JAHWEH. - Divine name, called the "tetragrammaton" because it consists of 4 letters, the most used in the Hebrew Bible (approx. 6823 times), revealed by God Himself to Moses when sanctioning His new relations with Israel in the covenant of Sinai (Ex. 3, 13-17; 6, 2-4). God Himself explains: "I am who I am" (Ex. 3, 14), that is, the eternally existent, to whom existence belongs by nature, who assists (v. 12) His nation; immutable and therefore infallible in keeping His promises (U. Cassuto [V. BIBLICA.], p. 85).
J. is the only divine name in all Semitic languages that has a preformative verbal formation (= imperfect of the verb hāh, hīh; in Greek: ὁ ὤν; "he who is"; A. Vaccari, J. [V. BIBLICA.], pp. 5 sq., 9 sq.). Among the Jews, the reverential custom prevailed after the exile of not pronouncing the sacred name par excellence, replacing it with the generic 'adhōnaj ("my Lord"); they vocalized the tetragrammaton as 'adhōnaj, which resulted in the erroneous reading Jēhōwah (Jehovah), already attested in R. Martini's Pugio fidei from 1270, but much earlier. As the equivalent of 'adhōnaj, the Septuagint has Κύριος, and the Vulgate Dominus for J.
J., the full form, is the original one (found in the only ancient document mentioning J.: the Mesha Stele, line 18); from it derive the short forms: Jāh, in the Elephantine papyri, and in theophoric names alongside Jāh, Jō. It was believed (1932) that the divine name J. had been found in the texts of Rās Samrah (mt, VI, pl. X, lines 13-15; C. Gordon, Ugaritic Literature, Rome 1949, p. 26) in the form Jāh, which would therefore be the primitive one (K. G. Kuhn, A. L. Williams, R. Dussaud). But the identification amounts to a pure possibility; nor does it explain the transition from Jāh to Jāh (H. Bauer, O. Eissfeldt, A. Vaccari, A. Bea). Hitherto, every attempt to derive J. from the Egyptian pantheon (D. Völter, W. M. Müller, J. Lieblein), or from the Babylonian one (F. Delitzsch, A. Loda), or from the Kenites (K. Budde, H. Gressmann, E. Sellin, C. Toussaint) has proved arbitrary and vain (C. Toussaint [V. BIBLICA.], pp. 218-225; J. Plessis [V. BIBLICA.], col. 837 ff.; F. X. Kortleitner, Commentationes biblicae, III, Innsbruck 1930, pp. 90-93; VIII, ibid. 1933, pp. 5-8). The verbal form itself contradicts this. J. is a name not created by men, but revealed by J. Himself (Vaccari).
BIBL.: F. Prat, Jéhovah, in DB, III, coll. 1220-44; J. Plessis, Babylone et la Bible, in DBL, I, col. 837 ff.; L. Hennequin, Éléphantine, in DBL, II, col. 990 ff.; J. P. van Kasteren, Yahvé et El-Schaddai, in La science catholique, 8 (1894), pp. 296-315; M.-J. Lagrange, La révélation du nom divin «Tetragrammaton», in Revue biblique, 2 (1893), pp. 239-50; id., El et Yahvé, ibid., 12 (1902), pp. 370-75; id., Encore le nom de Yahvé, ibid., 16 (1907), pp. 383-86; C. Robert, La révélation du nom divin Jéhovah, ibid., 3 (1894), pp. 161-81; S. Landersdorfer, Der Gottesname Jhush in den Keilschriften, in Bibliotheze Zeitschrift, 10 (1912), pp. 24-35; G. R. Driver, The evidence for the name «J. » outside the Old Test., in Old Test. essay, London 1927, pp. 18-24; M. Noth, Die israelischen Personennamen im Rahmen der gemeinismischen Namensgebung, Stuttgart 1928, pp. 101-104; A. Loda, Israël des origines au milieu du VIIIe siècle, Paris 1930, p. 371 ff.; C. Toussaint, L'ancien jaloïsme, ibid. 1931, pp. 215-29; H. Bauer, Die Gottheiten von Bas Schamra, in Zeitschrift für die alttest. Wissenschaft, 51 (1933), p. 92 ff.; A. Vaccari, in News Domini, in Verbum Domini, 13 (1933), pp. 3-7; id., J. e i nomi divini nelle religioni semitiche, in Biblica, 17 (1936), pp. 1-10; U. Cassuto, La questione della Genesi, Florence 1934, pp. 19 ff., 24 ff.; F. Ceuppens, De historia primavera, Rome 1934, p. 96 ff.; G. Eissfeldt, Neue Zeugnisse für die Aussprache des Tetrargamms als J., in Zeitschrift für die alttest. Wissenschaft, 53 (1935), pp. 59-76; K. G. Kuhn, Jn. Jho, Jhush. Über die Entstehung des Namens J., in Orientalische Studien E. Littmann, Leiden 1935, pp. 25-42; R. Dussaud, Les découvertes de Bas Shamra et l'Ancien Testament, Paris 1936, p. 107; A. L. Williams, The Tetragrammaton-J., name or surrogate?, in Zeitschrift für die alttest. Wissenschaft, 54 (1936), pp. 262-69; A. Vincent, La religion des Judoe-Arameens d'Éléphantine, Paris 1937, pp. 25-60; A. Bea, Archäologisches und Religionsgeschichtliches aus Ugarit-Ras Samra, in Biblica, 20 (1939), p. 440 ff.; G. Mercati, Sulla scrittura del tetragramma nelle antiche versioni greche del Vecchio Testamento, ibid., 22 (1941), pp. 339-66; F. Zorell, Lexicon hebraicum, Rome 1940 ff., p. 228 ff.; R. Dussaud, Yahvé, in Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et des Belles Lettres, 1940, pp. 364-70; W. A. Irwin, The tetragrammaton, in The journal of more eastern Studies, 3 (1944), pp. 257-59; J. A. Montgomery, The Hebrew divine name and the personal pronoun hā', in The journal of biblicae Literature, 63 (1944), pp. 161-63. Francesco Spadafora
