The Sephardim and the Holy Name of YHVH
- Ephraim D'Angelo
- Jul 28, 2021
- 8 min read
Updated: May 10
By Ephraim D’Angelo Hernandez
July 28th, 2021 (Updated November 20th, 2021)
First, I’d like to start this article by saying that although I do believe there is proof of a correct pronunciation of God’s name, a.k.a., Tetragrammaton. I do also believe that there are dialectic variations that some may think make the discussion a non-issue. This topic has been one of many intense discussions that I hope to finally put to rest, in the end it is the Eternal God himself who will put it to rest for us.
In our three years of learning and practicing Orthodox Judaism we had heard many times that the correct pronunciation of the name of the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob was lost to time. That nobody really knew how to pronounce it. It’s ridiculous to even think that I blindly believed that, since I have heard God’s name invoked from a young child in the Spanish Apostolic Church, as did my wife. How can this be true that no one know’s how to pronounce the name of God?
The second thing we learned concerning the invoking of God’s ancient name is that it was forbidden. "It is the ineffable name of God, so holy you can’t utter it or you’ll violate the third commandment." I’m not being sarcastic at all, I'm just repeating what we heard. There are a lot of pieces to this puzzle, so please bare with me because there is a very large elephant on the page of this topic that I have to deal with first. That is the very large scale existence of the descendants of the Sephardim of Spain and Portugal a.k.a., the Anusim (Coerced ones).
All over the America’s live the descendants of the Sephardic Israelites though most don’t presently know who they are. What! What do I mean, "they don’t presently know who they are?" Yes, it’s true. The Spanish Inquisition drove us to hide, and hide we did, so intense was this determination to hide ourselves that we became lost. We had acquired the designation of Crypto-Jews for two reasons. First, because we were practicing our original Torah faith in secret and Second, because we were in a constant state of running and hiding from the Spanish Inquisition because of it. What we did retain, however, is a hunger for the Word of God, our gifts in music and song, we retained a heart for יהוה,and we retained the utterance of God’s ancient name.
For hundreds of years all over the Americas in Spanish speaking churches the name of the God of Israel was invoked. Anyone who is a serious student of the Bible/Tanahk will clearly see that the God of Creation wants His name invoked. He wants us to swear by His name, to magnify Him by saying it out loud as King David did in nearly every Psalm he wrote, and directed the Levites to sing.
You see I believe that many of the descendants of the Sephardim originate from the Levitical families, and maybe even partly of the tribe of Judah and Benjamin since the Levites were intermingled. I’m presently writing a research paper about this. To this day the descendants of the Sephardim are rejected by today's "Jews," making us the only group the Jews in the State of Israel refuse to accept for Aliyah (to go up, i.e., to Jerusalem).
Who would better know how to pronounce the name of the God of the Hebrew’s than the Levites? Since the Sephardic Jews had to find ways to hide who we were and yet still try to pass on something to our children. In many testimonies given by Crypto-jews they speak of songs that were passed down. Though the children were not told that they were Jews they were given songs. The Spanish language itself is a testament to the name of the Creator.
The Sephardic Israelites may have adhered to the prohibition to invoke God’s name while still in Europe, and were likely cautious for a couple of generations but as soon as they were able to once again invoke Yehovah (יהוה), they did, and still do.
Many Proofs have come to light concerning the correct pronunciation of the God of the seeing eye and the hearing ear, and all of this only supports the way the Spanish/Latino people have been saying it for generations. At the end of this article are two supporting articles written about the subject; one by Lonnie Lane a previous Producer of Sid’s Roths’ Show That’s Supernatural; Another was an article published by the Religion News Service about Nehemiah Gordon’s discovery of 1,000 ancient manuscripts that show the right vowel points. That article was published in 2018, and the number of manuscripts has since surpassed 1,700.
Nehemiah Himself is a Karaite Jew, not a Christian or an Orthodox Jew, he is a scholar of Hebrew/Aramaic manuscripts. He was one of the first scholars to talk about the Hebrew Matthew shedding a tremendous amount of light on the New Testament. I have heard Nehemiah's presentation on the correct pronunciation of God’s name twice, in person. If you would like to search it out for yourself you can find Nehemiah’s research and podcasts at www.nehemiahswall.com. If this isn’t enough just let me know there’s plenty of proof available nowadays.
I would encourage every Messianic/Hebrew roots believer to read these articles, and pray to Yah himself about this. He will tell you himself what he wants, it’s all over the scripture what he expects. I myself want to encourage Yah’s people to learn to invoke God’s name properly and wisely. We are His people, a set-apart people, a holy priesthood. If we are striving to be holy as He is holy, then it is our responsibility to sanctify His name on the earth. Zechariah 10 and many other passages in Scripture make it clear that in the future (Zech. 10 is a prophecy) we will be proclaiming His name. If then, why not now? From the perspective of biblical prophecy Zechariah's then is our now.
