[1] 2 Kings i. 17 seq.; see Lucian's reading (cf. Vulg. and Pesh.).
Apart from the allusion 1 Kings xxii. 49 (see 2 Chron. xx. 35), and
the narrative in 2 Kings i. (see ELIJAH), nothing is known of this
Ahaziah. Notwithstanding his very brief reign (1 Kings xxii. 51; 2
Kings iii. 1), the compiler passes the usual hostile judgment (1
Kings xxii. 52 seq.); see KINGS (BOOKS). The chronology in 1 Kings
xxii. 51 is difficult; if Lucian's text (twenty-fourth year of
Jehoshaphat) is correct, Jehoram 1 and 2 must have come to their
respective thrones at almost the same time.
[2] In vii. 6 the hostility of Hittites and Mizraim (q.v.) points to
a period _after_ 842 B.C. (See JEWS, § 10 seq.)
[3] These details are scarcely the invention of the chronicler; see
CHRONICLES, and EXPOSITOR, Aug. 1906, p. 191.
JEHOSHAPHAT (Heb. "Yahweh judges"), in the Bible, son of Asa, and king
of Judah, in the 9th century B.C. During his period close relations
subsisted between Israel and Judah; the two royal houses were connected
by marriage (see ATHALIAH; JEHORAM, 2), and undertook joint enterprise
in war and commerce. Jehoshaphat aided Ahab in the battle against
Benhadad at Ramoth-Gilead in which Ahab was slain (1 Kings xxii.; 2
Chron. xviii.; cf. the parallel incident in 2 Kings viii. 25-29), and
trading journeys to Ophir were undertaken by his fleet in conjunction no
doubt with Ahab as well as with his son Ahaziah (2 Chron. xx. 35 sqq.; 1
Kings xxii. 47 sqq.). The chronicler's account of his war against Moab,
Ammon and Edomite tribes (2 Chron. xx.), must rest ultimately upon a
tradition which is presupposed in the earlier source (1 Kings xxii. 47),
and the disaster to the ships at Ezion-Geber at the head of the Gulf of
Akaba preceded, if it was not the introduction to, the great revolt in
the days of Jehoshaphat's son Jehoram, where, again, the details in 2
Chron. xxi. must rely in the first instance upon an old source. Apart
from what is said of Jehoshaphat's legislative measures (2 Chron. xix. 4
sqq.; cf. the meaning of his name above), an account is preserved of his
alliance with Jehoram of Israel against Moab (2 Kings iii.), on which
see JEHORAM; MOAB. The "valley of Jehoshaphat" (Joel iii. 12) has been
identified by tradition (as old as Eusebius) with the valley between
Jerusalem and the mount of Olives. (S. A. C.)
JEHOVAH (YAHWEH[1]), in the Bible, the God of Israel. "Jehovah" is a
modern mispronunciation of the Hebrew name, resulting from combining the
consonants of that name, _Jhvh_, with the vowels of the word _adonay_,
"Lord," which the Jews substituted for the proper name in reading the
scriptures. In such cases of substitution the vowels of the word which
is to be read are written in the Hebrew text with the consonants of the
word which is not to be read. The consonants of the word to be
substituted are ordinarily written in the margin; but inasmuch as Adonay
was regularly read instead of the ineffable name Jhvh, it was deemed
unnecessary to note the fact at every occurrence. When Christian
scholars began to study the Old Testament in Hebrew, if they were
ignorant of this general rule or regarded the substitution as a piece of
Jewish superstition, reading what actually stood in the text, they would
inevitably pronounce the name Jehovah. It is an unprofitable inquiry who
first made this blunder; probably many fell into it independently. The
statement still commonly repeated that it originated with Petrus
Galatinus (1518) is erroneous; Jehova occurs in manuscripts at least as
early as the 14th century.
