Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Awohili AT aol.com]

In all honesty, I have not seen anything definitive that 'puts a firm end'  
to any of the various theories about the the pronunciation of the Name.  It  
seems to me that everything is still very much on the table, and despite all  
that has been posted here -- much of it very interesting and even instructive 
-- 
 the last word has yet to be said.
 
Maybe one day it can be said, 'THIS IS IT!," but I don't think that day has  
yet come.
 
Nothing wrong with continuing to work on it, though.
 
Solomon Landers
 
In a message dated 08/10/2005 10:03:33 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
peterkirk AT qaya.org writes:

On  10/08/2005 13:02, Read, James C wrote:

>Thank you very much for this  post. I think this puts a firm end to the 
Yahwah theory.
>It is  perfectly clear that the first two syllables are Yeho/Yahu. The only 
question  
>that remains is the vowel in the final syllable.
>If yhwh is a  3m.s. YiQToL then both Qal and Hiphil take segol as the final  
vowel.
>
>A final 'a'vowel would support the 'He was ,he is, he  will be' theory 
presented in the 
>article provided earlier from the  catholic encyclopedia.
>
>  
>
I have just noticed a  new piece of data concerning the pronunciation of 
YHWH. I have realised  that the word YHWH appears to have a construct 
state, in the compound form  YHWH C:BA'OT "Lord of hosts". But this 
compound form is consonantally  identical to the absolute state (and also 
vocalised the same). If YHWH was  simply the spelling of a noun form 
ending in -AH (with qamets), like  Y:HOWAH, the construct state would end 
in -AT (with patah) and so be  consonantally YHWT. But this form is never 
found. This is perhaps an  argument against the form Y:HOWAH. However, 
nouns ending in -EH (with  segol) derived from lamed-he verbs are 
consonantally unchanged in the  construct (but the segol changes to 
tsere). See GKC 89e,f. This suggests  that a form like YAHWEH is more likely.