In your Bible, you will often see written LORD.

Take Isaiah 42:8

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I am the Lord; that is my name;
my glory I give to no other,
nor my praise to carved idols.

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However, that isn't what God says. He says "I am YHWH, that is my name;"

My understanding is we don't know exactly how it was pronounced because Hebrew at the time of the OT didn't have vowels. It is believed from Greek writings that it is pronounced Yahweh. Jehovah was made from overlaying the vowels of Adonai on to YHWH.

Anyway, point being that LORD isn't the name of God, but a word used as a substitution.

Why do we do that?

I understand the issue from a Jewish issue, but I don't see it being a problem from a Christian perspective. We do not have any issues with writing God or uttering his name. We as Christians do not say things like "the name."

If God gave us his name, why do we substitute a title for it? Does anyone have a Bible translation that actually uses YHWH?

I think the bro bible translates it that way

I did a video on this, because I find the whole thing fascinating. Many English translations will spend untold amounts of time making sure every word is exactly right. Then they will wholesale replace the most important word in the OT with something generic with an entirely different meaning.

I don't get too hung up on the pronunciation. I don't speak Hebrew, so I'd probably mess it up anyway. There is consensus, however, on the meaning of God's name. It's a contraction that simultaneously means "I was/I am/I will be". So you could call Him "eternal" and that would be a decent translation.

However, God does not merely exist, He lives. In fact, one of the most common oaths in the OT is "as surely as YHVH lives" implying that Hebrew understanding of God's name and nature is that He lived/lives/will live.

So anywhere I see YHVH I don't try and pronounce the Hebrew name, but instead use the phrase "The Everliving" to try and convey the meaning of His name.

Yahweh isn't used consistently through the Old Testament. They even divide the authors by the term used for God. And it isn't the name always used by God in the text.

This was a habit picked up from early jews and incorporated into the vulgate. As Rocag noted, it has a positive effect as being generic and not a proper name as early jews would have used. It also eliminates the issue Watson brought up about the other names for god (e.g. EL, Elyon, Elohim, El shaddai).

For instance in Deuteronomy 32:8-9 EL and YHWH are different things. But the KJV mistranslates and calls EL "most high" and YHWH "lord" changing the meaning of the verse.

Pro Sandy,
Actually, you haven't quoted Isaiah 42:8 properly. It should read LORD, not Lord. We know that LORD means Yahweh.

What would you prefer the text to say when it reads "LORD"? - Yawheh?

Longstanding tradition. In the Septuagint, The Name was translated as "Kyrios" ("Lord").

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Pro Sandy,
Actually, you haven't quoted Isaiah 42:8 properly. It should read LORD, not Lord. We know that LORD means Yahweh.

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Ok, I'll blame autocorrect

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What would you prefer the text to say when it reads "LORD"? - Yawheh?

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yes. That's what my posts says I think we should write.

The most accurate way to write it is in the Hebrew (can't do the font here).

It's better to just leave it like that.

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It's better to just leave it like that.

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Why?

We preserve this in our title for Christ "the existing one". On many icons Christ has three letters - omega, omicron, nu - in his halo. This literally means the being or he who is, which is from the Septuagint in exodus 3:14 - I am he who exists.

My understanding is that YHWH wasn't pronounced and the word for lord (Adonai) was said instead. So the tradition of using the word lord in lieu of the name is old.

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My understanding is that YHWH wasn't pronounced and the word for lord (Adonai) was said instead. So the tradition of using the word lord in lieu of the name is old.

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I believe that is a relatively new practice. We see in Ruth that common people who use it in greeting one another. Boaz tells he reapers, "may YHWH be with you." And they respond "may YHWH bless you." And nowhere in the mosaic law is any prohibition on speaking the name.

Asked my mom last night. She's a Methodist clergy member. Her explanation was that Yahweh isn't a name like John or James, but a concept. When God tells Moses that he is "I AM WHO I AM," he isn't giving a name to identify him from the other gods that the Egyptians worship, but saying HE IS.

I still find it odd that we intentionally substitute it out.

The Divine name was used at one time, but not carelessly. Def. nothing like oh "" as many say today with God. Then at some time it was decided to only use the name, as well as many of His names, in the Temple. When the Temple was destroyed the knowledge of how to pronounce the name was soon lost. Therefore it is not pronounced today. Anyone who claims to know with certainty is just clueless. There are about 13 ways to pronounce the name and no one knows the correct way, despite the claims of many.

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It's better to just leave it like that.

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Why?

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Because that's the way HE wrote it. If you want to be as careful as you can, then it's best to just leave it as He wrote it. For practical reasons, we change it to some transliteration. Like the practical reason that I don't know how to type the Hebrew font on TexAgs.

As for saying it, the bible tells us to declare his name. Yeah, exactly how to do that seems to be debatable. But I'll take a deliberate and thoughtful attempt to say His name, no matter what accent you put on it, over a deliberate and thoughtful attempt to hide His name by some title.

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Like the practical reason that I don't know how to type the Hebrew font on TexAgs.

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TexAgs seems to have trouble dealing with non-ASCII characters in general. You have to type them as HTML numeric character references, like this:

אבגדהוזחטיךכלםמןנסעףפץצקרשת

We know His name. It is Jesus Christ.

His full name transliterated into English as best I can is:

Yah'wah Yeshua Ha'Mashiac

I thought this was going to be about some new translation Joel Esteen just released, or something to like that.