Page 69 - SABBATH

Epilogue

The Usage of Divine Names

ince I was a youth I have often wondered why the most common English
Stranslations of the scriptures have chosen to not represent the names of the Father
and the Son as they originally occurred in the Hebrew and Greek, but instead they replaced
the names of deity with titles that are not names at all. At one time when I was yet a very
young man I began to go through my Bible and replace each occurrence of “the LORD,” “the
Lord,” “God,” “the Lord God,” and other such renderings with the actual divine names and
titles that occurred in the ancient manuscripts. This proved to be a daunting task since the
name “Yahweh” alone occurs over 6,800 times in the Old Testament.
For various reasons the translators down through the years have chosen to render the
divine names as something other than that which is accurate and original. One reason is due
to a misapplication of the third commandment that Moses brought down on the stone
tablets from Mount Sinai. The commandment I refer to is the one which instructs the
followers of Yahweh to not use His name in a vain manner. The command is often rendered
in the following fashion in popular translations.

Exodus 20:7
"You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not
leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.”
(NAS)

You will note the uppercase spelling of the word LORD in this verse. If you were to
read the translators’ notes for this Bible version, and many others, you would find that the
translators chose to replace the name Yahweh with the title LORD everywhere that it
occurs. Additionally, the word God is a translation of the word Elohim, which denotes a
divine being. This verse could be more authentically rendered in the following manner.

You shall not lift up or bear the name of Yahweh your Elohim falsely, deceptively, or
in vain, for Yahweh will not regard him as guiltless who lifts up or bears His name
in a false, deceptive, or vain manner.

The Hebrew word that is often rendered as in vain is translated as false just a few
verses later in the commandment “Thou shalt not bear false witness,” so one can readily see
that the Hebrew word holds different shades of meaning. The Elohim of Israel whose name
is Yahweh was declaring that His name was not to be used indiscriminately. The name
Yahweh was to be used with great integrity.
It was the practice of Jewish scribes, when making copies of the scriptures, to not
write out the name Yahweh when it occurred in the text, for they misconstrued the above
commandment to mean that Yahweh’s name should not ever be written or uttered, for it
was a holy name. Indeed it is a holy name, but Yahweh never commanded that it should not
be written or uttered. He commanded that it should not be used in a false, deceptive, or vain
way.
For example, today when men give oaths they often swear on the Bible, or they swear