More than seven years since my last post on this blog and in a surprising twist, I came across someone on Facebook’s Nerdy Biblical Language Majors (NBLM) named Joseph Weissman who has argued (under Reformed Masora on Substack) something I never thought I would run into—namely, that both יְהוָֹה Yəhōvā́(h) and יְהוִֹה Yəhōvī́(h) are the real points of the Name and that the -i sound represents a possessive pronoun, such that Yəhōvī́ means “My Yehovah.” He writes about this on his Substack here. So, let’s look at his argument and make some comments.
Reconstructing the Argument
I don’t tend to think that we should have to dig back into the 1500’s to find support for our arguments. When I asked Joseph about his use of antiquated sources, he said that he “believe[s] we’ve lost a lot from the heights of Reformation-era insight into Biblical Hebrew” (personal conversation) and finds more valid arguments among the old Reformers than in modern sources, but that he also hopes to bring the strength of their arguments back into favor among academics in our days. This is why he quotes from them so heavily in his argument, a tactic which hindered my understanding of his article. After I read it, I referred it to Jonathan Beck, and he wasn’t able to make that much of the article even though he is part of the Reformed Tradition. That said, I will not discount the argument solely on the basis that no modern Hebraist or reference (grammar, lexicon, article) can be found to make a similar argument. Instead, I will first try to reconstruct the argument without the quotations to get at the heart of what Weissman means in his argument and the points that he would like to make in support of יְהוִֹה Yəhōvī(h) and, less controversially, יְהוָֹה Yəhōvā(h).
In an attempt to get to understand the argument, I asked ChatGPT to rewrite the Substack article and to put it into a more logical order to summarize the meaning in two paragraphs, and this is what was returned:
Rewritten and Clarified Argument
Critics have long argued that Jehovah is a hybrid form, created when the Masoretes combined the consonants of the Divine Name (יהוה) with the vowels of Adonai (אֲדֹנָי), and that Jehovih (יֱהֹוִה) merely substitutes the vowels of Elohim (אֱלֹהִים) in places where Adonai YHWH occurs. On this view, both vocalizations are artificial devices to remind readers not to pronounce the sacred name, rather than genuine reflections of its ancient form.
Weissman disputes this assumption, arguing that the Masoretic pointing of Jehovah and Jehovih reveals an intentional, internally consistent pattern rather than random substitution. The regular vowel sequences (shewa–cholam–qamats/chiriq) fit naturally within Hebrew phonology and indicate a preserved reading tradition. Far from disproving Jehovah, the form Jehovih actually supports it, showing that the Masoretes maintained a stable and meaningful vocalization system for the Divine Name. Thus, Jehovah represents not a linguistic mistake but the continuation of an authentic pronunciation tradition within the Hebrew text.
After that, I rewrote what I thought the basic argument was and submitted it to Joseph in an attempted strongman of his position. He approved of my restatement and stressed that point 2 was not a major point but only something that he found interesting. This is what I sent to him:
In simple terms, it seems to me that this is your argument:
(1) The Masoretes were neither superstitious nor careless, and their pointing represents an older tradition (dating back to Moses??) for how the text should be preserved, and they preserved it meticulously.
(2) The -i ending of Yehoví represents a personal possessive suffix, in the same category as מַלְכִּי “my king” and כְּבוֹדִי “my glory.”
(3) This use of -i is an emotional suffix drawing upon the author’s connection with YHVH.
(4) Jesus read from the MT in Luke 4, which lends credence to the reading of Yehoví.
(5) Lots of old Reformed authors took such a position.
It is this reconstruction of his argument that I would like to look at, only bringing in quotes from his sources where they are relevant to understanding his position.
Were the Masoretes particularly superstitious?
This doesn’t seem like a particularly relevant question, but it came up in the first three source quotes that Joseph provided. The Masoretes were traditional Jews of the time. Their goal in putting ink to paper was to preserve the reading tradition that they had received. They would have held to the same general beliefs that basically all Jews held at the time, which included some things that I personally would consider superstitious.
