Why Names Matter

Names, in the ancient world, were never mere labels. They were not the arbitrary social conventions we sometimes think they are today: a pleasant sound, a family tradition, a fleeting fashion. No: in Israel, names were prophetic utterances, compressed theology, miniature creeds. When you named a child, you were making a statement about God, about the world, about what you believed would come to pass.

This blog is about two names that changed everything: the name of Israel's God, and the name given to a young Hebrew who would lead his people into the Promised Land, and much later, the name given to another young Hebrew who would lead his people into a far greater promise still.

We're talking about YHWH and Yahusha. Or, if you prefer the later traditions, Yehoshua. Or, in its Greek, Iēsous. Or, as we've come to say in English, Jesus.

But here's the thing: to understand the story, we need to understand the sounds. The breath and consonants that carried the story forward through the centuries. And to understand the sounds, we need to see what the ancient Hebrews saw when they looked at their sacred scrolls.

Let me take you on that journey.

The Four Letters

The Breath of God

Stand for a moment in the sandals of an ancient Israelite scribe. Before you lies a scroll, freshly prepared, the leather smooth beneath your practiced hand. You are about to write the Name. The Name above all names, the one Moses heard at the burning bush.

You dip your reed into the ink. Your hand forms four letters: יהוה

Or, if you are writing in the older script (the one your ancestors used before the Babylonian exile) you shape these signs: 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄

Four letters. Four sounds. But what sounds?

Now here's something remarkable that reveals just how sacred this Name was considered. When the scribes at Qumran were copying biblical texts in the decades just before and after Jesus' birth, they wrote in the square Aramaic script that had become standard after the Babylonian exile. But when they came to the divine Name, they did something striking: they switched scripts. Right in the middle of their text, written in the newer Hebrew letters, they would carefully form the Name in the ancient Paleo-Hebrew characters (𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄).

You can see this practice clearly in the Great Psalms Scroll from Cave 11 at Qumran (11Q5, also called 11QPsa), dated to approximately 30 BCE to 50 CE. In this leather scroll containing Psalm 118 and other psalms, the scribe wrote the entire text in the standard square script, but each time he came to the tetragrammaton, he switched to Paleo-Hebrew. The scroll would continue in one script, and then suddenly, there it was: the four letters in the old form, standing out visually on the page.

This wasn't carelessness or inconsistency. It was reverence. These scribes were making a statement: this Name is so sacred, so ancient, so foundational, that it must be written in the script of Moses and David. Even though centuries had passed and the language had evolved, the Name itself deserved the honor of its original form.

Here's where the story gets interesting, and where we need to tread carefully, because we're dealing with something the ancient Israelites themselves treated with profound reverence. These four letters (yod, he, waw, he) were the Name itself. The Jewish scribes who copied these texts century after century preserved these letters with meticulous care. But how were they pronounced? Ah, that's where the mystery deepens.

The Masoretes, those brilliant Jewish scholars working between the sixth and tenth centuries AD, eventually added a system of vowel points to help readers know how to pronounce the sacred text. By then, however, the tradition of speaking the divine Name aloud had long since ceased. Out of reverence the Name was not pronounced in public worship. Instead, readers would say Adonai ("Lord") when they encountered those four letters.

Here's where it gets complicated. Some scholars argue that the Masoretes didn't simply omit vowels for the divine Name. Rather, they deliberately placed the vowel points for Adonai underneath the consonants YHWH as a reading instruction, a reminder to say "Adonai" instead of attempting to pronounce the Name itself. This wasn't meant to preserve the original pronunciation but to obscure it, ensuring that the sacred Name would not be spoken aloud. Centuries later, some Christian scholars who didn't understand this scribal convention combined the consonants of YHWH with the vowels of Adonai, creating the hybrid form "Jehovah," a pronunciation that likely never existed in ancient Israel.

Whether this was intentional concealment or simply a reverential reading tradition, the result is the same: the Masoretic vowel points don't tell us how Moses or David pronounced the Name. They tell us what medieval Jewish readers were supposed to say instead of the Name.

And here we must pause for an important observation. The English word "LORD" in most Bibles represents the Hebrew Adonai, which according to Strong's Concordance (H136) carries the meaning of "sovereign" or "master." But there's a troubling parallel: the Canaanite title Baal (H1168) means essentially the same thing, "lord, master, owner." The Israelites were repeatedly warned not to call upon Baal, yet the substitution of a generic title ("Lord") for the personal, covenant name of Israel's God creates an uncomfortable echo of that very practice. The divine Name was given specifically to distinguish Israel's God from all the Baals and lords of the surrounding nations.

But what did it sound like in Moses' day? In David's time? During the prophets?

The Linguistic Clues

Now, this matters because (as we'll see) the meaning and the sound were intimately connected. The anci

Now, this matters because (as we'll see) the meaning and the sound were intimately connected. The ancient Hebrews didn't separate them the way we moderns do. The name was the reality; to know the name was to know the person.

So let's look at what we can actually recover from the evidence. And there are clues. Good ones.

First, consider the structure. These four letters (Y-H-W-H) are not arbitrary. In Hebrew linguistics, they form what scholars call a "theophoric element," a piece of the divine name that appears embedded in other names. And here's the crucial observation: when this divine element appears at the end of Hebrew names, it consistently shows up as -yahu.

