In any attempt to understand the Bible, there is no substitute for a knowledge of ancient Jewish custom and practice. For example, the term “Jehovah,” which is found in many Christian translations of the Bible, originated because of a lack of awareness of Jewish custom.
Pronunciation
In Hebrew Scripture the personal name of God is written with four Hebrew letters — yod, heh, vav, heh (YHWH)[1] — and therefore called the tetragrammaton. This name appears 6,829 times in the Hebrew Scriptures.
By linguistic comparisons with other ancient Semitic languages, scholars can be almost certain that the divine name was originally pronounced yah·WEH. The pronunciation of the first syllable of the tetragrammaton is confirmed by the abbreviated form of God's name yah (transcribed “Jah” in the King James Version), which is sometimes used in biblical poetry (Ps. 68:4). It is also confirmed by the yah that is attached as a suffix to many Hebrew names such as 'eliyah (Elijah) and 'ovadyah (Obadiah).
In the First Temple period, at least until the Babylonian Exile in 586 B.C., the divine name was regularly pronounced in daily life.[2] By the third century B.C., although the tetragrammaton was pronounced by priests in certain Temple liturgies,[3] Jews avoided its use, employing instead
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