On Pronouncing YHWH

A book The Songs of Ascents by David C. Mitchell includes the theme “The Pronunciation of the Sacred Name.” Per his Academia page, “David Mitchell is a biblical theologian, musicologist, and musical director. ... His academic qualifications include the PhD in Hebrew Bible.”^[1]

He provides an appendix to his book regarding the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton. I will include select text from this appendix and then offer my appraisal of his statements. (See his book for the intended textual formatting I am unable to reproduce here.)

If you have not already read my blog entry The reason for the name, I recommend that you do as it sets the stage for what follows.

Appendix 1 Singing the Sacred Name, page 232:

Gesenius suggested that the vowels supplied by the Masoretes were not the true vowels of the Name at all. Instead, he said, the Masoretes substituted the vowels of Adonai, ‘my Lord’, beneath the four consonants, to show that Adonai should be read instead of pronouncing the true name. This, he said, was in line with the scribal practice called ketiv-kere - meaning ‘written-read’ - which occurs throughout the Masoretic codices. In ketiv-kere, the letters of a word written in the text are given the vowels of another word, whose consonants are written in the margin, to show that the marginal word should be read. In this case, Gesenius said, the sheva, holam, and qamats vowels of the Tetragrammaton were not its real vowels at all, but borrowings from Adonai.

This might be convincing if the Masoretic vowels for the Tetragrammaton were indeed those of Adonai. But since they patently are not, the argument collapses. For while the Masoretic vowels for the Tetragrammaton are sheva, holam, and qamats, the vowels of Adonai are hataf patah, holam, and qamats. If the Masoretes intended that Adonai should be read, why did they write sheva instead of hataf patah? Such an omission, required neither by grammar nor reverence, could only cause confusion.

Response:
“This might be convincing if the Masoretic vowels for the Tetragrammaton were indeed those of Adonai.”

They are.

“But since they patently are not, the argument collapses.”

They patently are the same vowels, so the argument holds. See below.

“For while the Masoretic vowels for the Tetragrammaton are sheva, holam, and qamats, the vowels of Adonai are hataf patah, holam, and qamats.”

This is due to the Aleph of Adonai being a guttural which prefers a compound sheva, also called the hataf patah. Since the Yod of the Tetragrammaton is not a guttural, the vowel point reverts to the simple sheva. See Figure 1^[2]:

Figure 1

“If the Masoretes intended that Adonai should be read, why did they write sheva instead of hataf patah?”

See above.

“Such an omission, required neither by grammar nor reverence, could only cause confusion.”

It was required by grammar, and it still causes confusion today.

Therefore, the argument holds that the vowels of Adonai were placed on the Tetragrammaton, which produced an artificial pronunciation.

Later, on page 237 he presents the artificial pronunciation of Yehovih. He correctly explains: “when the Tetragrammaton follows Adonai, the first vowel is changed from sheva to the short ‘e’, hataf seghol, and the last vowel is vocalized with the i-vowel hireq: Yehovih.” This is correct, however like with hataf patah above, he did not understand that the hataf seghol is also a compound sheva. This can be seen below on both the Aleph of Adonai (top) and the Aleph of elohim (bottom). See Figure 2:

Figure 2

Now, while he shows the Tetragrammaton with the vowels of elohim including the hataf seghol, in both cases it reverted to the simple sheva when applied to the Tetragrammaton.

He continues: “In such cases, the Masoretes appear to have replaced the first and last vowels of the Name with those of elohim in order to show that the reader should read Adonai Elohim rather than an awkward Adonai Adonai.”

Exactly. They were not averse to hiding the true pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton—in these cases using elohim instead.

He continues, with my comments in brackets:

“From this we can discern the true practice and intent of the Masoretes. Their practice in reading was to substitute Adonai for the Tetragrammaton. When the infrequent Adonai YHVH combination appeared, they showed, by substituting two vowels [the first and the last] of elohim, what form should be spoken. Wherever else the Tetragrammaton appeared, they either preserved the original vowels complete [no, they used the vowels of Adonai as explained above], assuming that the reader would know to substitute Adonai [especially since its vowels were present], or else they gave only two vowels, sheva and qamats, omitting the holam dot. [Yes, but it was also at times omitted for Adonai].”