The Ben Asher family may have been Karaites (קָֽרָאִים), people who believed only in the Written Torah and not in the tradition of the Oral Torah as promulgated by the rabbinic authorities. This is a question that has been long in debate with many today convinced that it was the case. One part of the Mishnah that I’ve always thought of as rather superstitious is the concept that old, dilapidated buildings are full of dangerous spirits (מַזִּיקִין) that can attack someone if they go in alone. These מזיקין are also said to invade someone’s body while they sleep and to pollute a dead body, which explains why there is טֻמְאָה “impurity.” This is all taught in the Oral Torah. It may indeed be that the Karaites were the intellectual descendents of the Sadducees, who are said to have rejected all but the Torah, such that they didn’t accept the authority of the other two sections of the Tanach—the Prophets and Hagiographa. The Karaites obviously went further than the Sadducees in this sense, but perhaps there was a tendency to avoid the demonology and mysticism that was developed in the Second Temple Period. This would certainly make them less “superstitious” than the Rabbis, but these are concepts that carried over into early Christianity and a world of ideas from within which Christianity emerged.
I mean, how does one define “superstition”? Relevant to this discussion is the fact that the Mishnah prohibited the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton as far back as the early third Century (cf. Sanhedrin 10:1: אֵ֫לּוּ שֶׁאֵין לָהֶם חֵ֫לֶק לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא... אַף הַהוֹגֶה אֶת־הַשֵּׁם (הַמְּפֹרָשׁ) בְּאוֹתִיּוֹתָיו). This may well have be so fully within the consciousness of the Jewish people of all stripes—even Karaites—that the tradition was not to pronounce the Name when reading (even if someone did have opinions of how it should be pronounced that was not published somewhere), but instead to substitute the Name with “circumlocutions” (to use Nehemia Gordon’s term). Consequently, the Masoretes may have held to the belief that pronouncing the Name would lead to exclusion from the World to Come, which was believed throughout Judaism at that time and, to a great extent, among Jews today. It is no more superstitious to believe this than to believe that fornication or adultery might keep one from Paradise, which can be assumed to be a standard belief among Christians (though we cannot be sure in today’s political environment).
So, I’m not absolutely certain what superstition is being referenced by either De Moor or Gomarus in Weissman’s article. Perhaps they are saying that replacing the name יהוה with either אֲדֹנָי or אֱלֹהִים when reading can only be justified through superstitious reasoning. By the time of the Masorets (who were operating more than half a millennium after the composition of the Mishnah), it would not have had to do with superstition so much as simply with the reading tradition, which is what they were interested in preserving. Their entire focus was on preserving the reading tradition—how the words were spelled (orthography), how they should be pronounced (vocalization), and where the text should be corrected (with the kri-ktiv system). Even the chanting notation was part of their preservation purpose. One consistent part of that tradition was the replacement of the Tetragrammaton with words that meant “the Lord” and “God.” We certainly don’t think that modern Jews make this replacement out of superstitious thinking, and I don’t think it’s valid to attribute such issues to the Masoretes, whether they were Karaites or not.
Does the vocalization (נִקּוּד) go back to Moses?
This really feels like a distraction that I could become lost in. To answer this succinctly, I remain unconvinced that a historical Moses (מֹשֶׁה) existed or ever led people through the desert into the land of Canaan. I recently read Richard Elliott Friedman’s Exodus (SanFran, 2018) and am favorable toward his suggestion about the Levites coming from Egypt into Israel and joining the Israelites. This exodus would have been much smaller than what is represented in the text of the Bible. Taking this together with the explanation of Israelites and Judahites as Canaanite people as presented in, for example, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman’s The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (Blackstone, 2022), we are presented with a very different view of the development of the people through archaeological evidences from what we see in the Tanach.
Does this mean that the vocalizations assigned by the Masoretes are not ancient? Of course not. Look at the distinction they draw, for example, between הָרָה וְיֹלֶ֫דֶת hārā(h) vəyōléḏeṯ as in Isaiah 7:14 and Jeremiah 31:8 and הָרָה וְיֹלַדְתְּ hārā(h) vəyōlaḏt (a form with a consonant cluster) as in Genesis 16:11 and Judges 13:5 & 7. They are the same phrase with the same meaning, but the reading tradition has maintained a distinction in pronunciation. I do not hold to the idea that the Masoretes were being in any way whimsical when assigning vocalization to the text. One does not need to take the pronunciation back to Moses in order to support the fact that the Masoretes were preserving their reading tradition.
