Dated to around 1400 BCE, this Egyptian hieroglyphic inscription from the temple of Amenhotep III at Soleb, in Sudan, is considered the earliest known mention of the name YHWH. The inscription reads “tꜣ šꜣsw yhwꜣ” (ta Shasu YHW(a)), which translates as “the land of the Shasu of YHWH.” According to Raphaël Givéon, the Egyptian term šȝsw likely derives from the verb šȝs (“to wander, go, stride, pass through”), evoking their nomadic lifestyle. This is a link with עִבְרִי ʿIḇrî/ivri Hebrew. This root šȝs is a literal translation of the Biblical Hebrew ʿāḇar (עָבַר, “to pass, cross over”), the basis of ʿIḇrî (עִבְרִי, “Hebrew,” meaning “the wanderer” or “one who passes”.
This inscription provides an important historical backdrop for understanding the earliest attestations of the divine name YHWH
“Jehovah or Yahweh – A Debate Older Than It Seems.”
God said to Moses: אֶהְיֶה Ehyeh … and then he said again: יְהוָה YHWH … this is My name forever … (Exodus 3:14–15).
At the burning bush, Moses asked God about His name. He received a revelation that continues to burn without being consumed like this burning bush, illuminating us time and again. After studying and meditating on this passage for many years, I thought I had exhausted it. But one question lingered: why explain a verb with another verb (HWH with HYH)? This question, along with research on other biblical names, brought unexpected light and, in my view, settled the debate on the true pronunciation of the name YHWH.
Names hold great fascination, as they tend to fossilize languages, much like toponyms that preserve traces of ancient dialects and lost meanings. All languages evolve, even if sacred scripture slowed Hebrew’s transformation — time’s erosion still took its toll. Add to this the absence of vowels in the original consonantal system, the prohibition against pronouncing the divine name, and the late emergence of Masoretic vocalization (8th–10th centuries CE), and you face immense challenges in reconstructing YHWH’s original pronunciation.
With the modern reconstruction of the pronunciation Yahweh, scholars thought they had reached the deepest, un-eroded layers of the mountain. [1]
But it is precisely here that Exodus 3:14–15 casts a discreet yet tenacious light. Indeed, even the greatest scholars can only work with what they have, not with what they lack. The oldest layers of Hebrew available for grammatical reconstruction date back, at best, to the time of Moses.
Yet the dialogue in Exodus 3:14–15 demonstrates that already in his era, YHWH was older than the common Hebrew of that time. God does not “update” this Name to fit Moses’ Hebrew—which would become the language of written revelation—but instead provides an exegesis of it in that language: אֶהְיֶה Ehyeh, while leaving intact a much more archaic traditional form: יְהוָה YHWH. And it is this divinely validated W/Y switch that sheds light for us.
How Archaic Is YHWH?
YHWH stands as the first revealed personal name, older than “Adam,” which at first functions as a collective or generic term designating humanity as a whole. Eve is included in this broad category of humankind; she too is an “Adam.” see Genesis 1:27
But in Genesis 2:4, where we read: “This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when YHWH God made the earth and the heavens.” the first personal name is revealed, plunging its roots into creation itself.
This verse grants the name YHWH the creative authority of Genesis 1, where the act of creation occurs through the jussive form of the verb HYH – yehi: “let it become / let it come to be.”
“And God said, ‘Let there be (yehi יְהִי) light.’ And there was light.” (Genesis 1:3)
This dynamic of bringing into being through the word supports the interpretation of YHWH as “He causes to become” rather than a mere “He Is.” [2]
To summarize, the essence of the name YHWH / “He causes to become” is firmly rooted in the progressive creative act of Genesis 1 and derives its very reason for being from it. Notably, for the author of Genesis 1 and 2, the original root HWH had already shifted to HYH, preserved only as a “fossil” in this name. [3]
Returning to the Jehovah/Yahweh question, Exodus 3:14–15 provides a kind of “divine seal” at the heart of the debate. God explains His name with אֶהְיֶה (ʾehyeh: “I Will Become,” formed on the Hebrew HYH), but commands Moses to say: “YHWH… this is My name forever.”
In other words, ʾehyeh serves as an explanatory foundation without ever replacing the ancient form YHWH; there is no phonetic fusion like “yahyeh → yahweh” imposed by this text, but rather an explicit ratification of the ancestral use of the Tetragrammaton.
This ʾehyeh / YHWH juxtaposition rules out the idea that the Name was “updated” into classical Hebrew, instead emphasizing the diachronic independence of the HWH form: God comments on the Name in Moses’ language but does not remodel it.
The key point is that linguistic evolution renders any phonetically certain reconstruction utterly illusory:
- The Yahweh reconstruction based on classical Hebrew.
- The ambiguity of matres lectionis (possibilities like Yihowah, Yehuah, etc.).
- Dialectal variations in shortened forms (Yeho- / Yo- / Yahu-).
- And the Masoretic vocalization יְהֹוָה (Yehowah) as a qere system.
All are centuries—even millennia—posterior to the time YHWH was first revealed.
In this perspective, Exodus 3:14–15 shifts the focus: God validates the traditional use of the Name without modernizing it, prioritizing covenantal continuity over absolute etymological or phonetic precision.
The reconstructed form “Yahweh” (a hypothetical qal imperfect or causative from HYH) remains a useful scholarly hypothesis, but it does not supplant the ancestral Tetragrammaton YHWH, which the biblical text explicitly consecrates as the Name “forever.”
Thus, the traditional pronunciation—whatever its regional or dialectal realization may have been—emerges as legitimized by the text itself and cannot be nullified by purely academic reconstructions.
Given all this, nothing entitles us to claim that the Yahweh pronunciation is superior to those preserved in other linguistic traditions.
