Footnote 6 – “More Than Any Man Has Ever Done”

Special treatment of the divine name (the tetragrammaton, often transliterated YHWH) is an ancient practice observed by Jews and Christians. To avoid pronouncing the divine name, Jews traditionally say adonai (lord) when they encounter these letters, and many Christian translations honor this tradition by using the word Lord. Jehovah is an artifical construct, made from a tortured half-English, half-German pronunciation of JHWH, which is one transliteration of the divine name. To this were added two vowels from the Hebrew word adonai, the o and final a. (The first a and final i of adonai are indicated by Hebrew letters and were considered consonants.) Put together, with an added schwa to facilitate pronunciation of the first consonant, the result was Jehovah. Although intended to indicate reverence, the practice of using a substitution for the divine name sometimes distorts the text, as in Psalm 110:1 or Isaiah 42:8, “I am the Lord, that is my name.”