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NASB | Psalm 83:18 That they may know that You alone, whose name is the LORD, Are the Most High over all the earth. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Psalm 83:18 That they may know that You alone, whose name is the LORD, Are the Most High over all the earth. |
Bible Question: I need to know the different names used in the bible for God and where to find them? |
Bible Answer: Hi and welcome to this forum. A popular question here but an interesting one nonetheless. Psalm 83:18 tells us that God's name is Jehovah. The Bible uses various "titles" for the Almighty God Jehovah but his one personal name remains the most often occurred word in the original Bible. History tells us that Judaism teaches that while God’s name exists in written form, it is too holy to be pronounced. The result has been that, over the last 2,000 years, the correct pronunciation has been lost. Yet, that has not always been the Jewish position. About 3,500 years ago, God spoke to Moses, saying: “Thus shall you speak to the Israelites: The LORD Hebrew: YHWH, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you: This shall be My name forever, this My appellation for all eternity.” (Exodus 3:15; Psalm 135:13) What was that name and appellation? The footnote to the Tanakh states: “The name YHWH (traditionally read Adonai “the LORD”) is here associated with the root hayah ‘to be.’” Thus, we have here the holy name of God, the Tetragrammaton, the four Hebrew consonants YHWH (Yahweh) that in their Latinized form have come to be known over the centuries in English as JEHOVAH. Throughout history, the Jews have always placed great importance on God’s personal name, though emphasis on usage has changed drastically from ancient times. As Dr. A. Cohen states in Everyman’s Talmud: “Special reverence [was] attached to ‘the distinctive Name’ (Shem Hamephorash) of the Deity which He had revealed to the people of Israel, viz. the tetragrammaton, JHVH.” The divine name was revered because it represented and characterized the very person of God. After all, it was God himself who announced his name and told his worshipers to use it. This is emphasized by the appearance of the name in the Hebrew Bible 6,828 times. Devout Jews, however, feel it is disrespectful to pronounce God’s personal name. Concerning the ancient rabbinic (not Biblical) injunction against pronouncing the name, A. Marmorstein, a rabbi, wrote in his book The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God: “There was a time when this prohibition [of the use of the divine name] was entirely unknown among the Jews . . . Neither in Egypt, nor in Babylonia, did the Jews know or keep a law prohibiting the use of God’s name, the Tetragrammaton, in ordinary conversation or greetings. Yet, from the third century B.C.E. till the third century A.C.E. such a prohibition existed and was partly observed.” |