THE NAME OF GOD

  The Hebrew origins of the Lord's Prayer.

There's so much deepness and richness once you get into the Hebrew in Hebrew Matthew.

There is a Hebrew Matthew in the British Library; and one is from Florence, Italy.

The second line of the prayer. It starts, “Our Father in heaven,” and then it says in Hebrew, “Yitkadesh shimkha.

That is a powerful statement, because in English, we usually translate that, “Hallowed be your name.” What does that really mean, “Hallowed be your name?” It's kind of like this vague statement, “Your name is holy.” But when you look at it in Hebrew, and in Greek, the Hebrew and Greek here are identical, it means literally: “May Your name be sanctified,” which grammatically is a call to action. “May Your name be sanctified” is a call to action.

It begs the question, if we're sanctifying the name of our heavenly Father, what is His name? What is the name of our heavenly Father? And that's what the prayer is, too, our Father in Heaven.

He only has one name. And that is a name that He gave and revealed to Moses when Moses asked the exact same question, “What is the name that I should tell the Israelites? You've appeared to me in the burning bush, said, ‘Go to the Israelites,’ and I'm gonna say, ‘The God of our forefathers has appeared to me.’ I need to be more specific.”

So, Moses, when he appears before God at the burning bush, he says, “God, what name should I tell them?” And the answer comes in Exodus 3:15. God says: “Tell the children of Israel this: ‘YHVH - Yehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and this is how I am to be remembered throughout all generations.”

In the earliest Hebrew manuscripts that have vowels, it's written “Yehovah.” Some people say it's “Yahweh” or “Yahuwa.”

Based on the earliest Hebrew manuscripts I pronounce it “Yehovah.” God said to Moses: “Thus, you say to the children of Israel, ‘Yehovah,’  the God of your fathers has sent me to you. This is My name forever. This is My memorial for every generation.”

Based on this verse, how do I know that the name is still relevant today in the 21st century? How do I know it's still relevant today, based on the verse? It says forever. Are we still in forever?

The Hebrew phrase "forever" is actually two words  “le'olam”. We translate this "forever,” but what it literally means is “the universe.” And what you're saying when you say "le'olam" is, “for the duration of the universe.” As long as heaven and earth continue to exist, this will be true. That's what "le'olam" means. And he's saying, “As long as the universe continues to exist...” And after it ceases to exist, it won't really be of much interest to us, because we'll be dead, and so will all of our descendants. “But forever, for the existence of the universe, this is My name forever and for every generation.” And we're still in every generation.

How do I know this is relevant for  today?”

 

Notice: Psalm 148:11-14: Kings of the earth and all peoples; Princes and all judges of the earth; Both young men and virgins; Old men and children: Let them praise the name of Yehovah; For his name alone is exalted; His glory is above the earth and the heavens. And He has lifted up the horn of His people, The praise of all his saints; Even of the children of Israel, a people near unto him. Praise you Yehovah.

Now, if you look in a lot of your Bibles, you won't see Yehovah, though. You'll see that in place of the name, “Yehovah” it will say, “LORD.” Now, why is that? And a lot of people will ask me, “Why isn't this in my Bible?”

Now, if we look at the title page of the original 1611 King James Version if you look, you will see the biblical world as it was understood by the translators. You will see Aaron with the breastplate and Moses with the 10 Commandments, the tablets. Then you see the lamb. Then you see this bird, a  dove. And then you see the Father in heaven up in the clouds, and it says “YHVH -Yehovah” in Hebrew, at the very top of the page.

So, if somebody tells you, “Well, Yehovah doesn't appear in my English Bible. In my Bible, it only says ‘LORD’”

Tell them, “In the original one from 1611, it had it on the top of the page.” Now, it is preserved in seven places in the King James, and in those verses the translators decided, “If we write here ‘LORD,’ it won't make any sense.” For example:

Psalm 83:18: “That men may know that Thou whose name alone is Jehovah...”

Note: before the 14^th century there was no J in the English language, so without the J we would have “Yehovah"

Also: in 1611 the J was interchangeable with the I, and it's actually spelled six times with a J, once with an I. So, they would have read this as “Yehovah” back in 1611, which is pretty close, a different nuance of pronunciation. “That men may know that you whose name alone is Yehovah, are the Most High over all the earth.”

Now, here they realized, if we write "the LORD,” it will change His name and it won’t make any sense, which is exactly what many translators have done. Like the NIV, which is, of course, the Nearly Inspired Version, we said, they've written "the LORD.” And most translations have replaced it with "the LORD,” changing the eternal name of our Father. Now to be fair, what they did is they wrote it in capital letters.

