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Why the Legacy Standard Bible Translates "Yahweh" in the Old Testament


Whisper Transcript | Transcript Only Page

00:00:00.000 | (silence)
00:00:02.160 | - Hi, I'm Abner Chow, one of the translators
00:00:09.800 | of the Legacy Standard Bible.
00:00:11.880 | And I have with me here today, Dr. Joe Zakevich.
00:00:16.540 | Zakevich, Zakevich?
00:00:18.960 | 'Cause there's a lot of different ways to say it, huh Joe?
00:00:20.560 | - There are a variety of ways to say it.
00:00:22.980 | We say it Zakevich.
00:00:24.320 | Some people in our family say Zakevich, my mom,
00:00:28.400 | but everybody else says Zakevich for the most part.
00:00:30.160 | - But it's all the same name.
00:00:31.160 | - It's the same name, it's the same last name.
00:00:32.640 | - And I guess that's pretty good, a way to illustrate
00:00:35.360 | what we're gonna be talking about right now,
00:00:36.840 | which is the issue of Yahweh.
00:00:39.740 | And that is a major change in the Legacy Standard Bible.
00:00:43.880 | People have a lot of questions about it,
00:00:45.660 | and they're very understandable questions.
00:00:47.800 | And they usually fall into kind of three categories.
00:00:51.880 | One is, should we even translate
00:00:56.260 | the Tetragrammaton as Yahweh?
00:00:57.560 | Is that okay?
00:00:59.200 | Another question is, okay, if that is permissible,
00:01:02.360 | how should we say it?
00:01:03.560 | And how do we know that's the right way?
00:01:05.520 | And the final and third question people have is,
00:01:07.880 | well, so what?
00:01:08.900 | Well, what's the big deal?
00:01:09.960 | Why does this matter?
00:01:11.200 | What's the purpose behind it?
00:01:13.080 | So kind of in getting this conversation started,
00:01:15.520 | let me begin by kind of tackling that first question
00:01:18.720 | of should we even translate the Tetragrammaton as Yahweh?
00:01:23.720 | Is that permissible?
00:01:25.480 | And sometimes people ask the question kind of like this.
00:01:27.420 | They say, "Well, Paul in the New Testament,
00:01:29.600 | "he translated it as Lord, Kurios.
00:01:32.320 | "And if it was good enough for the Apostle Paul--"
00:01:34.360 | - It's good enough for me.
00:01:35.200 | - It's good enough for me, exactly.
00:01:36.960 | And we understand that argument.
00:01:38.440 | And I think one thing we really want to establish
00:01:41.040 | is that there is nothing wrong at all
00:01:44.880 | of translating the Tetragrammaton as Lord.
00:01:48.520 | There's nothing wrong with that.
00:01:49.560 | To say otherwise would be to condemn the New Testament,
00:01:52.420 | and we definitely don't want to do that.
00:01:55.040 | - Right, the New Testament is inspired.
00:01:56.640 | - That's right, so it's inerrant.
00:01:58.120 | - Those translations are inspired,
00:01:59.800 | and therefore they are accurate.
00:02:00.920 | - Absolutely, and so we don't want to say that.
00:02:03.920 | But there's a difference between saying
00:02:05.600 | something is without error, it's not wrong,
00:02:08.060 | and it's mandated across everything.
00:02:11.600 | And that's where we need to make some observations.
00:02:13.960 | Like in the New Testament itself, Revelation 19,
00:02:17.440 | three times there is hallelujah.
00:02:20.760 | And there we hear the name Yahweh, hallelujah.
00:02:25.080 | We hear it repeated three times.
00:02:26.400 | So the New Testament doesn't bar
00:02:28.480 | the use of the name of God as Yahweh.
00:02:31.960 | And on top of that, the early church
00:02:34.840 | didn't think of it that way either.
00:02:36.280 | We have Theodorette or Clement of Alexandria and others
00:02:39.840 | who talk about the use of the name Yahweh
00:02:43.360 | in amongst their people.
00:02:44.900 | And we even have copies of Greek translations
00:02:47.820 | of the Old Testament, both Jewish and Christian,
00:02:50.160 | that preserve the name Yahweh
00:02:52.480 | and reflect that in those documents.
00:02:56.000 | And so all that to say is that the idea in history
00:02:59.840 | was never that this is the only way to translate,
00:03:02.600 | Lord is the only way to translate the Tetragrammaton.