The form Jehovah was used in the 16th century by many authors, both
Catholic and Protestant, and in the 17th was zealously defended by
Fuller, Gataker, Leusden and others, against the criticisms of such
scholars as Drusius, Cappellus and the elder Buxtorf. It appeared in the
English Bible in Tyndale's translation of the Pentateuch (1530), and is
found in all English Protestant versions of the 16th century except that
of Coverdale (1535). In the Authorized Version of 1611 it occurs in
Exod. vi. 3; Ps. lxxxiii. 18; Isa. xii. 2; xxvi. 4, beside the compound
names Jehovah-jireh, Jehovah-nissi, Jehovah-shalom; elsewhere, in
accordance with the usage of the ancient versions, Jhvh is represented
by Lord (distinguished by capitals from the title "Lord," Heb.
_adonay_). In the Revised Version of 1885 Jehovah is retained in the
places in which it stood in the A. V., and is introduced also in Exod.
vi. 2, 6, 7, 8; Ps. lxviii. 20; Isa. xlix. 14; Jer. xvi. 21; Hab. iii.
19. The American committee which cooperated in the revision desired to
employ the name Jehovah wherever Jhvh occurs in the original, and
editions embodying their preferences are printed accordingly.
Several centuries before the Christian era the name Jhvh had ceased to
be commonly used by the Jews. Some of the later writers in the Old
Testament employ the appellative Elohim, God, prevailingly or
exclusively; a collection of Psalms (Ps. xlii.-lxxxiii.) was revised by
an editor who changed the Jhvh of the authors into Elohim (see e.g. xlv.
7; xlviii. 10; l. 7; li. 14); observe also the frequency of "the Most
High," "the God of Heaven," "King of Heaven," in Daniel, and of "Heaven"
in First Maccabees. The oldest Greek versions (Septuagint), from the
third century B.C., consistently use [Greek: Kyrios], "Lord," where the
Hebrew has Jhvh, corresponding to the substitution of Adonay for Jhvh in
reading the original; in books written in Greek in this period (e.g.
Wisdom, 2 and 3 Maccabees), as in the New Testament, [Greek: Kyrios]
takes the place of the name of God. Josephus, who as a priest knew the
pronunciation of the name, declares that religion forbids him to divulge
it; Philo calls it ineffable, and says that it is lawful for those only
whose ears and tongues are purified by wisdom to hear and utter it in a
holy place (that is, for priests in the Temple); and in another passage,
commenting on Lev. xxiv. 15 seq.: "If anyone, I do not say should
blaspheme against the Lord of men and gods, but should even dare to
utter his name unseasonably, let him expect the penalty of death."[2]
Various motives may have concurred to bring about the suppression of the
name. An instinctive feeling that a proper name for God implicitly
recognizes the existence of other gods may have had some influence;
reverence and the fear lest the holy name should be profaned among the
heathen were potent reasons; but probably the most cogent motive was the
desire to prevent the abuse of the name in magic. If so, the secrecy had
the opposite effect; the name of the god of the Jews was one of the
great names in magic, heathen as well as Jewish, and miraculous efficacy
was attributed to the mere utterance of it.
In the liturgy of the Temple the name was pronounced in the priestly
benediction (Num. vi. 27) after the regular daily sacrifice (in the
synagogues a substitute--probably Adonay--was employed);[3] on the Day
of Atonement the High Priest uttered the name ten times in his prayers
and benediction. In the last generations before the fall of Jerusalem,
however, it was pronounced in a low tone so that the sounds were lost in
the chant of the priests.[4]
After the destruction of the Temple (A.D. 70) the liturgical use of the
name ceased, but the tradition was perpetuated in the schools of the
rabbis.[5] It was certainly known in Babylonia in the latter part of the
4th century,[6] and not improbably much later. Nor was the knowledge
confined to these pious circles; the name continued to be employed by
healers, exorcists and magicians, and has been preserved in many places
in magical papyri. The vehemence with which the utterance of the name is
denounced in the Mishna--"He who pronounces the Name with its own
letters has no part in the world to come!"[7]--suggests that this misuse
of the name was not uncommon among Jews.
