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It’s important to recognize right up front that we simply do not know with absolute certainty how God’s name was originally pronounced. The common English pronunciation of Yahweh is an educated guess, and there are many other probable candidates such as Yahu, Yaho, and Yahuwah, but we’ll never know for sure how it sounded when God spoke it to Moses.

Two key things prevent us from knowing: (1) Hebrew was written without vowels for many centuries, so we’re left with only four consonants: YHWH, and (2) people started avoiding the pronunciation of God’s name long before Hebrew began to be written with vowels. And when the Hebrew Bible was finally written with vowels, artificial vowels were inserted into the spelling of God’s name in order to keep people from pronouncing it. So, in this chapter we’ll try to understand why—why did the Israelites go from swearing by Yahweh’s name, using it in prayer, song, and greetings to forbidding its use altogether?

On the Life of Moses

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