What is the significance of the name YHWH?

[trumpet152]

Any ideas?

 

[Marilena]

The significance is it is Gods name

 

[jesusluv]

YHWH or http://www.hiscovenantministries.org/images/yhwh_5.gif in Hebrew

    **God's name the "I Am", reveals the fullness of His nature, all of God's nature and attributes are embodied in His name.**

Originally Hebrew didn’t have any vowels, and was written right to left, although some of the consonants carry with them the indication of associated vowel sounds.For instance, the “Y” is associated with the sound of a “long e”, as in “team”. The H is associated with the sound of a “short a” as “ah!” The Vav is associated with the vowel “u” and produces the sound in the word “cool.” Thus, the name of the Creator sounds something like “ee-ah oo’ ah”, with the accent on the second of the three syllables, as is the pronunciation convention in Hebrew.

     **A brief study in linguistics.**

     To translate is to explain the meaning of one language using the words of another.

     To transliterate is to spell a word using the letters of another language.

     "**I am**" is the English translation of the meaning of God's personal name.

     The English transliteration of God's personal name is **YHWH**, with vowels added, **YAHWEH**, translated to **I AM WHO I AM.**


     No matter what language you use, whether you translate or transliterate, **YHWH's** name means "**I am that I am**" and it directly points to His real name, which is the same in all languages.

I got all this from hiscovenantministries.org/yhwh.htm which is not a Catholic site and may be something way out there, but that sounded like a good explanation to me.

 

[JimG]

Or it could be translated: “I Am Who Am”

 

[Semper_Fi_1]

JimG:

Or it could be translated: “I Am Who Am”

Or, I am Who Is, or I am That I am. You get the idea

God’s name, as revealed to Moses, shows us His omnipotence/omnipresence and is the basis for our monotheistic faith.

 

[JimG]

For the ancient Israelites, a person’s name was in some way supposed to state his essential nature, and the name “I AM” certainly does that for God.

Philosophically, one would like to take the name “I Am,” which God gives himself, to refer to God’s eternal unchanging Being. And that’s OK. But the ancient Israelites were not a philosophical people. For them the name had a more dynamic meaning than can be conveyed through our variants of the verb “to be.” For them, the emphasis is more on divine activity. They might have understood the name as meaning something like “I cause to be what is, or what happens."

 

[Stephen_Korsman]

YHWH or http://www.hiscovenantministries.org/images/yhwh_5.gif in Hebrew

    **God's name the "I Am", reveals the fullness of His nature, all of God's nature and attributes are embodied in His name.**

I attended a talk by a Jewish history professor, who explained that if you take the Hebrew letters for “I am” and “I was” and “I will be” and superimpose them on each other, you get the YHWH letters you posted the image to.

God bless,
Stephen

 

[trogiah]

I interpret it to mean that Moses heard fhe voice of Reality coming from the burning bush. He knew that he was hearing undeniable absolute truth and this was the only name that could express it.

Consider the name of God in light of the question “Does God exist?” (I know some theologian wrote a very long book with that as a title. I never read the book and I don’t intend to)

The name of God gives us a very simple answer to that question:

Existence is God.

Moses came to know Existence as a personal friend. Jesus came to know Reality the way an only and most beloved son knows his own father. And Jesus invites us to come to know Reality in the same way.

That is what I think of when I consider the name of God.

peace

-Jim