The Samaritans, who otherwise shared the scruples of the Jews about the
utterance of the name, seem to have used it in judicial oaths to the
scandal of the rabbis.[8]
The early Christian scholars, who inquired what was the true name of the
God of the Old Testament, had therefore no great difficulty in getting
the information they sought. Clement of Alexandria (d. c. 212) says that
it was pronounced [Greek: Iaoue].[9] Epiphanius (d. 404), who was born
in Palestine and spent a considerable part of his life there, gives
[Greek: Iabe] (one cod. [Greek: Iaue]).[10] Theodoret (d. c. 457),[11]
born in Antioch, writes that the Samaritans pronounced the name [Greek:
Iabe] (in another passage, [Greek: Iabai]), the Jews [Greek: Aia].[12]
The latter is probably not Jhvh but _Ehyeh_ (Exod. iii. 14), which the
Jews counted among the names of God; there is no reason whatever to
imagine that the Samaritans pronounced the name Jhvh differently from
the Jews. This direct testimony is supplemented by that of the magical
texts, in which [Greek: Iabe zebyth] (Jahveh Sebaoth), as well as
[Greek: Iaba], occurs frequently.[13] In an Ethiopic list of magical
names of Jesus, purporting to have been taught by him to his disciples,
_Yawe_ is found.[14] Finally, there is evidence from more than one
source that the modern Samaritan priests pronounce the name _Yahweh_ or
_Yahwa_.[15]
There is no reason to impugn the soundness of this substantially
consentient testimony to the pronunciation Yahweh or Jahveh, coming as
it does through several independent channels. It is confirmed by
grammatical considerations. The name Jhvh enters into the composition of
many proper names of persons in the Old Testament, either as the initial
element, in the form Jeho- or Jo- (as in Jehoram, Joram), or as the
final element, in the form _-jahu_ or _-jah_ (as in Adonijahu,
Adonijah). These various forms are perfectly regular if the divine name
was Yahweh, and, taken altogether, they cannot be explained on any other
hypothesis. Recent scholars, accordingly, with but few exceptions, are
agreed that the ancient pronunciation of the name was Yahweh (the first
h sounded at the end of the syllable).
Genebrardus seems to have been the first to suggest the pronunciation
_Iahué_,[16] but it was not until the 19th century that it became
generally accepted.
Jahveh or Yahweh is apparently an example of a common type of Hebrew
proper names which have the form of the 3rd pers. sing, of the verb.
e.g. Jabneh (name of a city), Jabin, Jamlek, Jiptah (Jephthah), &c. Most
of these really are verbs, the suppressed or implicit subject being
_'el_, "_numen_, god," or the name of a god; cf. Jabneh and Jabne-el,
Jiptah and Jiptah-el.
The ancient explanations of the name proceed from Exod. iii. 14, 15,
where "Yahweh[17] hath sent me" in v. 15 corresponds to "Ehyeh hath sent
me" in v. 14, thus seeming to connect the name Yahweh with the Hebrew
verb _hayah_, "to become, to be." The Palestinian interpreters found in
this the promise that God would be with his people (cf. v. 12) in
future oppressions as he was in the present distress, or the assertion
of his eternity, or eternal constancy; the Alexandrian translation
[Greek: 'Egô eimi ho ôn ... 'Ho ôn apestalken me pros hymas],
understands it in the more metaphysical sense of God's absolute being.
Both interpretations, "He (who) is (always the same)," and "He (who) is
(absolutely, the truly existent)," import into the name all that they
profess to find in it; the one, the religious faith in God's unchanging
fidelity to his people, the other, a philosophical conception of
absolute being which is foreign both to the meaning of the Hebrew verb
and to the force of the tense employed. Modern scholars have sometimes
found in the name the expression of the aseity[18] of God; sometimes of
his reality, in contrast to the imaginary gods of the heathen. Another
explanation, which appears first in Jewish authors of the middle ages
and has found wide acceptance in recent times, derives the name from the
causative of the verb; He (who) causes things to be, gives them being;
or calls events into existence, brings them to pass; with many
individual modifications of interpretation--creator, life-giver,
fulfiller of promises. A serious objection to this theory in every form
is that the verb _hayah_, "to be," has no causative stem in Hebrew; to
express the ideas which these scholars find in the name Yahweh the
language employs altogether different verbs.
This assumption that Yahweh is derived from the verb "to be," as seems
to be implied in Exod. iii. 14 seq., is not, however, free from
difficulty. "To be" in the Hebrew of the Old Testament is not _hawah_,
as the derivation would require, but _hayah_; and we are thus driven to
the further assumption that _hawah_ belongs to an earlier stage of the
language, or to some older speech of the forefathers of the Israelites.
