Hebrew Nuggets: YHVH or YHWH?
Not many know that both YHVH and YHWH are prounounced as our modern day V in english. They are both pronounced Yehovah. The shortened version of the Father’s name changes a vowel and becomes Yah.
We have some people saying the V in the YHVH is actually a W (waw) making it YHWH. We have historical evidence back to the time of Ezekiel that the Vav is pronounced correctly with a V sound, not a waw .. the waw comes from Aramaic, not Hebrew. Most Jewish populations in the 1800’s when this research was conducted pronounced the Vav with a V sound. Even opposite factions within Judaism agreed it was a V sound. Only a handful of Jewish groups who were heavily influenced by Aramaic, adopted the waw since there is no V sound in Aramaic. YHVH in Hebrew is pronounced Yud Hay Vav Hay.
The German scholars of the 19th-century assumed ‘vav’ was pronounced ‘waw’, but there is lots of evidence that this just isn’t so. Aside from loan words transcribed into Greek and Latin — and from Ionian Greek into Hebrew [ca. 9th-BCE], all you have to do is look at the forms of the Phoenician vav that were borrowed by the Greeks and Etruscans back in the 9th-8th BCE to set you straight on this. (You can also check out Sardo-Phoenician [10th] and Malto-Phoenician [12th] to see the letter forms.
In the original 1611 KJV the Father’s name IEHOVAH was on the title page. The J was interchangable with the I so they would have read this as YEHOVAH. They realized here that if you use the word LORD it would change his name and wouldn’t make any sense which is exactly what many translators have done.
Psalms 83:18 That men may knowe, that thou, whose name alone is IEHOVAH: art the most High ouer all the earth.
KJV 1611
Recorded in the Mishnah, or the writings of the early Rabbi’s says that a man is required to greet his fellow man using the name. This was their original Jewish tradition that predates the tradition of not speaking the name, the one that most Jews today will be familiar with.
They took this from Ruth 2:4. “And see, Bo‛az had come from Běyth Leḥem, and said to the reapers, Yehovah be with you!” And they answered him, Yehovah bless you!”
When someone was coming you blessed them in the name of Yehovah.
Several biblical texts prove that the letter vav/waw—the sixth letter in the Hebrew alphabet was pronounced as vav, not waw. This being the case, this has tremendous ramifications how to pronounce the personal name of Elohim—YHVH called the tetragrammaton. This information would, therefore invalidate the idea that the tetragrammaton is written YHWH as opposed to YHVH. Moreover, this information would also invalidate the several common modern pronunciations of the tetragrammaton including Yahweh, Yehowah, Y’huwah, or any other pronunciation that contains a w sound.