Hebrew Voices #193 – Global Outpouring – “The Name of Our Father”

Dr. Nehemia Gordon - Bible Scholar at NehemiasWall.com

In this episode of Hebrew Voices #193 - Global Outpouring "The Name of Our Father", Nehemia is interviewed by Philip and Sharon Buss from Global Outpouring where he shares his fascinating perspective on the deep things of the Hebrew Scriptures and how he has put decades of study into finding and confirming the correct pronunciation of the Name “Yehovah.” He shares with the Busses just a few of his many discoveries, the fascinating history of how and why God’s name, Yehovah, became forbidden to say, and why it’s important for Christians and Jews to understand it’s meaning.

I look forward to reading your comments!

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Hebrew Voices #193 – Global Outpouring – “The Name of Our Father”

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: The Romans said, “If we can get people to just use God, we know that God is Zeus and Jupiter, and they don’t know that yet, but they’ll eventually get it.” But if, instead of God you say Yehovah… well, no, Yehovah is not the same as Zeus and Jupiter. So, for me it’s important that if he says, “This is My name forever. This is My mention for generation to generation”, I should take that seriously.

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Philip: God promises in Joel 2:28 to pour out His spirit on all humanity. Welcome to Global Outpouring, where we contend for that promised outpouring. We equip for that outpouring so that we may engage in that very outpouring. I’m Phillip Buss.

Sharon: And I’m Sharon Buss. Welcome to the podcast today. We have with us a very, very special guest that I’ve been longing for a long time to have with us. His name is Dr. Nehemia Gordon, and he is an author, and he is a scholar of the deep things of the manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible. And he’s going to share with us some things that we need to know about the name of our Father.

Thanks for joining us today. I know you’re going to enjoy this podcast. But before we get started, we want to encourage you; if you haven’t already done so, please go to our website, globaloutpouring.net and sign up for our email lists. You never know when something might happen, that we might say something on YouTube or on some other platform that we might get thrown off, and then you wouldn’t be able to find us. So, if you are on our mailing list, we’ll be able to stay in touch with you. And we’d love it for you to stay in touch with us, if you would give us some feedback. You can send an email to [e-mail], or you can go to that globaloutpouring.net page, and there’s a feedback form there.

And also, if there’s anybody that is really being fed by this podcast, if you would like to help us pay it forward, help us to continue to make these podcasts, there’s a donation page on our website, and we would greatly appreciate your help.

So, today we have with us Dr. Nehemia Gordon, and I need to tell you some of the backstory for this episode. If you want to understand the Bible, you have to get back to the Hebrew first. The scriptures that the writers of the New Testament referred to are the Hebrew Bible, what we call the Old Testament. Paul, writing to Timothy, said, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” He said that in 2 Timothy 3:16. So, what he’s referring to is the Hebrew Bible. There was no canon of New Testament scripture in those days.

And then he wrote in Romans chapter 3, verses 1 and 2. Verse 1 says, “What advantage has the Jew?” Or “What is the superiority of the Jew?” Depending on what translation you read. And then in verse 2 it says, “Much in every way. For first, indeed they were entrusted with the oracles of God, the very words or the utterances of God.” And the contemporary English Version says, “First of all, God’s messages were spoken to the Jews.” So, that’s why we should go back to the Jews to find out the nitty gritty of the Hebrew language.

So, I’ve been following Nehemia Gordon on YouTube for years, and I’ve read two of his books. He’s an expert in the Hebrew language because he’s Jewish and he has studied it all of his life. He comes from a long line of rabbis, so he has a great teaching gift in his DNA. He’s not a Christian. He’s a Karaite Jew, a scripturalist not following the Rabbinic additions to the Bible, but just going by the Hebrew Bible itself without adding or taking away like the Pharisees of old did, and those who follow the Rabbinic sages of a thousand years ago.

Dr. Gordon’s first impression of Jesus was that he was a Karaite, a scripturalist, somebody who’s really just paying attention to what the word says. So, as I learned from Dr. Gordon about the correct pronunciation of the name of our Father, I became passionate to share this information. And if you listen to many of our podcasts, you often hear me pronounce the name “Yehovah” instead of reading the word “LORD”, that’s written all in caps. That is really just hiding the name and saying “Lord” instead of saying what the name is; Yehovah.

