I Belong to Yahweh!

I belong to Yahweh!
I am his, and he is mine.
He lives in me--astonishing, 
this truth I can’t absorb!
I live in him, in whom I have
my being, my true home,
my source of life and strength,
all my giftings and my soul,
the “who” I am, because of him.


“I AM,” he said to Moses
and he says it now to me:
the Alpha and Omega, 
the Truth from A to Z,
the One beginning and the end
but there’s no starting place,
no finish line that ties up time;
HE IS eternally. And
I am his, and he is mine!

Yes, I belong to Yahweh. And for years I didn’t know I could call him by his name!

Rich treasures of truth have been poured out on me through the work God gave me to do: Bible translation. I would never have guessed what a learning curve it would become, not only in terms of the fascinatingly complex Nyarafolo language I was sent to work in, but also through digging into the original language texts. A key principle of accurate translation is knowing what the message meant to those who first wrote and heard it. Then you try to capture that in the target language.

I have lots of stories I could share, but recently an essential key term came up for discussion again. Right now I am over here in Nyarafololand for a few weeks. Today we  gathered together a group of Nyarafolo pastors and some lay people who help us edit translation drafts in order to review our rendering of God’s personal name. In Hebrew it is YHWH, often called the tetragrammaton. In the Pentateuch and Psalms, which have already been published along with the New Testament in Nyarafolo, we have used a transliteration that is different from the ones  in other languages around here, but reflects the meaning of YHWH, which is based on the Hebrew verb “to be.” In Nyarafolo we have used Yewe, because ye is the verb “to be” and the suffix we makes it a noun: the being one/the one who is! Two related languages use Yawe, which is also a possibility. One of those always accompanies it with their word for God in order to identify it clearly, since a mispronunciation could confuse it with their word for “mother.” That could happen in Nyarafolo too.

That special rendering, Yewe, had been suggested by our former SIL partner here, David DeGraaf, who helped us get off to a good start in translation back in the ‘90s. Then he and his wife Karen were needed in other areas, and the young Nyarafolo man who had worked with him translating the Gospel of Mark went off to get further training. Moise and I leapt in to keep things going. Our first challenge? The Pentateuch, which is Genesis through Deuteronomy.

We had realized that those books were necessary background to understanding the Good News about Jesus, and much other teaching. And right away, in Genesis, we had to decide how to translate YHWH. I’ll make a long story short and explain why I am glad we chose to use Yewe rather than a substitute word like what we are used to reading in almost all English (and French) translations:  LORD (Kàfɔli in Nyarafolo).

I had grown up knowing the Lord, praying to him, singing about his name in songs like this one: Glory to his name, Glory to his name; There to my heart was the blood applied; Glory to his name!  (“Down at the Cross”).  I didn’t think much about what his name actually is; I was always told that his “name” just stood for his character. But then one summer while in college I went to the InterVarsity training camp in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Cedar Campus, and learned something new. The Bible teacher that year was using The New Jerusalem Bible, and I was astonished as I heard “Yahweh” and discovered that it was the way God had identified himself to people all through the Old Testament. When my parents asked me what I wanted to get for Christmas that year, I told them I wanted a copy of that Bible. I was off on a journey of discovery.

The more I studied the Word, both in doing translation and in seminary, the more I realized what a privilege it is to know that God wanted human beings to know his name—not just however they said “God” in their language, the one above all the world and transcendent, but as the one who actually wants them to know him, and to call him by his personal name. And his name has deep meaning that tells us he is eternal:

‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, who is, who was, and who is to come, the Almighty. (Rev. 1:8 NJB)

When he revealed himself to Moses, and Moses wanted to know who this was who was sending him back to Egypt to rescue the enslaved Israelites, he told him:

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.”And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.'” (Exod. 3:14 ESV)

God said to Moses, ‘I am he who is.’ And he said, ‘This is what you are to say to the Israelites, “I am has sent me to you.” ‘ (Exod. 3:14 NJB)

Putting I AM in capitals does make it stand out as his name! 

