Names of God in Judaism

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The names of God in Judaism begin with four Hebrew letters, יהוה. That name appears 6,828 times in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia edition of the Masoretic Text. Yet most Jews today never say it aloud.

  Judaism recognizes a short list of names so holy that, once written, they can never be erased. They are that four-letter name, Adonai, El, Elohim, Shaddai and Tzevaot. Some lists add a sixth Hebrew phrase, usually rendered "I Am that I Am".

  Each name raises its own puzzle. Who was ever allowed to speak the four letters, and when did the speaking stop? Why does a word that looks plural take a singular verb when it names one God? And what turns a scribe's pen into an act of ritual care, where a single slip can send a whole page to a burial place for scripture?

  1456849

• 2. The Silenced Name

  ›

  Nothing in the Torah explicitly forbids speaking the four-letter name. The Book of Ruth shows that it was still pronounced as late as the 5th century BCE. By at least the 3rd century BCE, during Second Temple Judaism, it had stopped being spoken aloud. The Talmud relates, perhaps anecdotally, that the silence began with the death of Simeon the Just.

  Hebrew is an abjad, a script that often leaves out vowels, so nobody knows which vowels originally belonged to these letters. Vowel points were added to the Hebrew text only in the early medieval period. When the Masoretic Text supplied them for this name, it borrowed the vowel points of Adonai or Elohim, depending on context. Those marks told readers which word to say instead. Direct transliteration is avoided in Jewish custom.

  Rabbinic Judaism teaches that only one person could pronounce the name. That was the High Priest, who spoke it just as it is written in the Holy of Holies of the Temple in Jerusalem on Yom Kippur. As each blessing was made, the people in the courtyard threw themselves fully to the ground on hearing it. The Temple was destroyed in 70 CE and has not been rebuilt. So most modern Jews say Adonai during prayer and Torah reading, and HaShem, meaning "The Name", in discussion. Most English translations of the Bible substitute a title rather than transcribe the name. The Septuagint may have kept the Hebrew letters themselves amid its Greek text, but scholars have reached no consensus on that.

  Not every community went along. Karaite Jews traditionally treated pronouncing the name as a mitzvah, a commandment, because it fills the Tanakh. Under pressure, and seeking acceptance from mainstream Rabbinical Jews, most modern Karaites now say Adonai too. The Beta Israel pronounce it as Yahu, but also use the Geʽez term Igziabeher.

  Mark Sameth proposes a stranger story. He argues that the priests of ancient Israel pronounced only a pseudo name, reading the four letters in reverse as huhi, "he-she", which would signify a dual-gendered deity. He points out that Guillaume Postel in the 16th century and Michelangelo Lanci in the 19th century had theorized something similar.

  1113141516

• 3. A Verb In Disguise

  ›

  In the Book of Exodus, Moses asks God for a name and receives three responses. The first is Ehyeh asher ehyeh, which the King James Version translates as "I Am that I Am". The word ehyeh is the first-person singular imperfect of hayah, "to be". Biblical Hebrew has no tenses in the English sense. Instead it uses an aspectual system, in which the imperfect covers any action not yet completed.

  So the phrase stretches in several directions. It can read "I will be what I will be" or "I will be who I will be". It can also read "I shall prove to be whatsoever I shall prove to be", or even "I will be because I will be". The small word asher is a relative pronoun, and "that", "who", "which" or "where" can all fit, depending on context.

  Translators have pulled the line apart. Leeser has "I Will Be that I Will Be", while Rotherham has "I Will Become whatsoever I please". The Septuagint, Philo and the Book of Revelation use the Greek Ego eimi ho on, "I am Being" or "the Existing One". The Latin is ego sum qui sum, "I am Who I am". Modern Hebrew forms of the phrase also exist, among them Ani Sh'ani and Ehiyeh sh'Ehiyeh.

  The four-letter name is thought to be an archaic third-person singular of the same verb, meaning "He is, was or will be". That fits the Exodus passage, where God names himself in the first person. A reader can take it as the present, "I am what I am", or the future, "I shall be what I shall be". It can even be the imperfect, "I used to be what I used to be". The name already appears in the Book of Genesis.

  Tradition holds that the four-letter name is believed to derive from this phrase. That belief is why some lists count "I Am that I Am" as an extra protected name.

  4142444546

• 4. My Lords

  ›

  About 450 times in the Hebrew Bible, the word Adonai appears, and it nearly always refers to God. Its form is adon, "Lord", joined to the first-person singular pronoun, so it literally means "My Lords". Grammarians usually explain the plural as akin to the royal "we", a plural of majesty taken as singular, much as with Elohim.

  The final syllable puzzles readers. Hebrew would normally give the vowel patach there, but Adonai uses kamatz. Professor Yoel Elitzur calls this a normal change when a Hebrew word turns into a name. He cites Nathan, Yitzhak and Yigal as other examples.

