Biblical Hebrew Forum

["yahua'sef" <gs02wmr AT panther.Gsu.EDU>]

On Fri, 30 Apr 1999, George Athas wrote:
> Hi Joseph! (Or should I call you Wondell? I don't really know who it is I'm 
> writing to.)

Shalom George! Well I prefer just to be called Joseph or Yahua'sef or
Yocef, whichever u prefer. I just gave out my "birth name" because I
thought it was obligatory, and the previous message struck me with such
sincerity that I said 'Why not?' to myself.

> 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.

You present some interesting points. I will definitely have to whip out
the old library card and get on the books as soon as I can. Your last
comment is striking.

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

Hu Ya'HuaH (He is Oh WHo He Is).

;-)

If only the tribe of YAHUdAH were around, they'd have a fit! ;)


lehi'tirot