Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George Athas <gathas AT mail.usyd.edu.au>]

Hi Joseph! (Or should I call you Wondell? I don't really know who it is I'm 
writing to.)

> > How would you break this down? Are you treating HUWA as a verb? Or are 
> > you treating it as a personal
> > pronoun?
>
> Now, I know I am no grammar specialist or a linguist, far FAR from being
> a scholar to some of the professors here - but I would take it as pronoun.
> But who knows?When trying to analyze the Tetragrammaton its dangerous
> waters we tread, and a slippery slope we embark on. I was simply offering
> what I thought about it and what i was taught.

Well, unfortunately, if HUWA is a pronoun we've never seen anything like it 
before. The pronoun for "He" is
spelled HW' (heh-waw-aleph). Also, aleph's are silent in Hebrew, so the 
pronoun for "He" is pronounced just as
"hoo" ('oo' as in 'book'), without an "ah" sound on the end. This certainly 
isn't what the name YHWH contains
because aleph's just don't drop out of words.

The possibility, though, that HUWA represents a verb is also troublesome. It 
would have to be a perfect verb
(that is, a completed action) of either the Hophal (causative passaive) stem 
or the Pual (causative/intensive
passive) stem. A hophal is immediately ruled out because we don't have enough 
letters to form a root. It could
only be a geminate verb of root waw-heh-heh, but in Hebrew no roots begin 
with waw - they all turned into
initial yodhs. But, even allowing for this possibility, what does the root 
mean? It certainly doesn't mean "to
be" or "to become".
The other possibility is a Pual, but this would mean considering the HWH in a 
passive stem - impossible by
nature if it means "to be" or "to become".
The only way that the last three letters HWH can be a verb is if they are a 
perfect active Qal verb, to be
pronounced as "hawa". In this case, the waw is definitely a consonant and not 
an elongated vowel. However, it
does strike me as odd that a name would begin with an exclamation "Oh". I 
think we'd have to look for another
meaning to YA. But it makes a lot more sense that the initial yodh be 
considered as a preformative of an
imperfect vowel - it would make perfect sense. After all, how many names are 
like this? Hundreds. How many
start with "Oh"? None that I know of. It also makes it very difficult to 
explain why we have the shortened form
"YAHH" (with a dagesh in the heh) if the heh is actually a completely 
different word and particle from the YA
part.

But, then again, Joseph, if YHWH gave himself his own name and decided that 
it was not one word but at least
two, who am I to argue? Who are you to argue? In the words of `Eli, "He is 
YHWH - he'll do what is good in his
own eyes." If that is the case, though, he is a completely baffling deity.

> [...] I just have trouble attempting to compartmentalize the most 
> mysterious and
> intruiguing name into some boxed set of rules and definition. For me, it
> defies all logic - and our attempts to use modern day grammar rules(or
> even ancient knowledge on the subject) is beyond futile, as enjoyable as
> it may be for personal knowledge. The quest is what fascinates me.

But then, Joseph, the name YHWH can mean all things to all men. If we can't 
use grammar to analyse it then it
may just as well mean "Kitchen Sink". It strikes me as an odd method to relax 
all the rules and norms of
language (which you would admit that YHWH himself created) just to analyse a 
name which you would say is
unanalysable - but one which you are trying to analyse yourself. It's trying 
to box us in by saying "No boxes!"
It just seems illogical to me.

But, as I said, "He is YHWH."

Best regards,
GEORGE ATHAS
Dept of Semitic Studies,
University of Sydney
- Email: gathas AT mail.usyd.edu.au
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