So, a few months ago I was hearing in my spirit the words from the Lord’s Prayer, “Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come.” And so, this thought came to me, so I wrote it like this in my journal: “Lord, I never saw this connection before, that the sanctification of Your name, Yehovah, immediately precedes Your kingdom coming.” Let that sink in for a second. I went on to write, “I have longed to participate in shedding light on the truth of Your name.” And then I heard in my spirit… I heard the Lord say, “My child, I have longed for this as you have. Now is the time.”

So, long story short, we connected with Dr. Gordon to record this interview. So, he has put in decades of study into finding and confirming the correct pronunciation of the name of our Father, and he’s going to share a little of it in this podcast. Now, that is not to say that we feel like we have something to be proud of, because our father is looking at hearts. He’s really looking at the intents of our heart. He’s looking to find out what we’re thinking about having something right. He would rather have us mispronounce His name with a right heart than to know the proper pronunciation and be proud or have an attitude of superiority. That kind of thing is disgusting to Him. So, He really just wants us to have a pure heart, and knowing Him is part of purifying our hearts.

So, we want you to know the importance of knowing our Father’s name, because to know Him is to love Him. And if we’re supposed to be loving Him with all of our heart, our soul, our mind, our strength, how strange it would be not to know His name. If you fall in love with somebody, love at first sight kind of thing, you want to know, who is that person? What’s their name? You want to build a relationship, but you start with wanting to know their name. So, that’s how you begin a relationship. So, we’re trying to build our relationship with our Heavenly Father, and knowing His name is a part of that, because we want to know Him. And knowing His name is important. And scripturally, it’s time for His name to be known again, as I wrote in my journal. “Zephaniah 3:9 says, ‘For then I will restore to the peoples a pure language, that they may all call on the name of,’ it says the LORD, but we know it’s ‘Yehovah.’ ‘To serve Him with one accord.’”

Now, we know that the restoration of the Hebrew language that began in the 1800’s is a part of this restoration of the pure language, so it’s time for His name to start being used again. And then Psalm 105:1 and verse 3 says, “O give thanks to Yehovah. Call upon His name,” call His name! “Make known His deeds among the people. Glory in His holy name. Let the hearts of those rejoice who seek Yehovah.”

So, just wanted to give you that little introduction. Here is the interview.

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Sharon: Nehemia Gordon, we are so delighted to have you with us today on the Global Outpouring podcast. I’ve been following you for about 12 years now on YouTube and I’ve read two of your books. I was first introduced to the Hebrew Yeshua Versus the Greek Jesus when Christine Darg was interviewing you about it.

Nehemia: Okay.

Sharon: And I got the book, and I was fascinated, and then I started following you on YouTube. So, at some point I also got your book Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. So, we want to talk about the name of our Heavenly Father as we find it in the Hebrew Scriptures. Now, I’ll just say welcome. We’re glad that you are with us, and we look forward to whatever is going to roll out of this interview.

Nehemia: Well, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me on the program.

Sharon: Thank you so much for joining us. This has been a dream of mine for a long, long, long, long time. And I’ve got a gazillion questions for you, but we’re going to have to settle down and focus on this, because I feel like it’s so important. Let me just back up and say it this way. The traditional church in the English language, and probably in other languages, has been using the word LORD in all caps in the Old Testament. Well, we call it the Old Testament; we could call it the Hebrew Bible or the Tanakh. But that’s hiding the name, the true name. So, how did you become so passionate about discovering how to pronounce the name of our Father?

Nehemia: So, I’m not a Christian. My background is, I was raised as an Orthodox Jew. I’m now what’s called a Karaite Jew…

Sharon: Which means?

Nehemia: Which means strictly Old Testament. A lot of Judaism today is about… in addition to the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, what Christians call the Old Testament, there’s this whole body of teaching, which is considered just as important, in some respects more important than what’s in the Bible, in the Hebrew Bible. And I say, I’m only bound by what’s in the Hebrew Bible. All the rest is interesting history, but I don’t consider it to be the word of God. Meaning, what a rabbi said a thousand years ago or 2,200 years ago is really interesting history but not God’s word. What the prophets spoke, or God spoke through the prophets, that’s the word of God for me. Or what they heard God speaking in the Throne Room, that’s the word of God. So, I look to the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, as my scripture.

Now, in the Hebrew Bible, God’s name, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, which… and there’s, I don’t know if we’ll have time to get to the whole controversy of how to pronounce it, because many people will say, Yahweh. My understanding is that it’s Yehovah. But no one really disputes what the letters are in the Hebrew: Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, which is translated in English, as you said, as LORD. But where that comes from is from a Jewish tradition to replace, in certain contexts, the name Yehovah with Adonai, which does mean Lord.