Yes they wanted you to read Adonai, this is correct. The reminder they gave was applying its vowels on the Tetragrammaton, just like they applied the vowels of elohim on it as he freely admits. This is certainly supporting the ‘vowels of Adonai on the Tetragrammaton’ explanation he opposes.

On page 236 he presented the abbreviation Jah. He explained:

“The likeliest explanation for the origin of Yah is that it is a contraction of Yehovah, preserving the first consonant and last accented vowel and aspirated heh, and omitting everything in between: Y-(ehov)-ah. Such contractions were always current among the Israelites: …”

What he did not include though were the examples in Isaiah 12:2 and 26:4 which have “YH YHWH.” Since YH is without any controversy pronounced Yah, it follows that the first syllable of YHWH would also be Yah.

In conclusion:

• Dr. Mitchell did not include the conversion of the compound sheva to the simple sheva, and seemed to be unaware of this grammatical feature of Hebrew.
• He did not realize that placing the vowels of elohim on YHWH coupled with their desire to have Adonai read in place of the actual pronunciation actually supported the claim that its vowels were applied to YHWH too.
• In discussing what Jah is an abbreviation for, he neglected to mention Isaiah 12:2 and 26:4.

Thus, the arguments made in his appendix are unconvincing.


Footnotes:
^[1] www.academia.edu/...
^[2] From “The Yehovah Deception” by the Yahweh’s Restoration Ministry, a Sacred Name movement, yrm.org/yehovah-deception, as previously referred to in my blog entry The reason for the name. jimspace3000.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-reason-for-name.html

Appendix

1. Other aberrant vowel pointing?

Other aberrant vowel pointing?

As shown above, the Yod of the Tetragrammaton received a regular sheva regardless if the compound sheva on the Aleph came from Adonai or Elohim. (It’s ironic that the ones who are confused about the compound sheva from Adonai reverting to a regular sheva do not seem to be confused about the compound sheva from Elohim reverting to a regular sheva.) But is there another example of aberrant vowel pointing?

Yes. Biblical linguist Jason Hare offers examples of this and explains:

There is no need for the ktiv [ketiv] to match the vowels of the kri [kere] perfectly. It simply need to indicate the vowels of the kri. For example, the image that I have created and attached here is from Deuteronomy 28:27 (BHS). The red is what is found pointed in the text of the Leningrad Codex (one of the template texts for Bible copiers from the Middle Ages). The green is what the Masoretes included in the margin to be read instead of what is in red, and the green is how the word in red would naturally be pointed if it were to be read as-is.

The ktiv in the text does not include the dagesh from the kri. It is clear that not every single point of the kri made it into the pointed text.^[A1]

He then compared this example from Deuteronomy 28:27 to “the chataf-patach in אדני” converting to the simple shiva in יהוה.

Another source explains the significance of the ketiv-kere in Deuteronomy 28:27:

For example, in Deut. 28:27, the ketiv word ובעפלים ophalim, “hemorrhoids,” was replaced with the qere וּבַטְּחֹרִים techorim, “abscesses,” because the ketiv was (after the return from Exile) considered too obscene to read in public.^[A2]

As the vowel pointing transfer here was not exact, no one should be surprised that the initial vowel for יהוה is not exact either, as a simplified version of the source vowel.

Additionally, he also pointed out (pun intended) another vowel pointing aberration:

Did you know that in 1 Samuel 25:28, we see אדני ʾăḏōnāy pointed with the vowels of אלהים ʾĕlōhîm? This isn't normal, but there it is!^[A3]

As shown in the image above, Adonai appears next to the Tetragrammaton in both scriptures, and in the later (Habakkuk 3:19) it is pointed with the vowels of Elohim with the simple sheva. With 1 Samuel 25:28, the vowels of Elohim were put on Adonai, and the vowels of Adonai were put on the Tetragrammaton! In both cases, the holam (the middle dot above the D in Adonai or the H in Elohim) was not carried for either Tetragrammaton, and that was acceptable. This reinforces that it should come as no surprise that in both situations the compound sheva was converted to the simple sheva. The following image displays what we may expect, with the holam included.


Appendix Footnotes:
^[A1] Facebook, March 24, 2023.
^[A2] “Qere and Ketiv” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qere_and_Ketiv.
^[A3] Facebook, March 30, 2023.

Appendix Credits: All images by Jason Hare, with the last image edited by me with English and all the holams.

Blog Index

If you enjoyed this, please consider donating: