Commentaria in Exodum
AND MY NAME ADONAI I DID NOT SHEW THEM.—In the Hebrew it is not Adonai, but the tetragrammaton name, consisting of four letters, namely jod, he, vau and he. Because this is ineffable, the Interpreter, after the manner of the ancients, substitutes for it the name Adonai; for otherwise God in Genesis revealed the name Adonai to the patriarchs, and calls Himself Adonai. Note in passing that Adonai is of three syllables, not four; for the last is the diphthong ai, and therefore this name is to be pronounced thus: A-do-nai.
The question is asked first, why the tetragrammaton name is called by the ancients and St. Jerome ineffable, by Theodoret unspeakable, and by Damascene unutterable.
Hence it came about that the Hebrews, for religion and reverence, did not dare to utter and pronounce the name of God; except the priests or pontiffs, who pronounced it in sacred rites, as in sacrifices, and in the solemn blessing of the people, and above all on entering the Holy of Holies, says Philo, book On the Life of Moses. Whence also Josephus says that it is neither right nor lawful for him to utter this name. When therefore this name occurred to those reading the Scripture, the Hebrews read Adonai for it, or, if it came together with Adonai, they read Elohim for it. Hence the Massoretes, who added points, or vowels, to the Hebrew Bibles, placed under the tetragrammaton name the points of the name Adonai (as Bellarmine demonstrates by four reasons in his grammatical exercise on Psalm 33, verse 4), namely sheva (which in the name Adonai is combined with patach, because of the guttural aleph), cholem and kamets, to indicate that out of reverence not the tetragrammaton but Adonai was to be read and pronounced; and in this they followed the custom of their times, not only the Septuagint translating Lord, and our Interpreter, as well as Origen in his Tetrapla and Hexapla, substituting here the name Adonai for the tetragrammaton; but Christ also and the Apostles, who, as often as they cite the Hebrew Scripture in which the tetragrammaton name stands, substitute for it the name “Lord.” Hence it has come about that the Jews do not know how that name is to be pronounced, or how God, Moses and the priests pronounced it; and they hand down that the last priest who pronounced this name of God was Simeon the Just, who received Christ in his arms in the temple; that afterwards no one pronounced it, and that they do not know how it ought to be pronounced; but that when the Messias shall come, they shall be taught by Him its true pronunciation. So they themselves. Out of reverence and religion for this name the high priest bore it engraved on a golden plate on his tiara, which Alexander the Great, meeting the high priest Jaddus, bowing to the ground, reverently adored, as Josephus testifies. Hence also Lucan, speaking of the God of the Hebrews, says: “Judea’s uncertain God,” because, namely, it worshipped an unknown God, whose name it knew not.
See here how great was once the reverence of the Hebrews for the divine name, which many Christians profane by naming it everywhere in rash oaths; nay, the modern Jews never dare expressly to swear by the tetragrammaton name, but by this formula they swear, and that rarely and only when compelled: I swear by jod, he, vau and jod (which are the four letters of the tetragrammaton name), which oath is held among them most high and sacred: so the Gentiles were not allowed to name the name of their false god Demogorgon; and if anyone did, the deity, or rather demon, showed itself offended by an earthquake, as Lucan testifies, book 6, and Boccaccio, book 1 On the Genealogy of the Gods, chap. 3.
The question is asked secondly, how this name ought to be pronounced, or what vowels are to be supplied to it. Some Greeks, says St. Jerome to Marcella, reading in Greek books this Hebrew name according to the Greek letters, to which these four Hebrew letters are similar, read it pipi. Secondly, St. Justin, Against Trypho, fol. 58, reads and understands the name Jesus for the tetragrammaton. Thirdly, Isidore pronounces this name Jodiod. For he says this name is made of the double letter jod. But all these either depart from or err concerning the Hebrew letters of the tetragrammaton. Fourthly, Irenaeus utters it Jaoth, which, he says, signifies a predetermined measure; or, if written with omicron, him who gives the flight of evils. So the Gentiles also seem to have pronounced this name. Whence Diodorus Siculus, book 3, says that Moses received the law from the God Jao; and Apollo of Claros, being asked who the god Jao was, answered:
Of all the gods call thou the highest Jao.
Macrobius is witness, book 1 of the Saturnalia, chap. 18.