00:03:05.520 | Now people in history, they can be wrong, we get that.
00:03:08.600 | But this shows us that there might be another possibility.
00:03:12.080 | And we can look at this from the angle
00:03:14.220 | of kind of consistency and translation philosophy.
00:03:17.320 | When we have something in the New Testament,
00:03:20.160 | like a change of name, a different enunciation of it,
00:03:23.240 | we don't read that back onto the Old Testament.
00:03:25.680 | We don't change, for example, Joshua to Jesus
00:03:28.920 | because that's how it's pronounced or said
00:03:31.320 | in the New Testament.
00:03:32.200 | And we don't change Messiah or anointed one
00:03:34.960 | in the Old Testament to Christ
00:03:36.360 | because that's how the New Testament words it.
00:03:38.240 | We translate the Old Testament as the Old Testament.
00:03:41.080 | We translate the New Testament as the New Testament.
00:03:43.800 | And likewise, when New Testament quotes the Old Testament,
00:03:47.040 | sometimes they change the wording slightly of the quote
00:03:50.220 | from the Old Testament.
00:03:51.060 | - They're making an interpretation
00:03:52.240 | and they're trying to focus on something within that quote.
00:03:55.160 | - That's right.
00:03:56.000 | - So they make that adjustment.
00:03:56.880 | - Right, and that brings out a nuance,
00:03:58.640 | that brings out a detail of the Old Testament text
00:04:01.080 | that was always there.
00:04:02.480 | And that's why it's so important to leave the Old Testament
00:04:05.680 | as the Old Testament and the New Testament
00:04:07.360 | as the New Testament so we can compare and contrast
00:04:10.120 | and see that nuance brought out.
00:04:12.380 | And I would say that I think that's what's going on
00:04:14.840 | with Yahweh, that when we see it in the Old Testament
00:04:17.940 | and then we see this deliberate shift in the New Testament
00:04:20.940 | to say, Lord, there's a purpose behind that,
00:04:23.960 | there's a theological reason behind that,
00:04:26.340 | there's a theological significance to that,
00:04:28.620 | and it makes a very profound and repeated point.
00:04:31.600 | And if people are wondering what the point is,
00:04:34.000 | I would just say, well, that's like question three.
00:04:35.920 | - Right, it's coming.
00:04:36.840 | - It's coming, yeah.
00:04:37.720 | But for now, what we would say is there's a lot of benefit
00:04:41.720 | to even translating the Old Testament as the Old Testament
00:04:45.080 | and the New Testament as the New Testament.
00:04:46.840 | It is not wrong, it's permissible,
00:04:49.900 | and there are some even benefits.
00:04:52.160 | 'Cause it puts us, and this gets back to the window concept,
00:04:55.080 | into the shoes and the feet and the eyes
00:05:00.000 | of the original biblical readers
00:05:02.200 | as they would encounter these issues,
00:05:03.860 | and that gives opportunity for theology.
00:05:06.520 | So having said that, okay, maybe it is permissible,
00:05:10.560 | maybe it's okay, we're allowed to do it,
00:05:13.240 | it could even be beneficial, how then should we say it?
00:05:16.480 | Well, Joe, walk us through this.
00:05:18.040 | - Right, that's the big question.
00:05:19.160 | So understanding the task, I think, before is that
00:05:21.840 | as translators, it is one of our tasks
00:05:25.300 | to make sure that we preserve the Old Testament
00:05:27.080 | the way it is and then preserve the New Testament
00:05:28.640 | the way it is, then we face the question,
00:05:30.840 | well, then how do we read it, how do we pronounce it?
00:05:33.480 | We need to start with the Bible itself,
00:05:35.440 | where it appears and where it's introduced,
00:05:37.000 | and that's in Exodus chapter three, verses 14 and 15,
00:05:40.760 | and then it continues on into the Old Testament
00:05:43.240 | in later passages.
00:05:44.140 | But when God introduces himself,
00:05:45.680 | Moses says to him, if the Israelites do not believe me,
00:05:49.800 | and they will ask me, who has sent you, what is his name?
00:05:53.480 | Then what should I say to the people?
00:05:55.240 | And God introduces himself by saying,
00:05:57.240 | first he gives a clause, he says, I am who I am,
00:06:00.880 | or you can translate it as, I will be whoever I will be,
00:06:05.400 | and then in verse 15, this is in verse 14,
00:06:07.840 | but then in verse 15, he uses the name
00:06:10.340 | that we're translating as Yahweh.
