Bible Studies

PRONOUNCING YHWH CORRECTLY 3

by Jeff Van Hatten
08/18/23
Free to Share

  Message Writer
  Hire Writer

Tweet

2 Kings 21:4 – “He built altars in the house of Yahweh, of which Yahweh had said, ‘In Jerusalem will I put my name’.”
2 Kings 21:7 – “In Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name forever.”
Recent archaeology discoveries have confirmed that the original pronunciation of the tetragrammaton in the ancient Hebrew text is Yahweh and the spelling is YHWH. Here is a third discovery found on an early Israelite curse inscription from Mt. Ebal that confirms this.

The Folded Lead Tablet
In March 2022, a lead tablet from Mt. Ebal was discovered by a research team led by scholars from the Associates for Biblical Research. At that time they claimed that it contained one of the oldest extant Hebrew inscriptions. Now, after more than a year, one part of the inscription has been peer-reviewed and published in the Heritage Science Journal.

The Folded Lead Tablet, containing writing on both its inside and outside, measures less than one square inch and appears to have been folded in half after being written. https://raptureparty.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/ebaltablet.png

The Inscription
As translated by the Associates for Biblical Research (ABR) team, the tablet reads:
• You are cursed by the god yhw, cursed.
• You will die, cursed—cursed, you will surely die.
• Cursed you are by yhw—cursed.
The team suggests that “the use of the name Yhw, a shortened version of the divine name Yahweh (YHWH), is clear evidence that the text is an early Hebrew inscription.”

The Objections
Aren Maeir, Professor Of Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University, says: “The object and its context are problematic; the data presented is of a very poor or even misleading character; the understanding of the archaeological context and its dating is lacking; the suggested reading is very hard to accept; and the generalizations and conclusions brought forward by the authors seem to be totally baseless.”

Christopher Rollston, a noted epigrapher from George Washington University said: “Facts are facts, and this article is very short on facts and very long on boundless speculation.”

The Rebuttals
In response to this criticism, Pieter van der Veen, a team epigrapher and Professor at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, stated, “I have worked with lead. I can assure you, what we see are NOT mere striations. Rather what we see is man-made and incised with a pen or stylus. The bulges seen on the back of the tablet prove that those letters are true letters indeed. They precisely match the signs on [the inside] and must be incisions to be actually visible on the back. These are not simple scratches or damage.”

ABR’s Director of Excavations, Scott Stripling similarly defended the team’s reading of the text, saying, “As several interior letters can also be detected on the outside of the tablet, where pressure marks of these letters caused by the stylus appear, we can be certain that they are there and that in most cases, the incisions are undoubtedly man-made.”

Conclusions
1) The original spelling of the name was Yod-Hey-Waw-Hey.
2) Archaeology clearly shows that YHWH is the correct spelling of the tetragrammaton.
3) Archaeology clearly shows that Yahweh is the correct pronunciation of the tetragrammaton.

Final Thought for 2023
The stage for Yeshua’s return is being set. Prophecy continues to unfold in an escalating pattern as foretold by the Hebrew prophets. The season of the birth pains is here – they are burgeoning and not going away. Time is short – Yeshua Ha’Mashiach is coming soon – be sure you have salvation in Yeshua and keep busy reaching the lost.