Fifthly, Theodoret here, Quest. 15: The tetragrammaton name, he says, is called by the Samaritans Jave, by the Hebrews Ja. Sixthly, some recent writers within the last hundred years pronounce this name Jehova, according to the points placed under it by the Massoretes. But these points, as I said above, are not the points of the tetragrammaton name, but of the name Adonai: whence the Massoretes themselves and all the Hebrews read Adonai for the tetragrammaton name.
They err therefore who from Jehova, or Jova (by crasis), derive Jove, the supreme god of the Gentiles: for this has a Latin name, not Hebrew, and is so called from juvare, to help. Varro also erred, who, as St. Augustine testifies, book 1 On the Harmony of the Gospels, chap. 22, thought that the Jews worshipped Jove, the god of the Romans; but Varro thought so, not because he had heard from the Hebrews that God is called Jehova or Jove, but because he held that the Jews worship the highest God, whom he himself thought to be no other than Jove.
I say then, it is most probable that this name is to be pronounced Jehveh or Yahveh, that is, He is or He shall be.
It is proved, because this name is the same as that which God imposed on Himself, chap. 3, verse 14, saying: “Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: He who is hath sent me to you”; but “He who is” in Hebrew is said Hayeh or Haveh: therefore it is the same tetragrammaton name; for it is not credible that God gave Himself two names here, but only one, and so repeats here the “He who is” given to Him in chapter 3, to encourage Moses and to teach him the same. So hold Bellarmine above, Genebrard in the Preface to the Psalms, and Pereira here, and this will appear more plainly from the following question. Our Alcazar, however, in Apoc. chap. 1, verse 4, contends at length that Jehova is compounded of four letters, each of which signifies an entire word. Jehova therefore is the same, he says, as Yihyeh, Hoveh, Vehayah, that is, “who shall be, who is, who was.” Whence Jehova is the same as what John says, Apoc. 1:4: “Who is, and who was, and who is to come,” and therefore this name is called tetragrammaton and ineffable: because its single letters cannot utter the entire word which they represent. But this etymology is not literal, as he contends, but symbolic, or rather cabalistic, of which more on Apoc. 1:4.
That the name of Jove was taken from the name Jehova, Marinus holds in his Dictionary, Masius in his epistle to Arias Montanus prefixed to the Psalms of Arias himself, and Marianus Victorius in his scholia on St. Jerome, epist. 136. But St. Augustine shrinks from this conjecture, book 6 On the City of God, chap. 9, and book 7, chap. 5, and Galatinus book 2, chap. 10.
It is to be noted, however, that the name Jeheva is not so much a verb as a name derived from a verb; for Jehova is a proper name of God. As therefore in other names a name signifying what sort of person he is, or will be, to whom the name is given, is commonly formed from a verb, for instance from the third person of the future: thus Jacob signifies the supplanter, and him who will supplant Esau; Israel signifies the ruler, and him who shall rule with God; Isaac signifies the laughing one, and him who shall make his parents laugh: so also Jeheva is a name having the same termination as the future Kal of the verb hayah, and signifies the being, and him who is and shall be. For the letter jod, the first in the name Jeheva, is heemantic, or formative of the name, as it is in the names just mentioned and in many others: for although the same jod is the letter etan, or characteristic of the verb in the future, yet in names it is heemantic, that is, formative of the name, and so transfers the future of the verb into a noun.
The same is confirmed by the fact that the name, or rather the verb, Jeheva is not found in the Hebrew precisely in chapter 3, verse 14, but is found in this chapter in the Hebrew. For in chap. 3, verse 14, where we have “He who is hath sent me,” the Hebrew has not Jeheva but ehyeh, that is, I am, as if to say: He whose name is “I am who am” hath sent me hither. Hence again it follows that one should say Jeheva rather than Jeheve; for the name is wont to be distinguished from the future of the verb by the point kamets, as is plain in the name Israel, which is distinguished from the future yisrae, that is, “he shall rule,” by kamets; for names are wont to end not in segol but in kamets.
Question. It is asked, first, what the tetragrammaton name signifies. Oleaster derives it from the root hava, that is, to crush, whence hova is contrition, as though Jehova were the same as the crusher, namely of Pharaoh and the Egyptians. This is an allusion to the name, but not its origin; for Moses alludes to this etymology in chap. 15, verse 3, when he says: “The Lord (in Hebrew it is the tetragrammaton name Jeheva) is as a man of war; Almighty is his name.”