  The singular forms adon and adoni, "my lord", were ordinary titles. The First Book of Samuel uses them for kings, and elsewhere they mark distinguished persons. The Phoenicians used adon as a title of Tammuz, which is the origin of the Greek god's name Adonis. Only very occasionally does it point to God in the singular, as in Psalm 136:3. Deuteronomy 10:17 stacks the titles "God of gods" and "Lord of lords" beside the four-letter name. The 2006 Jewish Publication Society translation renders it "For your God יהוה is God supreme and Lord supreme".

  When speaking the four letters fell out of use in the Hellenistic period, Jews may have started dropping that name wherever Adonai stood beside it. The practice may then have grown to cover the name in spoken prayer and written scripture. Adonai became the most common reverent substitute, and so it too came to be considered un-erasable. Most prayer books avoid spelling it out and print two yodhs in its place.

  The process did not stop there. Through chumra, the idea of building a fence around the Torah, Orthodox Jews came to treat Adonai as too holy to say outside prayer, so they say HaShem. Ashkenazi Hebrew gave the word its own variant pronunciations: Adaunoi, Adoinoi and Adonoi.

  The word baal followed the opposite path. It meant "owner", and by extension "lord", "master" and "husband". In some early contexts and personal names, Baal and Baali, "My Lord", were synonyms of Adon and Adonai. After the time of Solomon, and especially after Jezebel tried to promote the worship of Melqart, the Lord of Tyre, the name clung to the Canaanite storm god Baʿal Haddu. It was gradually avoided as a title for Yahweh, and several names containing it were rewritten with bosheth, "shame". The prophet Hosea scolded the Israelites for still using the word, and foretold a day when they would call God Ishi and no longer Baali.

  1931363473

• 5. Gods In The Plural

  ›

  The names Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Ariel, Daniel, Ezekiel, Israel, Immanuel and Ishmael all end or begin with El. They are usually read as "God", so that Gabriel means "Strength of God" and Michael means "Who is like God?". Israel means "one who has struggled with God", and Immanuel means "God is with us".

  El appears in Ugaritic, Phoenician and other late Bronze Age and Iron Age texts from the Levant. There it serves both as a generic word for god and as the name of the head of the divine pantheon. In the Hebrew Bible it appears alone only rarely, as in Genesis 33:20, el elohei yisrael, "Mighty God of Israel". Usually an epithet is attached, as in El Olam, "Everlasting El", El Hai, "Living El", and El Gibbor, "El of Strength". The form Eloah also exists.

  Elohim is the plural of Eloah, and it is identical to the ordinary word elohim meaning "gods". It is cognate with the Ugaritic 'lhm, the pantheon of Canaanite gods who were children of El. Yet when the Hebrew Bible uses it for God, the verbs that go with it are singular. Hebrew has a few other words like this. Behemoth is one, and the Modern Hebrew ba'alim, "owner", looks plural but takes a singular verb.

  A number of scholars trace the word to a Semitic root yl, "to be first, powerful", despite some difficulties. Elohim would then be the plural construct "powers", and the sense becomes "He is the Power over powers". Other theologians dispute this. Classics scholar Richard Toporoski asserts that plurals of majesty first appeared in the reign of Diocletian, from 284 to 305 CE. Gesenius, in his Hebrew Grammar, argues that the plural God uses in Genesis 1:26, Genesis 11:7 and Isaiah 6:8 is wrongly explained as a royal "we". He calls it a plural of self-deliberation and says a plural of respectful address is foreign to Hebrew.

  Mark S. Smith sees the plural as possible evidence of how early Jewish monotheism formed. References to "the gods" in earlier oral tradition may have been read as aspects of one God. Or they may have been absorbed into monolatry, where the god of a certain city was accepted after the fact as the God of Israel. A further reading treats the -im ending as abstraction, as in chayyim, "life", and betulim, "virginity". Then Elohim means "divinity" or "deity". In many passages it refers to non-Israelite deities, powerful men, judges and even angels, as in Exodus 21:6 and Psalms 8:5.

  The Aramaic word Elah comes from Proto-Semitic ʔil. It appears in Ezra, in Daniel, and in Jeremiah 10:11, the only verse in that whole book written in Aramaic. Daniel 2:47 uses Elah Elahin, "God of gods".

  3436393837

• 6. Almighty, Armies And Others

  ›

  In the Book of Genesis, Hagar gives God a name after he speaks to her through an angel. Her phrase, El Roi, literally means "God of Seeing Me". The King James Version translates it as "Thou God seest me".

  El Shaddai is conventionally translated "God Almighty". Its etymology is tied to the influence of the Ugaritic religion on Judaism. Translating El as "god" is straightforward in Ugaritic and Canaanite languages. The literal meaning of Shaddai, however, remains a subject of debate.

  Elyon occurs alone and in combination with El, YHWH and Elohim, chiefly in poetic and later biblical passages. In Modern Hebrew the adjective means "supreme", as in the phrase for the Supreme Court. El Elyon has traditionally been translated as "God Most High". The Phoenicians used what appears to be a similar name, which the Greeks wrote as Έλιονα.