Does Yehoví mean “My Jehovah”?
As mentioned above, this is not a key aspect to Joseph Weissman’s position on the Name. There he quotes William Wogan, who died in 1758, to the effect that “[i]n strictness [אֲדֹנָי יְהוִֹה] should rather be translated My Lord, my Jehovah”, apparently so that it can match the expression “my Lord and my God” (ὁ κύριός μου καὶ ὁ θεός μου) on the lips of “Doubting Thomas” in John 20:28. Wogan is reading Thomas’s words back into Habakkuk and laying the claim that the strictly literal translation would lead us to intepret these words in light of Thomas’s confession. There is no reason in the text of Habakkuk, however, to render it in this way. First off, the Hebrew for this expression might be something like אֲדֹנָי וֵאלֹהַי. It is not normal in Hebrew to say things like “my David” or “my Israel,” using possessive suffixes on proper names. Not normal, but is it possible for יְהוִֹה to be interpreted as “my Yehovah” based on Hebrew idiom?
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| “Dog” in Posession |
Possession is a bit complicated in biblical Hebrew. For common nouns, you create possession by adding suffixes to the word. In the case of כֶּ֫לֶב “dog,” you have to go back to the historic one-syllable root *כַּלְבְּ and add ִי for “my,” ךָ for “your (ms),” and so on as in the attached image.
It might, then, be taken as sensible to say that if you add -i to Yəhōvā́(h), you would get Yəhōvī́, as if you could have Dāvīḏ become Dāvīḏî (or rather Dəvīḏî) for “my David,” as we often say in English. Biblical Hebrew does not allow this. You cannot add a suffix to a personal name or to any proper noun to create a possessive. Thus, you cannot say “my Jerusalem” or “my America” in biblical Hebrew. There is a workaround by which one may say something similar to “Jerusalem which is to me” (יְרוּשָׁלִַ֫ם אֲשֶׁר לִי), but personal suffixes are not added to proper nouns.
There are gentilic endings that are added for people groups, such as יְהוּדָה Yəhûḏā(h) becoming יְהוּדִי Yəhûḏî, referring to one from the tribe or region of Judah. You will always find such forms bearing the yod and not pointed as *יְהוּדִה. Similarly, if we were allow for this exception to the rule, we would expect the heh to be replaced, such that we might wish to see *יְהוִֹי Yəhōvî́ (but do not). Indeed, if the -i in יְהוִֹה is an endearing element, why do we not find it in any single instance not in immediate proximity to אֲדֹנָי? Does YHVH somehow lose his dearness when it is only his Name?
There is no way in biblical Hebrew to turn יהוה into Yehoví such that it means “my YHVH.”
Does Luke 4:18–19 prove what version of the Tanach Jesus read from?
When Jesus is seen preaching in a synagogue in Luke 4, it is said that he took a scroll and read what seems to be a combination of Isaiah 61:1–2 and Isaiah 58:6. By comparing the wording from the Old Greek and from the Masoretic Text, Joseph has concluded that Jesus specifically read from the Masoretic Text. He mentions this in the present argument, too, saying that we “know that Christ himself read Jehovih when he read from the scroll of Isaiah 61 in Luke 4” and concluding that “[i]f it is good enough for Christ, we can use it too.”
Such a conclusion is based on the idea that we are given the exact wording of whatever came out of Jesus’s mouth. This can easily be dismissed by simply comparing the Gospels in places where they quote Jesus and seeing that the quotes are not verbatim. We should not assume that the author of the Gospel of Luke is even claiming to quote Jesus word-for-word. After all, he was not there to hear it. He is just giving recall of the verses as he recalled them from his own reading and putting those words into the mouth of Jesus.