Consider this, in Exodus 15:2, the short colloquiel name of God is revealed as Yah, it is the reason that we say Hallelujah pronounced Hallelu-Yah. Hallel meaning "Praise" in Hebrew, and Yah is God’s abbreviated name. Look it up, or download my blog post titled the Yah Study Here:
If you really look at how we humans communicate when we agree on something we say, “Yah.” We are using the abbreviated form of God’s name all of the time. If we only knew how often we were taking God’s name in vein when we say, “Yah,” to someone and we don’t do what we say. That is the primary way people take God’s name in vein. Not by saying "god." If your still writing a dash between the G and the d (G-d) please stop doing that. The word "god" is a title defining a subject, it is a common noun, not the subject himself. A god could be anything or anyone to whom ever it is that believes. That is why just saying "god" is very misleading. When somebody calls out to me in a crowd they could say, “Hey!” But how will I answer if I don’t know who they are talking to? Or if something is trying to get my attention but calling me Jim or some other name that is not my name, how can I answer?
Everybody knows that the God of creation is a personal god, omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent yet we expect him to answer without calling upon His name? If you look at the way words were used in ancient times in the bible you can see clearly that YHVH didn’t want to be called Baal, yet Baal simply meant Lord. Yehovah (יהוה) is set apart, holy, righteous and does not want to be associated with the common. He himself says He will again sanctify His holy name and bring glory to it once again.
Yeshua, praying to his Father said, "Father, glorify thy name." Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again. ~John 12:28
"Therefore tell the house of Israel that this is what the Lord GOD (Adonai YHVH) says: It is not for your sake that I will act, O house of Israel, but for My holy name, which you profaned among the nations to which you went. I will show the holiness of My great name, which has been profaned among the nations - the name you have profaned among them.
Then the nations will know that I, declares the Lord GOD (Adonai יהוה), when I show My holiness in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the nations and gather you out of all the countries, and I will bring you back into your own land."
Ezekiel 26:22-24
Notice the word GOD, underlined and in all caps, those should have been rendered as YHVH (יהוה), for that is what the text says!
How did we profane His holy name among the nations? By using God, Lord, HaShem and other common nouns instead of His holy name; Yehovah. We profane it everyday when we (as believers) continue in these practices in our lack of knowledge, when we make agreements saying Yah, but don't keep our word, or we swear by His name but don't mean it, we bring his name to nothing and profane it. When we write L-rd or G-d we are sanctifying a common noun, and we are disregarding our Holy Fathers own name.
You will notice in my writings that I more often use Yah, what I call His colloquiel name instead of the word god. I often do this in person, doing this helps me to be consciously aware of what I say and helps me to remember to keep my word.
In conclusion. Yes, I believe the Sephardim did retain the knowledge of the accurate pronunciation of the name of Yehovah (יהוה). We did not follow the Rabbinic teachings and refrain from invoking the most holy and powerful name of our Creator.
Could I be wrong about this pronunciation? Yes, and I am willing to change if that becomes evident. Whether I am correct or not really does not give me or anybody else the right to insist that everyone utter Father's name any certain way, or to cause separation in the body of believers for this reason. As a Levite my responsibility and obligation to Yah is to teach His people. For a time my daughter preferred to say Yahweh, as we all did while using the Jerusalem Bible, however, Lisa and I both having come from the Apostolic tradition where we heard His glorious name invoked in Spanish we reverted to that way as did our daughter; eventually. Whether you feel more comfortable saying Yahweh, or Yahuah or Yehovah, or even Yahveh we all should be sincerely seeking truth, and accept and respect each other.
But as Nehemiah states, when we learn about some of these other derivatives and that they have questionable origins, we need to change no matter how comfortable we are in what we presently do. He really gets into the history of the derivatives being an expert on the Hebrew and Aramaic languages and manuscripts and I (for one) trust his expertise.
My name, Ephraim, is said four or five different ways depending on ones linguistic/ethnic ancestry and I will answer when called, however I will not answer to Effy, or Ef, just like Yah will not answer to Baal. Bringing that back to the name of the Messiah, Yeshua is a shortened derivative of Yahushua which translates to Yah Saves.
"And now, Father, glorify Me in Your presence with the glory I had with You before the world existed. I have revealed Your name to those You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours; You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. Now they know that everything You have given Me comes from You.…"
John 17:5-7 (Emphasis Mine)
We love your questions, and to be sharpened. Feel free to email us.
Ephraim Hernandez
Sources:
Comments