Jahweh

Jahweh is a scholarly transliteration of the Tetragrammaton YHWH, the personal name of the God of Israel in the Hebrew Bible. The name consists of four Hebrew consonants and is treated as sacred in Jewish and Christian traditions. Because Hebrew originally lacked vowels in the written form, the exact pronunciation was not preserved, and later readers supplied vowel sounds from other divine names, obscuring the original vocalization.

Most scholars connect YHWH to a verb meaning “to be” or “to become,” yielding interpretations such as “I am who I am” or “he causes to be.” The precise vocalization is uncertain, and various readings have circulated since antiquity. In modern scholarship, Yahweh is commonly proposed as the most likely pronunciation, while Jehovah results from a Latinized rendering that inserted the vowels of Adonai into YHWH.

In Judaism, the divine name is not spoken aloud; readers substitute Adonai or Hashem when reading scripture. In Christian usage, renderings vary by tradition. Some English translations print “the Lord” where YHWH occurs, while others retain a form related to Yahweh or Jehovah in certain denominational works.

The Tetragrammaton appears thousands of times in the Hebrew Bible. The Masoretic Text and other manuscripts preserve the four consonants, and references to the name are attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls and related ancient sources. Modern discussions distinguish the historical, vocalized name from its later liturgical uses and translations, making Yahweh/Jahweh a central topic in studies of Hebrew language and ancient Israelite religion.