00:06:12.800 | And the starting point is that verse,
00:06:15.620 | and what those two verses make clear for us
00:06:18.200 | is that we're dealing with the verb, the to be verb,
00:06:21.800 | or he is, he was, he will be verb,
00:06:25.280 | and that's pretty much decided by the text itself.
00:06:28.680 | So we know that the name of God, Yahweh,
00:06:31.040 | is connected to that verb.
00:06:33.360 | - Say the verb in Hebrew for us.
00:06:35.000 | - In Hebrew, the verb would be haya.
00:06:37.240 | - Yeah, and you can even hear the connection
00:06:39.240 | between those two there.
00:06:40.240 | - That's right, yeah, haya or Yahweh,
00:06:42.680 | you can hear that it's the same root verb.
00:06:46.000 | Now, so that's the starting point,
00:06:48.240 | and we cling to that as one of our anchors,
00:06:51.420 | but then we go on and we ask, okay,
00:06:52.960 | so how do we know that Yahweh
00:06:54.480 | is the right way of pronouncing it?
00:06:56.120 | And scholars have done lots of study on this over the years,
00:06:59.520 | and the details of this word,
00:07:03.000 | the way that the letters appear,
00:07:04.560 | and in Hebrew, the letters would be yod-hay-vav-hay
00:07:08.160 | for the name Yahweh, and then in English,
00:07:09.920 | we sometimes say it as y-h-w-h, or it's written that way,
00:07:14.720 | and it's very important where these letters appear
00:07:19.200 | and which letters appear.
00:07:20.880 | And so as scholars make the linguistic
00:07:23.560 | and the grammatical study,
00:07:25.040 | they see that the first letter is Y.
00:07:27.320 | Well, that tells us that this is a verbal form
00:07:29.760 | which is identified by scholars and in grammar as yig-tol,
00:07:33.200 | it's a third person, and it's very important
00:07:35.320 | for letting us know how to start pronouncing that word,
00:07:38.000 | as yah, and then the word itself ends with a H,
00:07:42.560 | in Hebrew, hay, and that's a typical ending for a verb
00:07:46.320 | in a specific category, which is called a three-hay
00:07:48.760 | or a lamed-hay verb, and it ends as a eh sound.
00:07:53.080 | And so from that type of a study,
00:07:55.440 | the scholars have concluded that the most accurate way
00:07:57.880 | would be to render that word,
00:07:59.440 | to read that word, the name of God, as Yahweh.
00:08:03.000 | And even in the 19th century,
00:08:04.640 | Gesenius, a very well-known and renowned scholar,
00:08:07.280 | did this study, and he confirmed
00:08:10.000 | that this would be the most accurate way
00:08:12.760 | of pronouncing the word.
00:08:14.120 | But you also mentioned a number of other evidences
00:08:17.840 | in history, so some of the Christian resources
00:08:20.600 | and some of the other texts, they attempt
00:08:23.640 | or they record the way that they would have heard
00:08:25.800 | and the way they would have pronounced it as well,
00:08:27.320 | and you mentioned Theodoret and a few other guys,
00:08:30.600 | Origen, Hosea, Yahweh, or Clementine of Alexandria.
00:08:35.600 | So we have those evidences that point to the fact
00:08:39.480 | that Yahweh would be the most accurate way
00:08:41.800 | of pronouncing it.
00:08:42.880 | - Yeah, and I think it's people who have done
00:08:45.320 | their homework, both philologically, linguistically,
00:08:48.240 | attested in history, that gives anchor to all of this,
00:08:51.920 | but sometimes people wonder, well, what about Jehovah?
00:08:55.080 | I mean, we sing the song, or at least,
00:08:57.120 | they used to sing the song, Jehovah-Jireh,
00:08:59.280 | and we hear that kind of phrase.
00:09:01.400 | Tell us about that, too.
00:09:03.120 | - Yeah, Jehovah, somebody actually mentioned
00:09:04.720 | to me this past week, reminded me that Jehovah
00:09:07.160 | appears in, I guess, the old version
00:09:09.120 | of the King James Version, in Exodus 6, I believe.
00:09:12.360 | - And that even just shows that what we're doing
00:09:15.480 | in the Legacy Standard Bible isn't necessarily
00:09:18.760 | revolutionary in the sense of doing something
00:09:21.840 | totally different that's never been done before.