I don’t doubt that Jesus was reading the Hebrew text there, but I would not make any sort of argument out of that assumption. The early Church used the so-called Septuagint as their standard Bible. Of that there is no doubt. I cannot tell why this is a significant position to take, even having read through the other article on his Substack. He seems to think that if a quotation is given from the Old Greek in the mouth of Jesus, then the Masoretic Text and its authority are undermined—that if Jesus quoted from the Septuagint, then “let’s abandon our Hebrew Masoretic corruption... and embrace the Greek Septuagint.” I don’t who would make such a crazy argument.
Why is יהוה ever pointed with ḥirik?
The name for God is usually pointed as Jehovah in the Masoretic Text, however there are times when it is pointed Jehovih: typically when following Adonai, to form Adonai Jehovih.
Well, when it is in close proximity to it, whether before or after. For example, we find אֲדֹנָי יֱהוִה in Genesis 15:2 and יְהוִה אֲדֹנָי in Psalms 109:21. We are led to believe that YHVH is precious and personal only when he appears before or after אֲדֹנָי. This cannot be the case. If this were an endearnig element, as I stated above, we would expect to see it also when it appears alone, yet this NEVER happens.
So, why does יהוה sometimes take the pointing with ḥirik instead of kamats? In this case, it is just as your Hebrew teacher would tell you: The Masoretes wanted to avoid the redundancy of saying aloud what came to be אֲדֹנָי אֲדֹנָי. This was not out of any superstition, but just because it would call to mind a type of crying out to someone that would be out-of-place in regular reading. It would sound like the familiar אַבְרָהָם אַבְרָהָם (Genesis 22:11) or שְׁמוּאֵל שְׁמוּאֵל (1 Samuel 3:10) that we read in the Bible. In fact, we find יְהוָֹה יְהוָֹה twice in the Bible, at Exodus 34:6 and Psalms 104:1.
Since the combination יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהִים was already so common in the Bible (occuring 35 times, ignoring יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהֵ֫ינוּ\אֱלֹהֶ֫יךָ etc.), any time the combinations יהוה אֱלֹהִים and אֲדֹנָי יהוה appear, they are both read as אֲדֹנָי אֱלֹהִים, and both times that the combination אֱלֹהִים יהוה appears, it is read as אֱלֹהִים אֲדֹנָי. This is the entire point of using ḥirik on יְהוִֹה was to mark that its reading should be pushed from אֲדֹנָי to אֱלֹהִים. It really is as simple as that.
What of alternative spellings in Hebrew names?
Another point was raised that orthographic anomalies are common enough in Hebrew names to allow for the same spelling of a name to be pronounced two different ways, thus making exception for יהוה to be pronounced both as יְהוָֹה Yəhōvā́(h) and as יְהוִֹה Yəhōvī́(h). I wish that examples had been pulled besides the two that I see in Joseph’s article: דָּוִד Dāvīḏ vs. דָּוִיד Dāvîḏ and יְרוּשָׁלִַ֫ם Yərûšāláim vs. יְרוּשָׁלַ֫יִם Yərûšāláyim.
In the first case, it is the difference between plene (full) and defective spelling. This is not a different pronunciation but only the choice of whether to represent a long vowel with a mater lectionis or not. There are constantly differences of spelling like this all over the text. One verse may spelling “generations” as תּוֹלֵדוֹת in the long form, while the following verse may leave the matres lectionis off and write it as תֹּלֵדֹת. These are pronounced the same and have the same meaning. We are talking about spelling a word the same way and having different pronunciations for it. We might call to mind מֶ֫לֶךְ “king” vs. מָלַךְ “he reigned”, given that they are spelled the same consonantally but vocalized differently. By context, though, one should be able to tell that one is a verb and the other a noun. This is not the same as having the same exact word in the same exact context (a proper name) being pronounced two different ways with no change in consonants.
In the second case—that of Jerusalem—this is an issue of perpetual kri-ktiv. The consonantal spelling is preserved from a time when the name of the city was probably Yerushlem (as in Aramaic). It’s like preserving the gh in words like night and daughter in English, which are a reflection of the words’ Germanic roots but have no expression in speech. So, although it was spelled in the old way, as if it were Yerushlem, it was to be read as if it were the biblical-period name Yerushalayim (Yərûšāláyim). This is demonstrated by how the scribes crammed the ḥirik into the word (יְרוּשָׁלִַ֫ם) against the normal pointing convention of one vowel per consonant.