When we translated that part of Exodus into Nyarafolo, we found that the phrase “I am he who is”  ends with the words YE WE. It seemed like a miracle, something put in place by God himself to make himself known to the Nyarafolos by his name:  Yewe.  It is a language-friendly transliteration of YHWH, reflecting its meaning!

But now, comparing their translation to the French ones all around who use SEIGNEUR, “LORD,” and a similar rendering in an unrelated language that is a trade language, some workers in translation and the churches were wondering whether we should not just do like those others, and use the Nyarafolo word that means leader/chief/master (Kàfɔli). We dug into the consequences, and the use of YHWH in texts. And decided to stick with our rendering–I am delighted!

We had a very interesting discussion today. I had found an article published in The Journal of Translation in 2005, by Nico Daams, that provided an excellent outline for looking at YHWH in various constructions. It guided my choice of lining up verses in Nyarafolo that show how using God’s personal name actually has much more meaning that covering it up with “Lord.”  I’m going to try not to get too lost in scholarly ramblings here. I just want to share this one example that struck me in a whole new way this week as I prepared for the discussion:

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.¹ This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.'” ¹⁵ God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers– the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob– has sent me to you.’ “This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation. (Exod. 3:14 NIV)

God said that this is the name that he should be called always! And yet what name do we almost always use in English in this verse ? The LORD. It has been substituted throughout wherever YHWH is actually written. But it actually refers to his position as sovereign. It is not his personal name. Because of the way his name has been hidden, few of us even know what that really is.

There is a long history behind that. To summarize: After the books of the Old Testament had been written and not long before the coming of Jesus, the Jewish leaders decided that it was risky to keep pronouncing YHWH when they read it (most likely something like “Yahweh”), since they might take it “in vain” and disobey the commandment forbidding that:

“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. (Exod. 20:7 NAS)

So they said out loud their word for “Lord”, adonay, instead, whenever they saw YHWH. And starting in about the 6^th century AD they began adding vowels to their written language—previously just consonants—so that the untrained could more easily read the Hebrew. They put the vowels for adonay into YHWH. And centuries later, Masoretes (monks trained in Latin) misread that and transliterated it as Jehovah using those vowels that actually represented adonay, with different consonants since they didn’t have the y or the w in their language. 

And many people, not knowing this mistake, are still using Jehovah in songs etc., even though it has been taken out of nearly all English translations. Instead, there we have LORD. It hides his personal name. And people want to know his name, so that version—”Jehovah”–has stuck around.

A personal name is important. When I first came to Nyarafololand, my friends in town kept calling me “Madame.” I finally told them that it made me feel like I didn’t really belong, like an outlier of some kind. They said that “Linn” was strange to them. So I asked them to give me a name in their language, and they did. Even now, forty years later, when I tell new people I meet over here that my name is Penyuɔnɛkuɔ, they laugh with delight and begin building a friendship with me. Knowing my name, and me knowing their name, brings a new measure of closeness.

When God told his chosen people his name, it identified him for them that way: as a unique, personal God whose name also revealed that he truly exists, always has and always will, and who wants them to belong to him.

And now, those of us who have come to him are his chosen people too:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. (1 Pet. 2:9 NIV)

And we are to sing his praises, even the praise of his amazing name. Compare these translations. I find it much more inspiring to praise Yahweh, the I AM who loves me and will hold me forever, than just a word that means “Master”:

Praise the LORD, for the LORD is good; sing to his name, for it is pleasant! (Ps. 135:3 ESV)

Praise Yahweh, for Yahweh is good, make music for his name — it brings joy- (Ps. 135:3 NJB)

Praise Yahweh, for Yahweh is good; sing praise to His name, for it is delightful. (Ps. 135:3 CSB)

He is way above me, but he has brought me into his family and wants me to “be one” with him (cf. John 17). I am so delighted to know him, and to share with others the joy of belonging to him. I will indeed learn more and more about how to praise Yahweh, my God!