00:09:24.400 | In fact, sometimes we're just going back to our roots
00:09:26.720 | in a sense of the King James.
00:09:28.640 | - Right, yeah, and we're refining it,
00:09:30.280 | and we're trying to make sure that it's accurate
00:09:32.080 | both historically and grammatically and true to the text.
00:09:35.960 | - So, with regard to Jehovah, we do believe
00:09:40.000 | that it's an incorrect way of pronouncing it,
00:09:42.440 | but what that is, is it's a misreading
00:09:46.640 | of the vowels that appear on the letters Y-H-W-H,
00:09:51.640 | on the word Yahweh.
00:09:54.120 | It's simply a misreading of it, and what happens
00:09:57.160 | is that on the word Yahweh, there are two sets
00:10:00.240 | of vowels in the Bible, and those vowels tell us,
00:10:04.640 | or they tell the readers how to pronounce the word Yahweh,
00:10:08.400 | but those vowels do not belong to the word Yahweh.
00:10:11.880 | They are actually vowels from a different title.
00:10:16.280 | One is from the word Adonai, which means Lord,
00:10:19.360 | and the other one is from the word Elohim, which means God.
00:10:22.800 | And so, the intent here was that when somebody
00:10:25.960 | would be reading the Bible, and they would get
00:10:28.400 | to the holy name, they believed it to be too holy
00:10:32.080 | to be pronounced, and so they put those vowels
00:10:34.920 | on that word in order to indicate to the reader,
00:10:38.120 | say Adonai instead of Yahweh.
00:10:41.000 | Say Elohim instead of Yahweh,
00:10:43.400 | so that you don't say the holy name.
00:10:45.920 | Well, some of the translators, whether it was by accident
00:10:49.360 | or whether they thought that this was accurate,
00:10:51.880 | they came to the word in the Hebrew text,
00:10:55.120 | and instead of saying those proper words,
00:10:57.920 | Adonai or Elohim, Lord or God, they said,
00:11:00.680 | we're just going to read those vowels with the word Yahweh.
00:11:04.760 | And when they did that,
00:11:05.840 | they came up with the rendering Jehovah.
00:11:08.600 | Now, the problem with that is that those vowels
00:11:10.560 | do not belong to the word Yahweh.
00:11:12.400 | - Yeah, and there's even a conflict
00:11:14.240 | because there's two sets of vowels.
00:11:15.680 | So, even Jehovah doesn't represent the other set
00:11:19.600 | of one of the two sets of the vowels
00:11:21.640 | that are actually present in the Hebrew manuscripts.
00:11:23.920 | - That's exactly right.
00:11:24.760 | It would be something like Jehovah would be one option,
00:11:27.560 | and Jehovah would be another option,
00:11:30.280 | and the vowels are entirely different.
00:11:32.120 | So, that creates a conflict,
00:11:33.520 | but that shows that these vowels do not belong
00:11:35.960 | to the word Yahweh, to the name Yahweh.
00:11:37.960 | And for that reason,
00:11:38.800 | we believe that it's an incorrect reading
00:11:41.040 | of the text as well.
00:11:42.160 | - That is so helpful.
00:11:43.160 | Thanks for taking the time to explain that and so clearly.
00:11:46.120 | And I think the only thing I would add
00:11:47.920 | is just like with the name, Zakevich, Zakavich, and the like,
00:11:52.400 | even from the Old Testament to the New Testament,
00:11:54.840 | we see that different names are enunciated different ways.
00:11:58.880 | And the New Testament isn't bothered by that.
00:12:00.920 | The scriptures are not bothered by that.
00:12:02.800 | And so, we recognize that in language,
00:12:05.080 | sometimes you have to adjust the enunciation
00:12:07.600 | given the limitations of an alphabet.
00:12:09.880 | And so, the Lord knows, Yahweh knows,
00:12:12.440 | our heart to worship Him and say His name,
00:12:15.000 | but the reason He gave us His name
00:12:17.360 | is so that we would intimately commune with Him personally
00:12:20.560 | and distinguish Him from everyone else.
00:12:23.200 | And in light of that,
00:12:24.600 | I think this brings us to our third question.
00:12:26.320 | We've said, should we say this name?
00:12:28.600 | Should we use this name in scripture?
00:12:30.480 | And we saw from the New Testament itself, yes.
00:12:32.760 | And the Old Testament, yes.
00:12:34.360 | And even in church history, yes.
00:12:35.960 | And even in English tradition, yes, it's there,
00:12:39.280 | Tyndale and early King James and everything.