There are only two names that come to my mind when I think of them having different vocalizations in the biblical text. These are מְחֽוּיָאֵל vs. מְחִיָּיאֵל (Genesis 4:18) and פְּנִיאֵל vs. פְּנוּאֵל (Genesis 32:31–32). In each case, the vowel is changed in the consonantal text as needed. I mentioned above a theoretical form *יְהוִֹי, and I am certain that if, against all odds, the writers had wanted us to read “my YHVH,” they would have done so in this way. After all, the name is already able to be shorted to both יָהּ and יָ֫הוּ\יָהוֹ. We can certainly imagine adding a possessive suffix to this and having the vav resume its function as a consonant (which happens all the time in segolate nouns and other situations).
I would need to see more evidence of what the author meant in relation to alternative spellings or pointings in Hebrew. What I see in the text does not support Yehoví as a valid reading since (1) there is no yod to indicate possessive (heh is rarely used for third-person possessives, not first-person; e.g., אׇהֳלֹה = אׇהֳלוֹ) and (2) there is no orthographic distinction, as we should certainly expect (→ *יְהוִֹי).
Conclusion
I’ve attempted to take the argument of Joseph Weissman seriously and to approach it as a sincere attempt at explaining why we find יְהוָֹה in most instances and יְהוִֹה in some others. I’ve reconstructed the argument and attempted to respond to each part of it, but I understand that Joseph is in a completely different intellectual world from myself. He is convinced of Reformed Theology and that those who write as creators of that theological school had a special insight into matters spiritual and intellectual that lend weight to what they had to say.
This amounts, in my thinking, to an argument from authority (argumentum ad verecundiam), and since I do not take Reformed theologians seriously or think that they were within any near proximity to theological truth, I cannot and do not accept their words without skepticism and scrutiny. This is surely what puts Joseph and me at odds in terms of how we would approach this question—since the very fact that they made claims puts him in the position to first accept them with respect and then to evaluate his agreement with them. The fact that a Latin speaker wrote Iehovih domine in his translation of the Bible forces Joseph to take it seriously and try to interpret it, whereas I just think that the very rendering of יְהוִֹה as Iehovih represents an absurdity. I simply ignore everything that theologians write in deference to linguists, grammarians, and lexicographers.
As far as the arguments that are not ad verecundiam are concerned, there is not much to grapple with. If the name were intended to be read in an endearing tone, there is no reason why יְהוִֹה should not appear independent of אֲדֹנָי somewhere at some point within the text of the Hebrew Bible. There would certainly be verses that express great love for God that would inspire the reading “my YHVH” in the same way that we see אֱלֹהַי in the Bible. Indeed, we could just as readily expect to see it as “our YHVH” or “your YVHV,” as we see with אֱלֹהֵ֫ינוּ and אֱלֹהֶ֫יךָ, respectively. Why do we never find it with a yod as with all other 1cs possessive forms? We should expect to see something like *יְהוִֹי “my YHVH,” *יְהוֵֹ֫נוּ “our YHVH,” *יְהוֹוֹ “his YHVH,” etc., yet ALL of these and similar forms are nowhere to be found—and have no parallel with other personal names in all of Hebrew literature (perhaps with one exception, where we see “YHVH and his Asherah” in one inscription).
No, it is always and only found in immediate proximity with אֲדֹנָי and the only satisfying explanation is exactly what we learn from every Jew who reads from the Torah and Haftara publically—that the points on יְהוִֹה are an indication that we are to read it as אֱלֹהִים when it is either immediately before or after the name/title אֲדֹנָי. Nothing more; nothing less.
𝕳𝖊𝖇𝖗𝖊𝖜 𝕳𝖆𝖗𝖊
Jase Hare
Fonts:
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Hebrew: Shlomo or SBL BibLit
Greek: GFS Porson or Calibri
Transliteration: Calibri
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