Now, Yehovah appears, that name, 6,827 times in the most accurate manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, and “Adonai” appears about, I want to say 300 times, but I forget the exact number. So, Adonai, meaning “Lord”, is a perfectly legitimate title for God in the Hebrew. When Moses prays, he says, bi Adonai, “O my Lord.” But God’s name, when Moses says, “What is Your name?” He says, “Yehovah, this is My name forever. This is My mention from generation to generation.” They translated it as “memorial”, like He’s dead or something, but no, the Hebrew word is “this is My mention for generation to generation”.

And the fact that it appears almost 7,000 times… and this is really something that blew my mind when I realized it, when I learned this, the name Yehovah appears in the Hebrew Bible, what Christians call the Old Testament, more than all the other titles combined. More than “Lord”, more than “God”, more than “El Shaddai”, which means something like God Almighty… or not exactly, but that’s a different conversation. If you take all those titles combined, they don’t appear, I think, even half as much as His name, Yehovah.

And in ancient Jewish culture, we’re told that people would greet each other in the name. You know like how we say, “How are you doing?” and you say, “I’m doing fine,” even if you’ve had the worst day in your life? It’s just like kind of a formality. So, the formality they had in ancient Israel is they would say, “Yehovah be with you”, and the response was, “Yehovah bless you”. And you actually see Boaz, when he’s walking on the road to Bethlehem, he sees these men harvesting in the field. They’re covered in the dirt and the grime of their labor, and he says to them, “Yehovah be with you.” And they respond, “Yehovah bless you.” And then Gideon, when he meets the angel, he doesn’t realize it’s an angel. And the angel says, “Yehovah be with you.” And he thinks, “Oh, yeah, this is a greeting, you know? Okay, whatever.” And then he finds out, no, no, “Yehovah is with you, and that gives you the power to save Israel from the oppressors,” that’s what it says there. So, then he’s overcome with this… I’m going to call it a spirit, and then when that happens, he realizes, “Oh, wait. This isn’t just a glib greeting. This is actually the angel proclaiming that Yehovah is with me in this mission I’ve been sent on, and I have the power to carry it out.”

So, we’ve gone from greeting each other in the name to where, my tradition, the Jewish tradition, has made it forbidden to speak the name.

Sharon: Tell us why.

Nehemia: It’s a good question, why, and it’s complicated and there’s probably no time to get into all the reasons why, but really what we have is… I remember the term from about 20 years ago, they’d talk about “mission creep”. Mission creep is, you go to, I don’t know, Iraq, to do one thing, and you end up doing ten other things that you didn’t intend to do and spend 20 years there. That’s mission creep.

So, we have a certain amount of mission creep in Judaism, where, at first the idea was, “Well, God’s name is so holy, we should only use it when we bless people.” Well, originally, it’s greeting each other in the name. And then it’s like, “You know what? Let’s stop greeting each other in the name. We’re using it too loosely. We’ll only use it in the Temple.” And then the Temple is destroyed and they’re still using it, but it’s getting more and more narrow. And instead of Yehovah, they’ll say, “Adonai”. And now, today, if you go to Orthodox Jews, they’ll say, “Well, no, that name Adonai, that title Adonai, Lord, can only be used in a formal prayer.” And there’s a lot of formal prayers in Rabbinical Judaism. I mean, it’s not necessarily just in the synagogue; it might be you’re going to eat an apple and then you make a blessing. And it’s interesting, Christians bless the food; Jews bless God for the food. But when you make the blessing over the apple to God for giving you this apple, then you can say Adonai. But if we’re just having a conversation, or you even say to me, “What’s the blessing over the apple?” So, an Orthodox rabbi will not say the word “Adonai” unless he’s actually making formally that blessing.

So, this is the mission creep. We’ve gone from using Yehovah’s name to using a replacement, and now even the replacement has its own replacement. And so, the Orthodox Jews today will say “Hashem,” which literally just means “the name”, instead of saying Adonai even. So, we now have a replacement for a replacement. So, that’s what I call mission creep.

Sharon: Wow! Wasn’t there something about the name being forbidden by the Romans?

Nehemia: Absolutely. So, the Romans… this is mentioned by the Jewish historical sources and early rabbinical sources. There’s a whole discussion in the Talmud about this rabbi who was burned at the stake, and he was wrapped in a Torah scroll, and inside, between the rabbi and the Torah scroll, they then put in wet… I believe it was cotton, or some kind of wet fabric, to make it take longer to kill him. And the Talmud says, “Why was it such a brutal way and a torturous way?” They could have just slit his throat. Because he spoke the name the way it is written. Or it actually says, “He used to speak the name the way it is written.” He didn’t just do it once; it was a practice.