00:12:41.880 | And so, there is this buildup
00:12:43.280 | of just recovering what was in the past.
00:12:45.600 | And on top of that, we said, hey, we can have confidence
00:12:48.040 | from scholarship and from history
00:12:50.840 | that this is the right way to say it.
00:12:52.560 | But now people are saying, well, so what?
00:12:55.120 | What does that help us with?
00:12:56.640 | Joe, help us to think through that too.
00:12:58.360 | - Yeah, well, I think it makes a great deal of difference.
00:13:00.320 | And I think it really refines
00:13:01.920 | and it deepens our reading of the scriptures
00:13:04.080 | and our study of the scriptures.
00:13:05.480 | And again, we wanna start where it starts.
00:13:07.680 | When God said to Moses, this is my name, He said His name.
00:13:12.680 | And if we say Lord, we're not saying Yahweh's name,
00:13:17.040 | God's name, we're saying a title, Lord.
00:13:19.720 | And so, when we have Yahweh in the text,
00:13:22.640 | we actually read and we hear His name.
00:13:27.240 | And that spreads throughout the scriptures.
00:13:30.040 | I mean, the word Yahweh appears some 6,800 times
00:13:33.120 | or something like this.
00:13:34.280 | Right, and so you go from reading Lord
00:13:37.080 | to reading Yahweh 6,800 times.
00:13:39.720 | That really changes the way that you read the Bible.
00:13:42.680 | Now, there are various other benefits to doing this.
00:13:46.240 | You see the name Yahweh and you see the personal nature
00:13:51.240 | of God and the way that He interacts with His people.
00:13:54.000 | And the context in which He introduces His name
00:13:56.000 | is the covenant that He was about to make with His people.
00:13:58.360 | And so, every time you see Yahweh,
00:14:00.200 | you're thinking about the covenant
00:14:02.080 | that God made with His people.
00:14:04.440 | And then you stretch that throughout the scriptures
00:14:06.280 | and you get to the end of the Old Testament,
00:14:09.280 | you get to Zechariah, chapter 13, verse nine.
00:14:12.960 | It says that the people will one day
00:14:15.800 | call on the name of God
00:14:18.400 | and they will call on His name, Yahweh.
00:14:21.840 | And He will say, this is my people.
00:14:24.760 | And they will say, Yahweh is my God.
00:14:28.520 | Right, so it makes the relationship between Israel and God
00:14:32.200 | a much more personal relationship.
00:14:34.160 | And for us, it makes the experience much more readable.
00:14:36.800 | - Yeah, and even with that phrase, I love it in Zechariah.
00:14:39.880 | Yahweh is my God.
00:14:41.960 | That distinguishes God, the one true God,
00:14:45.320 | and it defines Him as this is the God of the Bible.
00:14:47.840 | Not just a generic God that you could stick with Buddha
00:14:50.840 | or Allah or other kind of gods that our society has
00:14:54.760 | or other religions have, but this is Yahweh.
00:14:57.160 | This is the God of the Bible.
00:14:58.480 | This is the God of Israel.
00:14:59.920 | This is the New Testament's God.
00:15:02.440 | This is that God.
00:15:03.480 | And we're defining and distinguishing Him.
00:15:05.480 | And it also distinguishes other titles for God.
00:15:09.400 | We were talking about this earlier.
00:15:10.760 | Talk to us about that.
00:15:11.600 | - Yeah, that's really interesting.
00:15:12.920 | And that's really helpful.
00:15:14.280 | So typically, the translation would have been Lord
00:15:17.800 | instead of Yahweh.
00:15:18.840 | But when you bring in Yahweh into the text,
00:15:21.160 | you have a clear distinction between when Yahweh is used
00:15:24.640 | and when Lord is used.
00:15:25.880 | And that really helps us understand the Bible,
00:15:28.360 | the reading of the Bible immediately.
00:15:29.840 | I mean, you think about Psalm 110.
00:15:32.160 | The Lord says to my Lord.
00:15:34.160 | That's how I memorized it.
00:15:35.600 | But now my question is, well, is it Lord or is it Yahweh?
00:15:38.560 | Is it both Yahweh's or is it both Lord's, the title Lord?
00:15:42.400 | Well, in the Hebrew, it is Yahweh says to my Lord.