This hypothesis is not intrinsically improbable--and in Aramaic, a
language closely related to Hebrew, "to be" actually is _hawa_--but it
should be noted that in adopting it we admit that, using the name Hebrew
in the historical sense, Yahweh is not a Hebrew name. And, inasmuch as
nowhere in the Old Testament, outside of Exod. iii., is there the
slightest indication that the Israelites connected the name of their God
with the idea of "being" in any sense, it may fairly be questioned
whether, if the author of Exod. iii. 14 seq., intended to give an
etymological interpretation of the name Yahweh,[19] his etymology is any
better than many other paronomastic explanations of proper names in the
Old Testament, or than, say, the connexion of the name [Greek: Apollôn]
with [Greek: apolouôn], [Greek: apolyôn] in Plato's _Cratylus_, or the
popular derivation from [Greek: apollymi].
A root _hawah_ is represented in Hebrew by the nouns _howah_ (Ezek.,
Isa. xlvii. 11) and _hawwah_ (Ps., Prov., Job) "disaster, calamity,
ruin."[20] The primary meaning is probably "sink down, fall," in which
sense--common in Arabic--the verb appears in Job xxxvii. 6 (of snow
falling to earth). A Catholic commentator of the 16th century,
Hieronymus ab Oleastro, seems to have been the first to connect the name
"Jehova" with _howah_ interpreting it _contritio, sive pernicies_
(destruction of the Egyptians and Canaanites); Daumer, adopting the same
etymology, took it in a more general sense: Yahweh, as well as Shaddai,
meant "Destroyer," and fitly expressed the nature of the terrible god
whom he identified with Moloch.
The derivation of Yahweh from _hawah_ is formally unimpeachable, and is
adopted by many recent scholars, who proceed, however, from the primary
sense of the root rather than from the specific meaning of the nouns.
The name is accordingly interpreted, He (who) falls (baetyl, [Greek:
baitylos], meteorite); or causes (rain or lightning) to fall (storm
god); or casts down (his foes, by his thunderbolts). It is obvious that
if the derivation be correct, the significance of the name, which in
itself denotes only "He falls" or "He fells," must be learned, if at
all, from early Israelitish conceptions of the nature of Yahweh rather
than from etymology.
A more fundamental question is whether the name Yahweh originated among
the Israelites or was adopted by them from some other people and
speech.[21] The biblical author of the history of the sacred
institutions (P) expressly declares that the name Yahweh was unknown to
the patriarchs (Exod. vi. 3), and the much older Israelite historian (E)
records the first revelation of the name to Moses (Exod. iii. 13-15),
apparently following a tradition according to which the Israelites had
not been worshippers of Yahweh before the time of Moses, or, as he
conceived it, had not worshipped the god of their fathers under that
name. The revelation of the name to Moses was made at a mountain sacred
to Yahweh (the mountain of God) far to the south of Palestine, in a
region where the forefathers of the Israelites had never roamed, and in
the territory of other tribes; and long after the settlement in Canaan
this region continued to be regarded as the abode of Yahweh (Judg. v. 4;
Deut. xxxiii. 2 sqq.; 1 Kings xix. 8 sqq. &c.). Moses is closely
connected with the tribes in the vicinity of the holy mountain;
according to one account, he married a daughter of the priest of Midian
(Exod. ii. 16 sqq.; iii. 1); to this mountain he led the Israelites
after their deliverance from Egypt; there his father-in-law met him, and
extolling Yahweh as "greater than all the gods," offered (in his
capacity as priest of the place?) sacrifices, at which the chief men of
the Israelites were his guests; there the religion of Yahweh was
revealed through Moses, and the Israelites pledged themselves to serve
God according to its prescriptions. It appears, therefore, that in the
tradition followed by the Israelite historian the tribes within whose
pasture lands the mountain of God stood were worshippers of Yahweh
before the time of Moses; and the surmise that the name Yahweh belongs
to their speech, rather than to that of Israel, has considerable
probability. One of these tribes was Midian, in whose land the mountain
of God lay. The Kenites also, with whom another tradition connects
Moses, seem to have been worshippers of Yahweh. It is probable that
Yahweh was at one time worshipped by various tribes south of Palestine,
and that several places in that wide territory (Horeb, Sinai, Kadesh,
&c.) were sacred to him; the oldest and most famous of these, the
mountain of God, seems to have lain in Arabia, east of the Red Sea. From
some of these peoples and at one of these holy places, a group of
Israelite tribes adopted the religion of Yahweh, the God who, by the
hand of Moses, had delivered them from Egypt.[22]
The tribes of this region probably belonged to some branch of the great
Arab stock, and the name Yahweh has, accordingly, been connected with
the Arabic _hawa_, "the void" (between heaven and earth), "the
atmosphere," or with the verb _hawa_, cognate with Heb. _hawah_, "sink,
glide down" (through space); _hawwa_ "blow" (wind). "He rides through
the air, He blows" (Wellhausen), would be a fit name for a god of wind
and storm. There is, however, no certain evidence that the Israelites in
historical times had any consciousness of the primitive significance of
the name.