[1]: Gesenius and the Shift to “Yahweh”
Wilhelm Gesenius (1786–1842), who himself used “Jehovah” in his writings, was the first to systematically propose the theory that the divine name was vocalized via qere perpetuum (substituting the vowels of Adonai under YHWH’s consonants), giving rise to the form “Jehovah.” No one had explicitly advanced this theory before him.
Today, contemporary scholarly consensus favors “Yahweh” as the more probable reconstruction of the original pronunciation, based on three main arguments (Notice the datation):
- Verbal form derived from HYH/HWH (“to be/become”)
YHWH is generally derived from the verb HYH/HWH (“to be/become”), with many scholars positing an older root yahw- already present in the 2nd millennium BCE (≈1500 BCE, in pre-monarchical Northwest Semitic). Modeling YHWH as a 3ms imperfect (yiqtol-type) from this root yields the expected vocalization Yahweh (“He Is / He Causes to Become”). - Theophoric shortened forms (Yahu/Yah)
Numerous biblical names use -yahu / -yah or Yeho- / Yo- as abbreviations of YHWH. Extrabiblical attestations like YHW/YH (e.g., Elephantine papyri, 5th–4th centuries BCE ≈500–300 BCE) and Greek transcriptions like Iaō from the same broad period suggest an original pronunciation of type “Yah- / Yahu-,” aligning better with Yahweh than Yehovah. - Early Greek transcriptions and Samaritan tradition
Ancient Greek renderings (Iaō, Iaoue, Iabe) attested from ≈3rd century BCE to early CE (≈300 BCE–200 CE), along with preserved Samaritan pronunciation reports from late antiquity and the Middle Ages, reasonably align with a Ya-we / Yah-weh pattern. Scholars view these as additional (though non-conclusive) support for the full Yahweh reconstruction.
[2]: Absence of Vowels in the Tetragrammaton and it’s meaning
The lack of vowels in the Tetragrammaton prevents definitively determining if YHWH is a simple form of HYH/HWH (“to be/become”) or a causative one (Qal or hiphil). In other words, the Name could evoke either “he becomes / he will be” or “he causes to become / he causes to be.”
The issue is thus: Does the Name emphasize only God’s existence (“he is / he will be”)? Or does it highlight His power to bring things into existence (“he makes become”), as suggested by a causative reading of HYH/HWH? In this context, the nuance “become” better conveys, in English, the dynamic aspect of the Hebrew imperfect, which expresses less a static state than an ongoing process or action unfolding over time.
[3]: Antiquity of the HWH / HYH Shift
The antiquity of the HWH / HYH shift is evident in Northwest Semitic cognates of the Hebrew verb hayah (“to be”):
- Ugaritic (1400–1200 BCE): 𐎊𐎈𐎊 yhy imperfect “he/she will be / live” (KTU 1.19 II:44; Keret epic). Root yahya, direct parallel to Hebrew yiḥyeh.
- Phoenician/Punic (1000–500 BCE): 𐤉𐤄𐤉 yhy imperfect “he/she will live / be” (Carthage inscriptions).
- Aramaic (pre-imperial, 900–700 BCE): hyh perfect “has been / existed” (Tell Fekheriye bilingual: hyh mlk = “he was king”); yhy imperfect “he/she will be” (early dialects).
Consistency of the Fossilized W/Y Switch in Proper Names
Biblical Hebrew features several etymological wordplays exploiting a switch between yod (י) and waw (ו) in related roots:
- Ḥawwāh – ḥyh / ḥay
Name: חַוָּה ḥawwāh (Eve) Gen 3:20.
Semantic root: חיה ḥyh / חַי ḥay “to live/living.”
The text plays on waw in ḥaw-wāh shifting to yod in ḥay / ḥayah, showing a W → Y switch around the “life” concept. - Moab – מוֹאָב / מֵאָב
Form: מֹאָב moʾav.
Explanation: מִאָב mi-ʾav (“from [my] father”) Gen 19:37 LXX.
Base mo-ʾav linked to mi-ʾav, with vocalic alternation and neutralized semivowel (w ~ y) in the mo/ma- syllable. - Wine – wyn (Ebla) → יָוָן / יַיִן
Reconstructed Eblaite root: wyn / wjn (with w).
Hebrew:- יָוָן yāwān (יוֹן / Yāvān, “Ionians/Greeks”) Gen 10:2: waw.
- יַיִן yayin (“wine”): yod doubled.
Proposed links play on an ancient glide between w and y, from wyn / wjn (Ebla, w) to yāwān (y-w-n) and yayin (y-y-n), redistributing semivowels w/y across Semitic and Aegean spheres.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetragrammaton
- https://www.biblicaltheology.com/Research/ManettiR01.pdf
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah
- https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/kb1mp8/how_did_scholars_identify_or_reconstruct_the/
- https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langues_s%C3%A9mitiques_du_Nord-Ouest
- https://www.reddit.com/r/hebrew/comments/1hh65nz/biblical_hebrew_does_anyone_have_a_source_for/
- https://www.tbsbibles.org/page/Jehovah
- https://tovrose.substack.com/p/examining-the-name-of-god-controversy
- https://www.ccel.org/ccel/herbermann/cathen08.html?term=Jehovah+%28Yahweh%29
- https://messaje.bible/node/1218
- https://www.facebook.com/groups/xjwrg3/posts/10161757164905835/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/nd08sb/christian_apologetic_website_claims_that_the/
- http://lespascals.org/docs/LesLanguesSemitiques.pdf
- https://www.theonenessofgod.org/the-pronunciation-history-of-yahweh-to-jehovah/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/hebrew/comments/q310aw/found_this_chart_explaining_the_meanings_of_the/