And this is in the Bar Kokhba revolt, which ends around the year… Well, the revolt ended in the year 135, but they still kept killing people for another three years. So, this is sometime in the time of the Emperor Hadrian, who died… and if there is a hell, he went there, in the year 138. So, you’re talking about the early 2nd century AD, or Jews say CE. And this rabbi used to speak the name the way it is written, and he’s getting executed by the Romans.

So, the Romans are trying to stamp out Judaism, and the problem was… so they had this vast empire, and it’s actually quite similar to what the Chinese are doing today. So, China has 56 different ethnic groups, and they want to have one coherent, unified people. So, what they’re essentially doing is, I guess what they used to call American Nation Building, and you do that by stamping out all the other cultures and making one single culture, thinking that somehow that will make it more cohesive. I don’t know that that necessarily works, but that was their goal.

That’s what the Romans were trying to do. It’s what the Greeks before them were trying to do. Not always the Romans doing it, meaning, not every emperor did that, but Hadrian in particular said, “Look, everybody brings a sacrifice to the emperor.” Bringing a sacrifice to the emperor, who was a god in their mind, is the way you show your loyalty. And if you don’t bring the sacrifice that means you’re not loyal to the state. And the state is more important in the Roman mind than any relationship you have with some supreme being who created the universe. The Roman emperor is a god himself.

And there was one special exception of who was allowed to not bring sacrifices and still be considered loyal to the state, and that was the Jews. And Hadrian comes along, and he says, “This is crazy. The Jews have revolted against us twice at this point. We’ve got to stamp out this Judaism thing and have them bring sacrifices just like everybody else.” And you have to understand their perspective, the Roman perspective. So, there was a god in Syria called Hadad, and the name of that god was so sacred in the mind of the Canaanites, particularly in what’s today Lebanon and southern Syria, that they wouldn’t even say the name Hadad. Hadad was considered an ineffable name, and they would call him, instead of his actual name, they would call him “Lord”, which in the Canaanite language is “baal”.

Sharon: Right.

Nehemia: So, the Romans come along, and they say, “You can worship any god you want, as long as you call him Zeus.” Zeus in Greek and Jupiter in… in the Eastern Roman Empire, they spoke Greek, so Zeus is the same as Jupiter in the Roman minds. “So, you can continue to worship Baal, whose name you don’t even use anyway. Just call him Zeus.” And the Canaanites were like, “Sure, if you want to call him Zeus, fine, we’ll even call him that. But we know he’s Hadad, he’s Baal. We never use his name anyway.”

And the Jews refused to do this, and they revolted. First, they revolted against the Seleucid Greeks in the year 168 BCE. And then Hadrian’s like, “Okay, the Greeks, the Seleucids, they had a nice little cute empire in the eastern Mediterranean, but I’m Hadrian! I’ve reached all the way to Hadrian’s Wall. This is the largest extent of the Roman Empire,” up to date, at least. I guess Trajan went a little bit before, but it was only for two years. He’s like, “It’s time they have to start worshipping our gods, including me.”

And so, he goes to the Jews and tells them to do it, and they say, “No, we worship Yehovah.” And the Romans, apparently… we say, “the penny dropped, the dime dropped”. They realized, “Okay, well, if we can get rid of that name.” So, the name is the problem. “You believe in a supreme being. We believe in a supreme being,” and that supreme being has lots of other beings around him in the Roman mind, right? He has many partners, right? He’s got a wife, and he’s got a daughter, and he’s got all kinds of other gods. “But if we could get you to worship this one God and not call him Yehovah, then it’s the same thing, right?” So, it’s this name that was the barrier, I guess the Romans thought.

In other words, I’m trying to understand why they did what they did. But the bottom line is, they forbade Jews from speaking the name of God. And it’s something that the Seleucid Greeks had done before; that’s the story of Hanukkah, in 168 to 165 BCE. Now, this is 132 to 138 AD. So, they’re forbidding Jews from speaking God’s name, and Jews are being killed for this. They’re being martyred for this.

Now, there were some internal reasons that the rabbis also didn’t want people speaking the name, and I don’t know if we have time to get into that.

Sharon: Would there be anything like trying to preserve life that they would forbid?

Nehemia: Oh, absolutely! So, look, at this point in history… we’re talking in the 2nd century AD, the rabbis are dominating Jewish institutions, and they’re very pragmatic. And by pragmatic, I mean they’re practical. There’s an interesting statement in the Talmud which says there’s only three things that you should be martyred for, and everything else just give in. You don’t want to give in, but if it’s a sword to your neck, or violating some biblical or rabbinical principle, you violate it, except for three things. They call that yehareg ve’al ya’avor. “The three things that one should be martyred for rather than violate.” And those three things are idolatry, sexual immorality, and murder.

So, if somebody says, “I’m going to kill you if you don’t kill that other person.” “Okay. Execute me. What can I do?” Or if they say, “Go engage in a certain act that’s forbidden, sexually.” “No. Execute me.” Or “bow down to this idol.” “Okay, I’ll be executed.” Everything else… it’s not ideal, but you’re allowed to give in on everything else.

And so, if the Romans come to them and say, “We’ll execute you if you speak the name.” “Okay, I’m not going to worship Zeus, but if you say I’m not allowed to speak the name or I’ll be killed, I can give in. I’m allowed to give in on that.” There’s actually a nuance there in the Talmudic discussion about this where they say, “But if they’re doing this in order to show other people that you’ve renounced obedience to the Torah, then you should be martyred even over the color of the shoelaces.” And that’s sort of this exaggeration. In other words, if Jews only wear white shoelaces and they say, “Okay, you’ve got to wear black shoelaces to show you’re no longer a Jew,” then you get martyred over that. I don’t know that anybody actually did that, but the point is that there are these three things that you get martyred over, and everything else you can give in on. And so, not speaking the name was something the rabbis were willing to compromise.

There are numerous examples of this in Jewish history, where people who dominated the Jews… Jews were almost always a minority; they would compromise on many principles as long as you didn’t violate these three central principles. And there were a lot of Jews who were martyred over these three principles.

There were instances where people came to the Jews and said, “You have to convert to this religion or we’ll kill you,” and they accepted martyrdom. There are stories of Jews jumping off of the walls, like in the city of York, in England. The Catholics came and said, “Okay, you’ve got to convert to Catholicism, or we’ll kill you all.” And the Jews were held up in this fortress, and they jumped off the walls with their children and died, because they said, “We have no choice. We have to accept martyrdom.”

Sharon: So, they were trying to preserve life, among other reasons, that…

Nehemia: Absolutely.

Sharon: … they came up with the idea that it’s too sacred to say.

Nehemia: Right. I mean, they already had this idea that in certain contexts it’s too sacred to say. So, mission creep was very natural here because, “Hey, I’ll get killed if I say it, and already there are certain contexts in which I won’t say it. So, let’s just extend that.”

Sharon: But that’s not what the Torah says. And it’s not what you see in…

Nehemia: No. It’s not what the Torah says, right. They had another practical problem, and the practical problem was, in the 2nd century, what they defined as magic was very widespread and was very influential. And you have to remember, they didn’t have doctors in the modern sense. So, if you had a fever or something, they’d say, “Oh, we know what to do. Let’s cut you and draw blood.” And I believe that’s what killed George Washington.

Sharon: Yes, I think so.

Nehemia: Which isn’t that long ago. He was killed by doctors who bled him. Well, they were doing that in the 2nd century, the Romans were doing that already. And that was cutting edge science and technology as far as they believed. Well, in that kind of situation people turn to magicians. And the magician will do “eye of newt” type stuff. And I mean, literally, they would do things like take dust from a grave and mix it and make a solution and have somebody drink it… the grave of a special person, not just anybody.

And then part of that is, you pronounce God’s name in healing. Now, where does prayer end and magic begin? Boy, that’s a whole discussion. But in the minds of the rabbis, this was magic. And so, in opposition to magic, they also limited the use of the name. So, there was an external reason, the Roman persecution, and an internal reason, which was, if somebody comes to me and says… if I’m a rabbi, somebody comes to me and says, “I have a compound fracture. I’m going to die in a couple hours.” And I say, “Well, there’s nothing I can do.” And I go to the magician, and the magician says, “Oh, I’m going to perform this ceremony.” And of course, when the guy dies, he says, “I didn’t perform the ceremony just right. I mispronounced one of the words, or I didn’t take the dust in the right way, or people were talking in the back.” There’s always an excuse of why it didn’t work.

And then sometimes it does work. Maybe not for a compound fracture, but sometimes people are sick and they just… call it what you will. Call it demonic forces or call it maybe naturalistic processes that people just get over disease. Every time that happens then the magician takes credit. And when it doesn’t work out, “Okay, well, it’s probably your fault because you didn’t have enough faith or something,” or somebody spoke during the ceremony or something. They had all kinds of excuses.