The attempts to connect the name Yahweh with that of an Indo-European
deity (Jehovah-Jove, &c.), or to derive it from Egyptian or Chinese, may
be passed over. But one theory which has had considerable currency
requires notice, namely, that Yahweh, or Yahu, Yaho,[23] is the name of
a god worshipped throughout the whole, or a great part, of the area
occupied by the Western Semites. In its earlier form this opinion rested
chiefly on certain misinterpreted testimonies in Greek authors about a
god [Greek: Iaô], and was conclusively refuted by Baudissin; recent
adherents of the theory build more largely on the occurrence in various
parts of this territory of proper names of persons and places which
they explain as compounds of Yahu or Yah.[24] The explanation is in most
cases simply an assumption of the point at issue; some of the names have
been misread; others are undoubtedly the names of Jews. There remain,
however, some cases in which it is highly probable that names of
non-Israelites are really compounded with Yahweh. The most conspicuous
of these is the king of Hamath who in the inscriptions of Sargon
(722-705 B.C.) is called Yaubi'di and Ilubi'di (compare
Jehoiakim-Eliakim). Azriyau of Jaudi, also, in inscriptions of
Tiglath-Pileser (745-728 B.C.), who was formerly supposed to be Azariah
(Uzziah) of Judah, is probably a king of the country in northern Syria
known to us from the Zenjirli inscriptions as Ja'di.
Friedrich Delitzsch brought into notice three tablets, of the age of the
first dynasty of Babylon, in which he read the names of _Ya-a'-ve-ilu_,
_Ya-ve-ilu_, and _Ya-u-um-ilu_ ("Yahweh is God"), and which he regarded
as conclusive proof that Yahweh was known in Babylonia before 2000 B.C.;
he was a god of the Semitic invaders in the second wave of migration,
who were, according to Winckler and Delitzsch, of North Semitic stock
(Canaanites, in the linguistic sense).[25] We should thus have in the
tablets evidence of the worship of Yahweh among the Western Semites at a
time long before the rise of Israel. The reading of the names is,
however, extremely uncertain, not to say improbable, and the
far-reaching inferences drawn from them carry no conviction. In a tablet
attributed to the 14th century B.C. which Sellin found in the course of
his excavations at Tell Ta'annuk (the Taanach of the O.T.) a name occurs
which may be read Ahi-Yawi (equivalent to Hebrew Ahijah);[26] if the
reading be correct, this would show that Yahweh was worshipped in
Central Palestine before the Israelite conquest. The reading is,
however, only one of several possibilities. The fact that the full form
Yahweh appears, whereas in Hebrew proper names only the shorter Yahu and
Yah occur, weighs somewhat against the interpretation, as it does
against Delitzsch's reading of his tablets.
It would not be at all surprising if, in the great movements of
populations and shifting of ascendancy which lie beyond our historical
horizon, the worship of Yahweh should have been established in regions
remote from those which it occupied in historical times; but nothing
which we now know warrants the opinion that his worship was ever general
among the Western Semites.