00:15:46.560 | And once you introduce Yahweh into the text,
00:15:48.560 | it becomes abundantly clear, I should say,
00:15:51.680 | that Yahweh is speaking to my Lord,
00:15:55.080 | who happens to be the Messiah, the master of David.
00:15:58.760 | And in that statement, you begin to realize that,
00:16:01.560 | okay, so what is the function
00:16:02.760 | or what is the significance of Lord?
00:16:06.480 | That He's the master of David.
00:16:08.360 | And then what is the function and the meaning of Yahweh?
00:16:11.160 | Well, that's His personal and His covenant name.
00:16:14.320 | And then you can take another example.
00:16:17.000 | Genesis chapter 19, verse 24, I believe it is.
00:16:21.520 | And there, this is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah,
00:16:23.560 | and God is about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.
00:16:26.000 | And you get to the point
00:16:26.920 | where God is destroying Sodom and Gomorrah.
00:16:29.560 | And then it says in verse 24
00:16:32.320 | that the Lord rained fire and brimstone
00:16:37.200 | from the Lord in heaven.
00:16:39.320 | Well, the question is, okay, once again,
00:16:40.680 | is it Lord, is it two Lords, is it two Yahweh's?
00:16:44.200 | Which one is it?
00:16:45.440 | And in this case, it actually happens
00:16:46.800 | to be two mentions of Yahweh, two references to Yahweh.
00:16:49.480 | So it says, "Yahweh rained fire and brimstone from Yahweh."
00:16:52.920 | And this is theologically significant.
00:16:54.480 | And it immediately jumps off the page
00:16:56.480 | because you're thinking two references to Yahweh,
00:16:58.680 | what does that mean?
00:17:00.040 | Right, and then this has implications
00:17:01.280 | for the two persons of the Godhead,
00:17:03.400 | which has implications then going forward
00:17:05.520 | and into the New Testament of who God is
00:17:08.320 | and how complex God is.
00:17:10.240 | - Yeah, and speaking of that, when we think then,
00:17:13.040 | okay, in the Old Testament, you have Yahweh.
00:17:15.040 | And then in the New Testament, you have Lord.
00:17:17.320 | There is, like we were talking about earlier,
00:17:19.000 | this deliberateness to translate it to Lord.
00:17:22.520 | And it's not just convention.
00:17:23.840 | We know that Jesus is Lord because he's the Messiah,
00:17:28.080 | because he is the Chosen One and the King of Kings.
00:17:30.920 | He's even above Caesar, who was called Lord,
00:17:33.600 | say, in the end of Acts 25.
00:17:37.000 | And so we know that he is the Lord.
00:17:40.200 | And at the same time, though,
00:17:42.000 | and we know it's not just due to convention
00:17:44.720 | because the New Testament juxtaposes,
00:17:46.880 | it puts the Old Testament references
00:17:50.240 | that it deliberately translates as Lord
00:17:52.640 | very close to the title that Jesus is Lord.
00:17:56.520 | We know they're making a connection, a correlation,
00:17:59.240 | that yes, Jesus is Lord.
00:18:01.480 | He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords,
00:18:03.520 | but that is because he is Yahweh himself.
00:18:06.600 | And the shift in translating Yahweh to Lord
00:18:10.520 | is to point everyone to Yahweh revealed,
00:18:13.840 | Yahweh incarnate.
00:18:15.360 | This is not just a God.
00:18:17.160 | This is not just a deity or a demigod or a derivative God.
00:18:21.440 | This is Yahweh.
00:18:23.000 | Jesus is Lord.
00:18:24.440 | Lord is Yahweh.
00:18:26.000 | And the New Testament is deliberately making that point.
00:18:29.000 | - And with that, a passage like Genesis 19.24
00:18:33.040 | with two references to Yahweh begins to make sense.
00:18:36.120 | This is two persons of the Godhead.
00:18:37.920 | - That's right.
00:18:38.760 | And it all just connects together then.
00:18:40.320 | And it kind of reminds me of what children
00:18:43.280 | are supposed to do at Passover.
00:18:44.600 | They're supposed to ask their parents,
00:18:46.120 | "Why are we doing this?"
00:18:47.480 | And with the shift from Old Testament to New Testament,
00:18:51.240 | the New Testament's deliberateness,
00:18:53.120 | yet still retaining the name Yahweh like in Revelation 19,
00:18:56.480 | but its deliberateness to translate it as Lord,
00:18:59.480 | people should be asking, "Why do they do that?"