  Tzevaot, also spelled Tzevaoth, Tsebaoth or Sabaoth, literally means "Armies" and is usually translated "Hosts". In the early books it refers to armies or armed hosts of men, and it is not a divine epithet in the Torah, Joshua or Judges. Starting in the Books of Samuel, "Lord of Hosts" appears hundreds of times. It runs through the Prophetic books, the Psalms and Chronicles.

  The Hebrew word Sabaoth passed into Ancient Greek as sabaōth and into Latin as Sabaoth, with no declension. Tertullian and other Fathers of the Church used it to mean an "Army of angels of God".

  5436346072

• 7. Everyday And Hidden Names

  ›

  Leviticus 24:11 and Deuteronomy 28:58 give the Hebrew phrase that became HaShem, "the Name". Jewish practice restricts the names of God to liturgical settings. So in casual conversation, even in languages other than Hebrew, some Jews say HaShem. When quoting the Tanakh or prayers, some pious Jews replace Adonai with it, and audio recordings of prayer services generally do the same. In writing it is often abbreviated to ה׳.

  In modern Israeli society, HaShem has spread beyond religious circles. Secular and traditional Jews use it in idioms of gratitude or hope such as Baruch HaShem, "Thank God", literally "Blessed be the Name", and Be'Ezrat HaShem. The Samaritans use the Aramaic equivalent Shema, written ࠔࠌࠀ, in much the same situations.

  Talmudic authors found another name in Gideon's altar. Judges 6:24 calls it YHVH-Shalom, and on that basis Pereq ha-Shalom in Shabbat 10b says the name of God is "Peace". One Talmudic opinion says a person should greet others with shalom so the word is not forgotten in exile. But the greeting is forbidden in unholy places such as a bathroom, because of the holiness of the name.

  Shekhinah, from a root meaning "dwelling", names the presence of God descended to live among humanity. The word never appears in the Hebrew Bible, and later rabbis used it for God dwelling in the Tabernacle or among Israel. It is the only principal name of God that is grammatically feminine. Some believed it named a female counterpart of God. That is unlikely, because it is always used with an article, and Semitic languages do not do that with proper names. It may not be a name at all, only a description of God's presence. Reform and Reconstructionist communities seeking gender-neutral language increasingly use The Eternal One, a phrase with a root in Genesis 21:33, which calls God the Everlasting God.

  Beyond these lies a long shelf of uncommon names. Ribono shel'Olam means "Master of the World", and Rofeh Cholim means "Healer of the Sick". Eibishter, a Yiddish form, means "The One Above". Aravat, "Father of Creation", is mentioned once in 2 Enoch, which places God on the tenth heaven. The Palestinian Targums use Dibbura, "The Word". The Aramaic Targums also have Memra d'Adonai, in which the written four-letter name appears in forms such as YYY, YWY and YY, yet is pronounced Adonai.

  Kabbalah added its own names. Ein Sof, "Endless", came into use after 1300 CE. Spelling out four divine names letter by letter yields a name of forty-five letters. Spelling out the letters of the four-letter name alone gives יוד הא ואו הא, whose gematria value is also 45. The 72-fold name comes from three verses in Exodus 14:19-21, each containing 72 letters. Reading them boustrophedonically produces 72 names of three letters each, and some regard this as the Shem HaMephorash.

  5657626664

• 8. Ink And Erasure

  ›

  A professional scribe, called a sofer, writes Torah scrolls, tefillin and mezuzah, and he must treat each divine name as sacred. Before copying any name or title he prepares mentally to sanctify it. Once he begins a name, he cannot stop until it is finished. He may not break off even to greet a king.

  If he makes a mistake, the name cannot be scraped away. A line is drawn around the error to show it is canceled. The entire page then goes into a genizah, a burial place for scripture, and he begins a new page.

  The rule comes from a passage that orders Israel to break down pagan altars, burn their sacred poles and destroy the names of the gods worshiped there. It then adds that Israel must not do the same to its own God. The rabbis concluded that God's name must never be erased or blotted out. The general halachic opinion limits this to the sacred Hebrew names and excludes euphemistic references. Authorities dispute whether the English word "God", or its equivalent in another language, may be erased. They also disagree on whether law or only custom forbids it, directly or as a precautionary fence.

  The tradition draws a sharp line around what counts. The name Jah is protected because it forms part of the four-letter name. In the second century the tanna Jose ben Halafta considered Tzevaot a common name, and Rabbi Ishmael said the same of Elohim. Words such as "Merciful", "Gracious" and "Faithful" describe attributes that humans share. Early authorities held that those words and names in other languages may be written and erased freely.

  Some moderns advise caution even there. Some Jews write "G-d" and "L-rd" so that no name appears in full. Others use HaShem, or an abbreviation such as BH for B'ezrat Hashem, "with the help of the Name".

  Even arithmetic bends around the name. Many Orthodox Jews say Ṭēt-Vav, "9-6", for the number fifteen, because the usual Yōd-Hē, "10-5", spells Jah. For sixteen they say Ṭēt-Zayin, "9-7", instead of Yōd-Vav, "10-6".

  578169