Now if you read the introduction to your Bible, if you read the fine print, that it originally is the name “YHVH - Yehovah,”” the tetragrammaton they call it, the four-letter name. And that four-letter name, which in Hebrew is four letters, Yud, say, “Yud.”

That's the four-letter name of the Father. It appears in the Hebrew Bible, in the Old Testament, “6,828” times. That’s in my Bible, on average, seven times per page, depending on the size of your font and everything. But seven times per page is a lot. It's about 1,000 pages. That's actually more than all the titles put together, more than “Lord,”

Now, "Lord" actually legitimately appears as “Adonay” in the Hebrew. “Adonay” is the Hebrew for “Master,” or Lord. It appears, “Elohim,” “God,” “El Shaday” appears, “El Elyon,” “Most High God.” Those legitimate titles appear less altogether than the name of the Father Himself, 6,828 times. Now, Yehovah is obviously an important name, isn't it? Sounds important. He likes to hear His name. He says it a lot.

Now, the reason we don't say the name and you see it in our English Bibles, is our English translators learned how to translate Hebrew from Jewish Rabbis. And the Rabbis taught them a tradition that whenever you see the name of our Heavenly Father, YHVH; Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, read it as "Lord,” as “Adonay.” So, that's tradition, that's not scripture.

Now, there's an older tradition, one that predates this tradition It goes back probably to up until the middle of the 2nd century. And this is recorded in the Mishnah, the writings of the early Rabbis. They say, “A man is required to greet his fellow using the name.” Now, I don't quote this as an authority that we're required to do this today. What I'm saying is that this was their original Jewish tradition, that predates the tradition of not speaking the name, the one that most Jews today will be familiar with. Now, this tradition that the Rabbis talk about here, that a man is required to greet his fellow using the name - Yehovah, they didn't pluck that out of the thin air. They tell us that they took this from the Book of Ruth, 2:4. And there it says: “Behold, Boaz was coming from Bethlehem. And he said to the harvesters, ‘Yehovah be with you.’ And they said to him, ‘Yehovah bless you.’” That was the greeting in ancient Israel.

When someone was coming, you blessed him in the name of Yehovah, in the name of what we later translated as "LORD.” Does that sound familiar from anywhere, to bless someone who comes in the name of the Lord?

And actually, in the New Testament, when Jesus - Yeshua comes, arguably there's a dual meaning there, that they're blessing him in the name of the Lord as he's coming, in the name of His Father, according to the New Testament, “Yehovah.” And he's also coming, according to the New Testament, in that name - Yehovah, as well. So, the New Testament says, is that right? It says there, “He came in the name of His Father,” which is a pretty neat trick if he never uses that name. However, his Hebrew name is Yehoshua which means Yehovah is salvation. How do you come in the name you never speak? By coming in a name that represents Yehovah So, this earlier tradition predates the ban on the name. Jews are whenever they see those letters YHVH, read them as a different word.

This is a tomb in the Galilee. What is the name of this tomb, who's buried here? This is the tomb of a Rabbi named Hananiah Ben Teradion, or Hanina Ben Teradion, according to some pronunciations. It's actually on the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere. It's not marked on any maps. It's not a secret where it is, but you have to really dig to find that information. And the Rabbi who’s buried in this tomb is a Rabbi who was executed by the Romans, he was martyred. He was actually burned at the stake.

We're told by the rabbinical sources that this Rabbi was taken and he was wrapped in a Torah scroll, and they put wet tufts of wool between him and the Torah scroll to slow the burning, and then they lit him on fire. And why did they do that, according to the Talmud? Because he spoke the name of the Father the way it is written. Whenever he came upon the name, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, and he was teaching in public, he would proclaim the name, “Yehovah.” And the Romans in the time of the Hadrianic persecutions, which ended in the year 138, banned the speaking of the name.

The tradition not to speak the name comes from shortly after that. And what happened is, the Rabbis realized, “If we keep speaking this name, we're going to be put to death.” Now, whatever you say about the Rabbis, one thing that we're very good at is adapting. They saw a threat and they said, “Okay, the Romans will kill us if we do this. We're going to do something similar, as best as we can do. When the Messiah comes, He'll drive them out of Israel, and we'll be all fine.” And they thought that would happen next week, or next month, or next year. They didn't think we'd be here 1,600 years later, or 1,800 years later, still waiting for that, for the Messiah to come and reign as the flesh and blood King over Israel.

Another famous example of that is the calendar. The Romans came and abolished the Sanhedrin, forbade the Jews to proclaim the monthly sighting of the new moon. And what did the Rabbis do? They said, “We'll adapt. When the Messiah comes next week, He'll restore the original calendar, or next month or next year. Until then, we'll follow this approximated calculating system.” There are Rabbis in Israel to this day, or in modern times, who say, “Whenever the Messiah comes, may it be today...” they pray every day, “May it be speedily in our days, we will restore the biblical calendar.” So, this method of adapting is what brought us the ban on speaking the name. No one ever thought it would last forever. And the Rabbis knew it wouldn't last forever because of this verse in Zacharia 14:9, It says there: “Yehovah shall be King over the entire earth, and on that day Yehovah will be one.” “And in that end time, all mankind will call upon His name.”

There's another verse like this in Zephaniah 3:9: For then will I turn to the peoples of a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of Jehovah, to serve him with one consent.

Let’s read Zephaniah 3:9: from Hebrew. It says: “Ki az e'hefokh el amim safa berura likro khulam beshem Yehovah le'ovdo shekhem ekhad,” “For then I will turn the nations to a pure tongue.” And that's a Hebrew expression, “A pure language,” it means. “To all call upon the name of Yehovah to serve Him.” And it usually is translated, “With one accord.” It literally says, “With one shoulder.”

It is describing an image of all mankind gathered together, serving Yehovah, standing shoulder to shoulder, calling upon His name - Yehovah, in that pure language, the original language, the language from before the Tower of Babylon.

If you read in the Torah, you can see very clearly that original language is Hebrew. You know, we see all these names of people. Remember, Yeshua and Yoshia? Yeshua, “He will save,” in Hebrew Matthew. You have that throughout the first 10 chapters of Genesis, people who are named things that only make sense in Hebrew. Adam, Eve, Seth, all these people's names are Hebrew names. The original language will be restored when the Messiah comes and sits on the throne of David.

The Rabbis admit this. It says this in the Talmud. It says, “This world is not like the world to come.” When the Rabbis say “the world to come" in this literature, they're talking about the reign of the Messiah here on earth as a flesh and blood king. They say, “In this world the name is written ‘Yehovah’ and read ‘Adonay.’” That's the that started in the 2nd century. “In the world to come it will be one,” “Written Yehovah and read Yehovah.”

I want to look at this verse in Acts 2:21. It says, “And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Now, this is a verse that appears as part of the scene in Acts 2, which is what's known as the “Pentecost event,” that is the Shavuot that happened 2,000 years ago. You all know what I'm talking about. And this is part of Simon Peter's Pentecost sermon.

And in the context of that sermon, 50 days…I guess, 53 days after that fateful event, what does this mean when he says, "the Lord?” What Lord is he talking about?

And if we think about this, what does this mean, we really would never know, if we only had this verse. But there's another verse, and that's a verse in the Book of Joel. And if you have a good reference Bible, you already know the answer, that Peter was not only quoting this one verse, he was quoting an entire section from the Prophet Joel. And in the Prophet Joel, what he says, there in Acts it says: “And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” In Joel it says: “And it shall come to pass to whosoever shall call the on name of Yehovah shall be saved,” Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, the tetragrammaton, that four letter word. That's the name that it says in Joel.

Now, when Simon Peter’s saying this in Jerusalem on Pentecost, on Shavuot, in the Feast of Weeks, presumably he's speaking in Jerusalem next to the Temple, in Hebrew. That was the language of discourse in Israel, and certainly, it would be the language in the synagogue and when you were giving sermons. And if he's reading Joel, Joel's already in Hebrew, he doesn't have to even translate it. So, if he's reading this in Hebrew in the Book of Joel... And remember, this is 100 years before that other Rabbi was put to death, burned at the stake for speaking the name of Yehovah in public, burned at the stake by the Romans. The Romans martyred him, not the Rabbis.

Now, what would Peter have been saying in the 1st century, 100 years before that Rabbi died? Presumably, he'd actually be quoting Joel verbatim, word for word, with the name “Yehovah.” Now, how can we know for sure? And I guess we can't ever know for sure, unless we go back in time. But here's a clue, and I think it's a powerful clue. This is a page from the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is actually from a Dead Sea Scroll from a place called Nakhal Khever. Most of the Dead Sea Scrolls come from where?

Qumran is a city on the shore of the Dead Sea.