So, the rabbis are combating this magic, and there’s actually a really interesting story in the Talmud about what the rabbis considered to be magic, but what seems to be some sort of early Christians who were healing in the name of Yeshua. And there’s a discussion; what happens if someone’s going to die? Like, there are two choices: Get healed in the name of Yeshua or die. And the rabbis say you should die, because that’s idolatry and it’s magic.

And then they tell the story of this one rabbi who was bitten by a snake, and someone comes to heal him. And he has seconds to decide, and he accepts death. Which is really interesting. So, the rabbis were wrapping up this whole thing of magic with, what they perceive to be magic, which was Christians healing in the name of Jesus… or, I mean in Hebrew it was Yeshua, right? It wasn’t Jesus.

Sharon: Wow. So, this is very interesting. What I also want to have you explain is how you discovered the actual name of Yehovah

Nehemia: So, for that, I’m going refer people, since we’re running out of time… I have a series online called The Open Door Series, and I believe there’s an episode called “The Tower That Still Stands.” It was at this point 13 years ago, or something like that, so I don’t remember exactly what it’s called. But go to my website, nehemiaswall.com, and you can hear the whole story. I don’t think I can do it justice right now. I also have a book called Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence, where I talk about that. That was a really long time ago, and I’ve discovered a lot more things since then, so that was the tip of the iceberg.

Sharon: Well, let me ask you this.

Nehemia: Yeah, go ahead.

Sharon: So, the last I heard, you had found 19 rabbis that had written about how to pronounce the name. And is it still just 19? Or have you found some more?

Nehemia: Let’s call it 19 for now. And frankly, if we have two, I feel like we’re in really solid territory.

Sharon: Sure.

Nehemia: So, there are these medieval Rabbinical discussions where… So, let’s back up. The rabbis are under pressure externally and internally, and they say, “Not only will we not use the name outside the Temple, and not only do we not use the name in certain contexts, we won’t use it at all. We’ll completely replace it with the Lord, with Adonai.” And that then influences the Christians. When they translate their Bibles, they end up writing “Lord,” through a few intermediaries. But that’s how it ends up happening. So now, fast forward, and there’s a rabbi named Maimonides who says, “We don’t even know how to pronounce the name. We don’t know what the vowels are. We don’t know if there’s a certain letter… We know what the letters are, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, but what are the vowels? We don’t know.”

I believe Maimonides did not know, but we have other rabbis who talk about the secret of the name, and they… at least they believed, that they knew, and they are pretty consistent. Now, I say pretty consistent, because there’s one exception of a rabbi who offers an alternative pronunciation, but we have all these… there’s one rabbi in particular who, off the top of my head… I want to say was in the 13th century in Europe, and he says… maybe he was 14th century, I don’t remember off the top of my head. But he makes the statement that the name is… he actually doesn’t say it’s Yehovah, he says it has the same vowels of the word le’olam. Now, le’olam is the word that means forever.

And he says, “When God says, ‘This is My name forever,’” which is in Exodus 3:15, “He’s actually hinting at what the pronunciation is.” So, le-o-lam is eh-oh-ah, which becomes Ye-ho-vah. And then he says this was revealed to him by the man of his secret. So, there was some kind of culture in medieval Judaism where people… and this is mentioned already in the Talmud, where it says that the name is not to be taught to the common man, the pronunciation of the name, that is, but it’s to be transmitted once every seven years from rabbi to disciple. And you think it’s some kind of throwaway line in the Talmud in 500 AD, right? But here we have, almost 800, 900 years later, we have a rabbi saying, “Yes, someone revealed this to me. And the name is the same vowels as le’olam,” meaning Yehovah. And then you have other rabbis who say similar things.

Sharon: Beautiful. So, the reason why I think it’s really important for us to know the name, and there are scriptures that talk about, “The Gentiles shall know My name” and “swearing in the name”. And I just am amazed at the times that you see where it says that “LORD is My name”, and obviously it’s not. So, it’s important for us, I believe, to know because of what it means. Can you explain what it means?

Nehemia: The name Yehovah means “He that was, He that is, and He that will be”. It is… for nearly 2,000 years at least, that’s how Jews have understood it. And I think that’s correct based on there is what’s called a paronomasia, or Hebrew word pun. I don’t have time to get into that, but Exodus 3:14 God says, “eheye asher aheye,” “I will be that which I will be”, and then He says, “My name is Yehovah.” So, He says, “I will be”, and we refer to him as Yehovah, which is a combination of three forms of the Hebrew verb, hayah, hoveh, yihiyeh, “He was, He is, and He will be”.

