Use of the Name Jehovah
When
Abraham was about to be sacrificed, he called upon the Lord to rescue him. The
Lord effected the patriarch’s escape from the sacrificial knife and then told
him, “My name is Jehovah” (Abraham 1:16). This event needs to be investigated
because many non-LDS historians and theologians ascribe to the view that
Abraham did not know the Lord by this name and that the proper name Jehovah was
not revealed or known until the time of Moses (see Exodus 6:3). This position might
be refuted scripturally (see Genesis 13:4; 22:14) but until recently could not
be refuted in light of known history.
Jehovah is
generally accepted as an anglicized version of the Hebrew deity-name YHVH,
perhaps pronounced “Yahveh.” The name also appears biblically as Ja or Ya,
both alone and in compound words such as hallelujah (Praise Ya). This Ya
form of the name Jehovah was found in 1975, in the archives of the
ancient city of Ebla. The Reverend Mitchell Dahood, Dean of the Oriental
Faculty of the Pontifical Biblical Institute and one of the foremost experts on
Ebla, reported: “In early passages of the Old Testament, God is referred to as
El. Then Exodus 3:14 records that he revealed His true name, Yahweh—which has
come into English as Jehovah—to Moses. But the Ebla tablets show that a
thousand years before that . . . both Il and Ya, forms equivalent to El and
Yahweh, existed in Northwest Semitic personal names. For example, in Ebla we
find a man named Mi-ka-il (Who is Like God?)—the modern Michael of course—and another,
Mi-ka-ya (Who is like Ya?).” (In Howard LaFey, “Ebla: Splendor of an Unknown
Empire,” National Geographic Dec. 1978, pp. 737-40.)
Tn years
ago the mention of the name Jehovah in a first person account by Abraham
might have been construed to be proof that the text was contrived, but the
discovery that the name existed in Ebla in pre-Abrahamic times lends historic
validity to the book of Abraham. (Jeffrey R. Chadwick, “First Person Abraham:
The Book of Abraham in Light of Ancient History,” in The Seventh Annual
Church Educational System Religious Educators’ Symposium on the Old Testament [Salt
Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1983], 34)
On Exo 6:3, see, for e.g.:
T. Desmond Alexander on the use of the Divine Name Yahweh in Genesis and Exodus 6:3
JST Exodus 6:3-4 Changing the KJV to be God Asking a Question to Moses
Duane A. Garrett on Exodus 6:2c-3