There are several other places where they’ve found scrolls, some of them from different periods. The ones from Nakhal Khever were placed there in the year 135 during the time of the Bar Kokhba uprising. That was an uprising against the Romans. It was part of the whole Hadrianic persecutions. Here in this Scroll, which is actually of Zachariah 8:23 through chapter 9:2. We could probably stop for a minute and talk about 8:23, that's a very important verse. What does it say there in 8:23 of Zachariah?

Zechariah 8:23: Thus saith Jehovah of hosts: In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold, out of all the languages of the nations, they shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.

There, it talks about how 10 men of all the languages shall grab hold of the Jewish man. Is that right? Now in this Dead Sea Scroll, what I want to talk about is the name. This is in Greek, the Greek translation of the Book of Zachariah. And here, there are two words on the page that appear that are not Greek words. You don't have to be a Greek scholar to see these words. It appears here and it appears here, and that is the name “Yehovah” written in what's called “Paleo-Hebrew.” Paleo-Hebrew is the original Hebrew script that was used before the Babylonian exile. When the Jews came back from Babylon, they gradually replaced the original Hebrew script with what we call in Hebrew the “Assyrian script.” That was the script used to write Aramaic, the language of the Gentiles. And when they wrote Hebrew, their Hebrew was heavily influenced by Aramaic, and they even used the Aramaic script to write their language. But when it came to the name of the Father, they wrote it out in Paleo-Hebrew.

Now, why did they do that in the Septuagint? For a number of reasons, but primarily because this name was considered so holy, it couldn't be written out in this Greek language, that they decided to write it out in the original language. And the problem came about when Gentile scribes came along, ‘cause remember, this up here, this is a Jewish copy of the Book of Zachariah in Greek. Most of the copies we have of the Book of Zachariah in Greek are Gentile copies from about 200 years later. And almost all of those have replaced the name “Yehovah” with what by then was standard Jewish tradition, where instead of Yehovah they said "Lord.” And in Greek, the word for Lord is “Kurios.” Say, “Kurios.”

Now Kurios is a very curious word.. So, this word “Kurios” replaces Yehovah it in most of the manuscripts of the Old Testament in Greek, except for a handful of them, about five of them. And in those handful, it actually has the name of Yehovah written not in Paleo-Hebrew letters but in Greek letters. Now, how did they do that? Let's look and see what they did.

They had the name, Yehovah, and they said, “We can’t write this in Paleo-Hebrew letters. No one on earth will know what this is. We've got to replace it with Greek letters.” And they said, “Well, this kind of looks like a Greek letter, and so does this.” What is this actually? If you read it right to left, this is “Yud-Hey-Vav-Hay. And they said, “Okay, the hey looks like what Greek letter?” What Greek letter does it look like? It looks a little bit like the Greek letter pi, like we use in mathematics to this day, 3.14. And so, instead of the two heys, they wrote pi and pi. And they didn't know what this was, the vav, or what that was, the yud. And in place of those, they decided, “Okay, after every consonant in Greek, we have to write a vowel.” And the vowels they decided to write were the Greek letter iota or ayota, you may know that as. So, they ended up with pi iota pi iota. And this word in Greek is pronounced “peepee.” No, I'm serious, “peepee.”

And there were actually several manuscripts of the Old Testament in Greek, where it says, “And peepee spoke unto Moses saying, ‘Thus sayeth peepee to the Prophets.” Even in Greek this sounded utterly ridiculous, and they said, “We've got to get peepee out of our Bibles.” And eventually, they said, “Okay, the Jews have now, under Roman pressure, decided to replace Yehovah with Lord, with Adonay. So, we’ll write “Kurios,” this curious word that replaces it.

Now, that's a fact that happened in the Old Testament, ‘cause we have the documents to show it. What happened in the New Testament? Certainly, we see that happening in the Old Testament, and I think it's reasonable to suggest that it may have happened in the New Testament. Either way, even in Greek, what was written in Peter's words was probably the word “Yehovah” in Paleo-Hebrew, in the original Greek of Acts, which of course we don't have. We have copies, of copies, of copies from 200, 300 years later.

Now I want to talk about why I think it's so important. You know, Yeshua preached this message, teaching people to sanctify the name of the Father. The reason I decided to share this thing on the name - Yehovah is something in this passage in Isaiah 56. And here, to understand this passage, we have to put ourselves in the mindset of the Prophet. We have to go back 2,700 years. Isaiah preached in the 8th century BC. He was very active during the time of the Assyrian invasions in 732, 721 and 701. Those were the three invasions. He preached before those invasions and after those invasions. When he gave his message, he would stand up in the public square and he would say, “Thus says Yehovah.” And that's how this prophecy opens.

