copied onto יהוה, the cholam wasn’t present to begin with and is simply not added.
Thus, the vowels belonging to אֲדנָי (without the cholam) are transferred as-is to יְהוָה in the exact same way that the vowels of אֱלֹהִים are transferred to יְהוִֹה (since ʾĕlōhîm doesn’t appear without the cholam) – with the half-vowels (chataf-segol and chataf-patach) being reduced in both cases.
This is the case regarding אֲדנָי, the specific name of God, but not the titles אֲדֹנִי (ʾăḏōnî) “my lord” or אֲדֹנַי (ʾăḏōnay) “my lords,” which both display the cholam in every instance.
The Missing Cholam
The cholam is thus missing in two words in the Hebrew language: אֲדֹנָי and יְהוָֹה. The fact that there are instances of the full vowel set should not be surprising, just as finding the full vowel set on אֲדֹנָי should not surprise us in any way. Both should appear randomly from time to time without surprising us.
In every instance, the vowels of אדני are transposed onto יהוה.
Nehemia Gordon has attempted an explanation of the attached prepositions in an audio recording with Keith Johnson in which he answers twelve questions from his audience. No real answer was provided except to attempt to cast doubt on our grammatical understanding of the text and to call up what he calls “the B52 Bomber” as a way of simply saying that we don’t really know what was going on with the biblical language. No real explanation was provided. He did not really address the attached prepositions at all. You cannot discount all of our manuscripts by the appearance of one small group of manuscripts that do something different from what we see otherwise. You can see his argument online here.
All of the relevant phenomena related to Hebrew orthography and morphology are in-line with the view that יְהוָה is an instance of kri perpetuum, as you will find in every competent biblical Hebrew grammar textbook. If the vowels on יהוה were original to the name, we would find לִיהוָֹה (lîhōvâ) “to YHVH,” בִּיהוָֹה (bîhōvâ) “in YHVH,” כִּיהוָֹה (kîhōvâ) “like YHVH” and מִיהוָֹה (mîhōvâ) “from YHVH.” This is obviously not what we find in the manuscripts of the Bible. Similarly, we would have no reason to shift the vowels of יהוה when it follows אדני, since the combination would be read as ʾĂḏōnāy Yəhōvâ, which wouldn’t cause any conflict. Instead, we would have אֲדֹנָי יְהוָֹה ʾĂḏōnāy Yᵉhōwâ or יְהוָֹה אֲדֹנָי Yᵉhōwâ ʾĂḏōnāy, whereas we actually have אֲדנָי יְהוִֹה ʾĂḏ(ō)nāy ʾĔlōhîm and יְהוִֹה אֲדנָי ʾĔlōhîm ʾĂḏ(ō)nāy in the texts. There would never be a reason to shift the kamats to chirik if the pronunciation of יהוה matched the vowels sheva-cholam-kamats.
In no way does Yehovah take on the expected vowels with prefixed prepositions, but in every instance the Name matches Adonai as expected.