00:19:02.280 | And we should be equipping them to say,
00:19:04.520 | "Because Jesus is Yahweh and Jesus is Lord
00:19:08.400 | "and the New Testament wants that absolutely correlated
00:19:11.600 | "and clear and connected."
00:19:13.260 | And it then provides a repeated theological emphasis
00:19:16.760 | and point.
00:19:17.600 | It's really great.
00:19:18.720 | - It's fascinating.
00:19:19.720 | And there's another element in respect to the name Yahweh,
00:19:24.080 | and that's the shorter form of Yahweh, right?
00:19:26.840 | Yah.
00:19:27.680 | It's far less frequent.
00:19:29.320 | It's very rare.
00:19:30.160 | - We hear it in Revelation 19, though.
00:19:31.560 | Hallelujah. - That's right.
00:19:32.400 | - Yah. - It appears there.
00:19:33.240 | Yeah, yeah.
00:19:34.120 | And the word hallelujah, I mean, Psalm 150,
00:19:36.280 | it ends with that.
00:19:37.920 | I think it begins with that as well.
00:19:40.020 | But the short form of Yahweh appears about 50 times
00:19:43.840 | or something like this.
00:19:44.840 | And if Yahweh is the personal name of God,
00:19:48.480 | I think it's fair to say that Yah
00:19:50.280 | would be the intimate expression of the name of God.
00:19:53.120 | - That's helpful.
00:19:53.940 | - And you look where the reference to Yah appears,
00:19:57.560 | and it appears in those passages
00:19:59.280 | where there's this passionate and emotional expression
00:20:02.640 | of gratitude and love and worship of God.
00:20:05.440 | The first time it appears is in Exodus 15.
00:20:08.200 | And it appears in the song where Moses
00:20:10.420 | and the Israelites sing to Yah.
00:20:13.360 | And they sing about the strength of Yah.
00:20:15.760 | Now, the significance there
00:20:18.120 | is that they just came out of Egypt.
00:20:19.900 | They just crossed the sea.
00:20:21.320 | They thought they were going to die
00:20:22.720 | and they were gonna be killed by the Egyptians.
00:20:24.600 | Then this massive miracle happens
00:20:26.400 | where God splits the sea they crossed,
00:20:29.360 | and their response is praise Yah,
00:20:33.200 | just from the abundance of their soul
00:20:34.800 | and the abundance of their heart.
00:20:36.000 | And then Yah continues to appear in the Psalms
00:20:39.320 | where it's very passionate expressions of worship of God.
00:20:43.720 | And maybe another example is in Isaiah 38
00:20:46.080 | where Hezekiah is about to die.
00:20:49.480 | He gets sick, he's about to die.
00:20:51.280 | And God gives him an extra 15 years of life.
00:20:54.920 | And so he writes a poetic worship song or a praise.
00:20:59.920 | And there he begins with praising Yah.
00:21:03.520 | He uses Yahweh in that song as well,
00:21:05.840 | but he begins with praising Yah.
00:21:07.840 | And so that would be the intimate reference
00:21:11.720 | and appeal to Yahweh.
00:21:13.440 | - Well, this is really helpful.
00:21:14.480 | So what we see is in translating the Old Testament
00:21:17.680 | as the Old Testament, it's not just permissible.
00:21:20.260 | It's not just that we know how to pronounce it.
00:21:22.280 | It's not, there are some really practical advantages to it.
00:21:26.440 | It captures God's distinctiveness.
00:21:28.600 | It distinguishes other titles for God.
00:21:31.360 | It even captures the emotion of the Old Testament
00:21:34.280 | in worship with that shortened form, particularly of Yah.
00:21:37.400 | There are so many great benefits.
00:21:39.080 | And praise Yahweh.
00:21:41.040 | - Yeah, amen to that.
00:21:41.880 | - Hallelujah for that.
00:21:43.920 | - It's appropriate to say hallelujah
00:21:46.840 | because it's coming from the depth of your soul
00:21:48.840 | and you're worshiping Yahweh in an intimate way.
00:21:51.440 | - Well, thank you for spending the time with us
00:21:53.760 | to bring clarity to these things.
00:21:55.300 | And our prayer is just that this would be really edifying
00:21:58.880 | to you all and helpful and clarifying as well
00:22:02.040 | as you think about worshiping and communicating
00:22:04.900 | with our personal God, Yahweh.
00:22:06.860 | (silence)
00:22:09.020 | [BLANK_AUDIO]