So, let's try to put ourselves back 2,700 plus years in the time of Isaiah, and hear his words, “Thus says Yehovah: “Keep judgment and do righteousness, for My salvation is close to coming, and My righteousness to be revealed.”

By the way, what's the Hebrew word for “salvation?” Actually, the Hebrew word for salvation is “yeshu'a.” You might think that's splitting hairs, but it's an important difference. Yeshua is derived from this word, but the word is a slightly different word. “My salvation, yeshu'a, is close to coming and My righteousness to be revealed.” And then it says: “Blessed is the man who does it, and the son of Adam who grabs hold of it. He who keeps the Sabbath from desecrating it…” I'm reading from the Hebrew, “and keeps his hand from doing all evil.”

Now, if you were a Jew, and you were walking by in the public square and you heard the Prophet standing there, preaching these words, would you think this applied to you? Presumably, you would, there would be no question that this applied to you. But what if you were a Gentile in Jerusalem at that time? You were one of those eunuchs of the kings, who were the ambassadors from all over the world. Jeremiah talks about these ambsddsfotd as the way he spread his message to the nations. He would preach to them, they spoke Hebrew, and they would then go out and convey the message all over the ancient world.

In Isaiah's time, if you were one of those men, those Gentiles sent by your king to Jerusalem, or if you were a merchant who had settled in Jerusalem, and you heard the Prophet speaking these words, would you think it applied to you? You'd probably think, “Well, he says ‘man’ and he says, ‘son of Adam,’ and it's true I'm a man. And it's true I'm a son of Adam, but he talks about the Sabbath and the covenant. And we know from Exodus that the Sabbath is the sign of the covenant between the God of Israel and the people of Israel.” And so, you might say to yourself if you were a Gentile in the 8th century BC, hearing Isaiah, “That doesn't apply to me. He's speaking to the Jews, not to me. He's speaking to those people who have a covenant between their God and them. Although I, as a Gentile, may believe in the God of Israel, I have no part of the Sabbath or that people.” And many people apparently thought that, because the very next words in verse 3 is Isaiah addressing those Gentiles. What it says in verse 3 is, he says, “Let not the son of the Gentile…” and the word there is “nekhar,” say, “Nekhar.”

Nekhar they translated “stranger” or “foreigner,” that's the Hebrew word for Gentile, undisputedly. “Let not the son of the Gentile who joins himself to Yehovah...” and the word for joining there, it's very interesting. It's the same root as the word “Levite.” If you look at the reason for the name Levite, look at the origin of it in Genesis. It has to do with Leah joining herself to her husband. Here it's speaking about the Gentiles who join themselves, who Levite themselves, who Levite themselves to Yehovah. “Let not them say, ‘Yehovah has surely separated me from His people.’”

Because that's what many of them were thinking, “I don't really have anything to do with that God.” Or, “Even if I join myself to that God of Israel, I'm not really part of His people. I'm a separate category, I don't belong to His people.

He's saying, “You must not say that.” He then talks about the eunuchs; we'll skip over that for the sake of the children and go to verse 6. In verse 6, he says: “And the sons of the Gentiles who join themselves, who Levite themselves to Yehovah to serve Him, and to love the name of Yehovah, to be His servants, all those who keep the Sabbath from desecrating it, and grab hold of my covenant.” This is one of the reasons, this verse, that I decided that I need to go and include this part of Yeshua's message of sanctifying the name - Yehovah.

Well, the prophecy doesn't end here. In verse 7, it says, “And I will bring them to My Holy mountain and I will make them rejoice in My house of prayer.” This is the most famous verse in the Old Testament. “I'll make them rejoice in My house of prayer, their burnt offerings and peace offerings shall be accepted upon my altar, for my house should be called a house of prayer for all nations.”

That phrase, “A house of prayer for all nations,” I mean, this whole congregation is named after it. It's one of the most famous verses in the Bible. Most people stop reading here. They got to the famous verse and we're done. But the next verse is the key verse to me, and this is verse 8.

Now, verse 8, It says: “Thus says Lord Yehovah who gathers in the dispersed of Israel. ‘I will gather others unto those who I have gathered.”

This is talking Yehovah Elohim - God gathering Israel from the four corners of the earth.

Brothers and sisters when we are all resurrected we will be gathered from all four corners of the world to rise up and meet the Messiah Jesus in the clouds and return to this earth with him as glorified, immortal men and women.

After the Lord Messiah takes his place on the throne of David at Zion and after he defeats the armies that will have gathered in the valley of Megiddo then all the Jews/Israelites will be gathered from the four corners of the world to come to live in Israel. May that day come soon!