And there’s almost no question… I think most… well, I don’t know… Scholars accept that in the Book of Revelation, when it talks about “he that was and he that is, and he that is to come”, that it’s aware of this Jewish explanation of the name and is tying into that. In other words, there’s a passage in Revelation where the angels say, “Holy, holy, holy is,” and I’m sure I’m misquoting it, “is the Lord…” I think it says the “Almighty” or something like that.

Sharon: Yes, the Lord God Almighty. Who was, and who is, and who is to come.

Nehemia: Right, exactly. So, what it’s actually taking is a phrase that appears in Isaiah 6, “Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh Yehovah tsva’ot,” “Holy, holy, holy is Yehovah of hosts”, and then it adds to that the explanation of that name. “He that was, He that is, and He that is to come.” Now, we could have a whole conversation about the difference between “He that will be” and “He that is to come”, but we probably don’t have time for that. That’s a separate thing.

But it seems pretty clear to me, at least, that this is based on this Jewish understanding of the name meaning, “He that was, He that is, and He that will be”, which is the explanation of the name. Now, names in Hebrew have explanations. Sometimes they have multiple explanations, by the way, meaning, often they do.

So, Jacob is called Ya’akov in Hebrew because he grabs on to his brother’s heel, and the word akev is heel. But then his brother Esau says, “He has deceived me twice.” And the word for deceived is ya’akveni. So, there’s two meanings. There’s the original meaning when he was named, which is that he grabbed on to his brother’s heel, and then his brother flips it on its head and says, “No, this reference is him as a deceiver.”

So, it’s very common for there to be two name explanations. The nation that came out of Esav, the brother of Jacob, is called Edom. And why is it called Edom? Well, there’s two different reasons given in Genesis, and they’re both true. One reason is that he came out all “ruddy”, meaning red, because the adom means red, and the other reason is he sold his birthright for red lentil stew. And red is adom and lentil is adom, so it’s ha’adom ha’adom, the red lentil. And so, we have two, you could even say three, reasons, because lentil and red, right? That’s very common.

So, the name Yehovah is related to “I will be that which I will be” and is related to “He was, He Is, and He is to come”.

Sharon: Thank you. And I remember that you wrote something also about when He says, “I am that I am,” that’s how it’s translated into English. And you wrote about that, “I will be that which I will be.” Can you give us that explanation about how it’s more than just once?

Nehemia: Right. Well, so, the Hebrew verb system… people have literally written entire dissertations, doctoral dissertations, on the Hebrew verbs. Speaking English today, we have past, present and future. In Biblical Hebrew it’s a bit more complicated. And that’s why when He says, “eheye asher eheye,” which we translate, “I am that I am”, many Jews will say, “No, it means I will be that which I will be”, which is based on the modern Hebrew. And in this case, by modern Hebrew, it was true also 1,900 years ago as well in Hebrew, that you shift over to these three tenses. But that’s a bit complicated.

I want to end with a passage from Joel. In the Hebrew it’s chapter 3 verse 5. I see in the King James it’s chapter 2, verse 32. It says, in the King James, “It shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered.”

Sharon: Come on.

Nehemia: And “LORD” there is in all caps. It says in the Hebrew, “Ve’haya kol asher yikra be’shem Yehovah yimalet,” “And it shall come to pass, that everyone who calls on the name of Yehovah will…” yimalet means something like “will escape.” So, there’s going to be this end times bad stuff that happens, and the people who call on the name of Yehovah will escape from that calamity. So, it seems like this is an important name that we should know.

Sharon: Beautiful. Absolutely, absolutely. And it also has to do with the fact that there are so many other names out there that people are worshipping. That, if you’re having a discussion with them and you talk about God, they’re thinking about their God when you’re thinking about your God. And that’s another reason, I think, that it’s important for us to know His name.

Nehemia: Oh, and this was the whole point of the Romans. The Romans said, “If we can get people to call on… to just use ‘God,’ we know that God is Zeus and Jupiter. And they don’t know that yet, but they’ll eventually get it.” But if instead of God you say Yehovah, well, no, Yehovah is not the same as Zeus and Jupiter. And this is something… Look, I’ve had this interesting conversation with Muslims. I’ll ask them, “Do you worship the same God that I worship?” “Oh, a hundred percent. Absolutely, unequivocally.” “Do you worship Yehovah?” “Who’s that? Never heard of him. No way.” What?