Many attempts have been made to trace the West Semitic Yahu back to
Babylonia. Thus Delitzsch formerly derived the name from an Akkadian
god, I or Ia; or from the Semitic nominative ending, Yau;[27] but this
deity has since disappeared from the pantheon of Assyriologists. The
combination of Yah with Ea, one of the great Babylonian gods, seems to
have a peculiar fascination for amateurs, by whom it is periodically
"discovered." Scholars are now agreed that, so far as Yahu or Yah occurs
in Babylonian texts, it is as the name of a foreign god.
Assuming that Yahweh was primitively a nature god, scholars in the 19th
century discussed the question over what sphere of nature he originally
presided. According to some he was the god of consuming fire; others saw
in him the bright sky, or the heaven; still others recognized in him a
storm god, a theory with which the derivation of the name from Heb.
_hawah_ or Arab. _hawa_ well accords. The association of Yahweh with
storm and fire is frequent in the Old Testament; the thunder is the
voice of Yahweh, the lightning his arrows, the rainbow his bow. The
revelation at Sinai is amid the awe-inspiring phenomena of tempest.
Yahweh leads Israel through the desert in a pillar of cloud and fire; he
kindles Elijah's altar by lightning, and translates the prophet in a
chariot of fire. See also Judg. v. 4 seq.; Deut. xxxiii. 1; Ps. xviii.
7-15; Hab. iii. 3-6. The cherub upon which he rides when he flies on the
wings of the wind (Ps. xviii. 10) is not improbably an ancient
mythological personification of the storm cloud, the genius of tempest
(cf. Ps. civ. 3). In Ezekiel the throne of Yahweh is borne up on
Cherubim, the noise of whose wings is like thunder. Though we may
recognize in this poetical imagery the survival of ancient and, if we
please, mythical notions, we should err if we inferred that Yahweh was
originally a departmental god, presiding specifically over
meteorological phenomena, and that this conception of him persisted
among the Israelites till very late times. Rather, as the god--or the
chief god--of a region and a people, the most sublime and impressive
phenomena, the control of the mightiest forces of nature are attributed
to him. As the God of Israel Yahweh becomes its leader and champion in
war; he is a warrior, mighty in battle; but he is not a god of war in
the specific sense.
In the inquiry concerning the nature of Yahweh the name Yahweh Sebaoth
(E.V., The LORD of Hosts) has had an important place. The hosts have by
some been interpreted of the armies of Israel (see 1 Sam. xvii. 45, and
note the association of the name in the Books of Samuel, where it first
appears, with the ark, or with war); by others, of the heavenly hosts,
the stars conceived as living beings, later, perhaps, the angels as the
court of Yahweh and the instruments of his will in nature and history
(Ps. lxxxix.); or of the forces of the world in general which do his
bidding, cf. the common Greek renderings, [Greek: Kyrios tôn dynameôn]
and [Greek: K. pantokratôr], (Universal Ruler). It is likely that the
name was differently understood in different periods and circles; but in
the prophets the hosts are clearly superhuman powers. In many passages
the name seems to be only a more solemn substitute for the simple
Yahweh, and as such it has probably often been inserted by scribes.
Finally, Sebaoth came to be treated as a proper name (cf. Ps. lxxx. 5,
8, 20), and as such is very common in magical texts.
LITERATURE.--Reland, _Decas exercitationum philologicarum de vera
pronuntiatione nominis Jehova_, 1707; Reinke,
"Philologisch-historische Abhandlung über den Gottesnamen Jehova," in
_Beiträge zur Erklärung des Alten Testaments_, III. (1855); Baudissin,
"Der Ursprung des Gottesnamens [Greek: Iaô]," in _Studien zur
semitischen Religionsgeschichte_, I. (1876), 179-254; Driver, "Recent
Theories on the Origin and Nature of the Tetragrammaton," in _Studia
Biblica_, I. (1885), 1-20; Deissmann, "Griechische Transkriptionen des
Tetragrammaton," in _Bibelstudien_ (1895), 1-20; Blau, _Das
altjüdische Zauberwesen_, 1898. See also HEBREW RELIGION.
(G. F. Mo.)