“From the rising of the sun even to its setting, My Name will be great among the Gentiles,” says Yahweh Sabaoth.
(Malachi 1: 11)
_____________
#####
If you are on the SnyderTalk email distribution list, clicking on the title at the top of the email will open SnyderTalk. Emails don’t contain videos that are very informative.
#####
Yahweh is Elohim, Our Savior
What I am about to tell you may not mean much to some of you today, but in the days ahead it will become important to you.
If it is meaningful to you today, rejoice. If it isn’t meaningful to you today, just store it away in your memory so that you can call it to mind at the appropriate time.
If you look at a Tanach that is written in Hebrew, you will notice that the Hebrew letters have vowel markings. Ancient Hebrew did not have vowel markings. The Hebrew letters were consonants or semi-vowels. Thus, the correct pronunciation of Hebrew words was dependent on being familiar with the words spoken in everyday usage.
For all practical purposes, Hebrew became a dead language for most of the world when the common era began. Common era is designated by CE or AD. Hebrew was reintroduced when Israel became a modern state in 1948. During the years when Hebrew wasn’t spoken or understood by the vast majority of people, the decision was made to create vowel markings to preserve pronunciations of words in the ancient language. The process of creating and communicating the vowel marking system took about 500 years, from roughly 500 AD or CE to roughly 1000 AD or CE.
Today, when you hear someone say that they have discovered ancient Hebrew manuscripts with vowel markings that reveal the correct pronunciation of Hebrew words, you know that they are referring to manuscripts that were written in 1000 AD/CE or later. In other words, they were written more than 1000 years after Hebrew became a dead language.
I want to draw your attention to the most important Hebrew word in existence. It’s called the Tetragrammaton. It’s the Name of our Creator.
The Tetragrammaton is a four-letter word. In modern Hebrew, it’s Yod Hey Vav Hey. In ancient Hebrew, it was Yod Hey Waw Hey. The vav sound is Germanized. It came along much later.
In the mid-second century BC or BCE, Jewish religious leaders forbade the articulation of our Creator’s Name. The penalty for violating their decree was death. For details, see His Name is Yahweh: Revised Edition.
Jewish people were taught to say Adonai or Hashem when they saw the Tetragrammaton. Neither of those words is a name. If Jewish people wanted to say a name instead, they were taught to say Yehovah. It is not our Creator’s name. It is a surrogate name that people could use without violating the rabbis’ decree since it isn’t the correct Name of Elohim.
That was roughly 1200 years before the vowel marking process was implemented. When scribes applied vowel markings to our Creator’s Name in the Tanach, they used vowel markings that produced the sound Yehovah in keeping with the decision of ancient rabbis 1200 years earlier, but again, Yehovah is not our Creator’s Name.
Yahweh is our Creator’s Name. It is the Name that is above every name. It’s the Name that Yahweh will place on our foreheads. It is the Name in which we have salvation.
- “I, even I, am Yahweh. There is no savior besides Me.” (Isaiah 43: 11)
- “Therefore My people shall know My Name; therefore in that day I am the One who is speaking, ‘Here I am.'” (Isaiah 52: 6)
- “Therefore behold, I am going to make them know—this time I will make them know My power and My might; and they shall know that My Name is Yahweh.” (Jeremiah 16: 21)
- “Behold, the days are coming,” declares Yahweh, “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch; and He will reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land. In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely; and this is His Name by which He will be called, ‘Yahweh our Righteousness.’” (Jeremiah 23: 5-6)
If you know Yahweh’s Name, declare it. If you know Yahweh, rejoice. You are one of the chosen people.
#####
_____________
#####
#####
_____________
#####
“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17: 22-24)