Sharon: Exactly.

Nehemia: “But in the Hebrew Bible, he’s called Yehovah 6,828 times.” Oh, well… now some Muslims will say, “Okay, yeah, okay. Sure. Yehovah is the same as Allah.” Others will say, “No, but in the original Bible it said ‘Allah’, and you Jews changed it.” That’s this idea of the corruption of Scripture, that they have this theology about that, or some do.

Sharon: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, yeah, it’s really interesting, right? If He has a name, if He’s the generic God, then He is Allah. If He has that specific name, well, some Muslims will say yes, and some will say no. It’s really interesting. I’ve heard this conversation between Christians, talking about Islam, where they’ll say, “Oh no, they don’t worship the same God as we do because they don’t believe that Jesus is part of the Godhead.” And of course, as a Jew, I say, “Well, what about us?” “Oh no, no, no, no, you guys worship the same God.”

Sharon: No, no, no!

Nehemia: Which is really interesting, because like, wait a minute. And I do think we worship the same God. So, for me, it’s important that if He says, “This is My name forever, this is My mention for generation to generation,” I should take that seriously.

Sharon: Absolutely.

Nehemia: And I should do my best to fulfill that.

Sharon: Amen!

Well, we hope that we can have you back another time to talk about lots of other things.

Nehemia: Sounds good.

Sharon: And that we’ll have more time to talk. We had some technical difficulties that shortened things up for us today. But we just want to say thank you so, so very much for being with us today and look forward to the next opportunity.

Nehemia: Thanks for having me. Shalom.

Sharon: Shalom, shalom.

Sharon: So, we’re so grateful to Dr. Nehemia Gordon for sharing this with us, and I just want to add something that he didn’t have time to add. We were having technical difficulties at the beginning of this and lost a lot of our time that we were going to have, that would have been an opportunity for him to share some of these things that I’m just going to fill in from his website. There’s an article on his website that we will put a link to in the show notes so that you can get the rest of the story. But I’m just going to give you a little smattering of what I was asking him about that he didn’t have time to explain.

And so, he says in this article, “The name Yehovah derives from the three-letter root,” and he spells it in Roman letters. You know, our letters H, Y, H, which would be Hey-Yud-Hey, which means “to be”. “We know this from Exodus 3:14 in which the Almighty explains His name as Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh. The word ehyeh is an imperfect verb from the root H-Y-H, meaning ‘to be’. In later Hebrew, the imperfect form took on the meaning of future, but in Biblical Hebrew it primarily expresses repetitive action.”

“In plain English, ehyeh means ‘I am now, and I will continue to be in the future.’ This is why Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh can be translated as ‘I am that which I am’, but also as ‘I will be that which I will be’. Both of these translations are correct, even if they are a bit inaccurate. An accurate translation would be ‘I am now and will continue to be in the future, that which I am now and will continue to be in the future.’”

“That’s quite a mouthful, and you can see why most translations prefer to dumb it down. Yehovah comes from the same root as ehyeh, the hollow root H-Y-H. Yehovah is actually a combination of three verb forms, hayah – he was, hoveh – he is, and yihyeh – he is now and will continue to be in the future. Together, hayah, hoveh, and yihyeh combine into the name Yehovah.”

And as Dr. Gordon said, you can go to his website, nehemiaswall.com, and you can order his books there. I particularly recommend The Hebrew Yeshua Versus the Greek Jesus and Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. This one, Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence, is covering so much more of the things that he talked about today, and you’ll enjoy these things. And we’ll also put a link to some of the explanations that he has on other videos that you can watch. And if you’re interested in knowing more about this, we’ve got some good resources in our show notes.

And we just want to bless you as we close. Yehovah bless you and keep you. Yehovah, make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. Yehovah, lift up His countenance upon you and give you His shalom, His peace, where there’s nothing broken and nothing missing. Amen.

Philip: Amen.

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Sharon: If you enjoyed today’s podcast, please subscribe, rate and review this podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your review helps the podcasting platform suggest this podcast to other listeners, who are also looking for a great move of the Holy Spirit. Check out our website at globaloutpouring.org to find out more information, read our blogs, connect with us and donate. You can also browse our web store for life changing anointed books. Until next time, this is Sharon Buss.

Philip: And I’m Phillip Buss.

Sharon: God bless you with His overwhelming loving presence.

You have been listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon’s Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

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