Take Eliyahu, the prophet we call Elijah. In Hebrew: אֵלִיָּהוּ. Break it down: Eli ("my God") + yahu. The meaning? "My God is Yahu." Or consider Hizqiyahu (Hezekiah): "Yahu strengthens." Or Netanyahu, yes, that Netanyahu, the name meaning "Yahu has given."

The pattern is unmistakable. When the divine name fragment appears at the end of a name, it's vocalized as -yahu.

Second clue: the name Judah. In Hebrew, יְהוּדָה (Yahudah). Now look closely at those letters: Y-H-W-D-H. It's the four letters of the divine name (Y-H-W-H) with a dalet (D) inserted in the middle. Remove that D, and what do you hear? Yahuah.

Third, we have the testimony of Josephus, that first-century Jewish historian writing in Greek. When describing the golden plate on the high priest's turban, he remarks that the sacred name consisted of "four vowels." Now, Josephus was writing in Greek, and Greek grammar used the term phōnēenta more broadly than we use "vowels" today. It could mean letters that produce sound without requiring another consonant. But his testimony is valuable: the Name was pronounceable, it had four distinct sounds, and those sounds were open, breath-like.

Put these clues together, and a picture emerges: the four letters Y-H-W-H were likely pronounced something like Yahuah in the period before the Babylonian exile. The first three letters (Y-H-W) gave the sound Yahu.

A Theological Note

Now, let me be clear about something important. I'm not suggesting that using a particular pronunciation is somehow more "correct" in a way that pleases God more than another. The early Christians, after all, used the Greek Theos and Kyrios quite happily when writing and speaking about Israel's God. The apostle Paul, when quoting the Hebrew Scriptures in his letters, wrote Kyrios in his Greek text, though the Septuagint copies he read from may well have contained the tetragrammaton in Hebrew letters (as early manuscripts like Papyrus Fouad 266 demonstrate). Whether reading the Hebrew letters or the Greek title, Paul spoke of Israel's God with complete confidence.

What I am suggesting is that there's genuine historical and linguistic value in understanding how Israel's sacred name would have sounded to Miriam and Moses, to Deborah and David. Because embedded in that sound was theology. Profound theology about who this God was and what he was doing in the world.

The Name of Salvation

From Hoshea to Yahusha

Now we come to the second name, and here the story gets even more interesting.

In Numbers 13:16, we encounter a pivotal moment. Moses is choosing twelve spies to scout out the Promised Land. Among them is a young man named Hoshea (הוֹשֵׁעַ, Strong's H1954) meaning simply "salvation." It's a good name, a hopeful name. But Moses does something unexpected: he changes the name. He adds three letters to the beginning (those same three letters, Y-H-W) and the young man becomes Yahusha: יהושע

Or in the older script: 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤔𐤏

Why? Because Moses wasn't just adding syllables. He was making a theological declaration. He was taking a general concept ("salvation") and specifying its source. Not just salvation in the abstract, but Yahu saves. The deliverance would not come from human strength or military prowess. It would come from Yahu himself.

The Linguistic Architecture

Let's examine how this name is constructed, because it's a masterpiece of Hebrew word-building.

The name consists of five consonants: Y-H-W-Sh-A.

The first three we've already met: Y-H-W (Yahu), the divine name fragment from YHWH (H3068).

The last two come from the Hebrew root ישע (yashaʿ, Strong's H3467), which means "to save, deliver, rescue." It's the same root you find in Isaiah 43:11: "I, I am YHWH, and besides me there is no savior." It's the verb that describes what God does at the Red Sea, what he promises through the prophets, what he accomplishes in history.

Put them together:

Yahu + sha = Yahusha (Strong's H3091)

"Yahu saves."

Now, the Masoretes, working centuries later, added vowels that produced the pronunciation Yehoshua, and that's a arguably a legitimate reading of the same consonants using the vowel pattern that had developed in their time. The Greek translators rendered it Iēsous. Latin gave us Iesus. English evolved that into Jesus.

But here's what I want you to see: regardless of which vocalization tradition you follow, the original meaning remains constant. This name is a compressed prophetic sentence. Every time someone called this name (whether in the wilderness, in Canaan, or centuries later in Nazareth) they were making a theological claim: Salvation comes from Yahu alone.

The Pattern in the Prophets

A Theology Written in Names

Once you see this pattern, you start finding it everywhere in the Hebrew Bible. Israel's naming practices were profoundly theological. Parents weren't just expressing fond wishes; they were participating in prophecy.

Consider Isaiah, יְשַׁעְיָהוּ (Yeshayahu). It's the same components as Yahusha, just in reverse order: Yashaʿ + Yahu = "Yahu is salvation." The prophet's very name proclaimed the message he would preach.

Or look at the names Isaiah gave his own children. Shear-jashub: "A remnant shall return." Maher-shalal-hash-baz: "Hurry to the plunder! Quick to the loot!" These weren't cruel experiments in unusual nomenclature; they were living prophetic signs, walking sermons. Every time someone addressed Isaiah's son, they proclaimed God's word.

This is the tradition into which both Joshuas (the one who conquered Canaan and the one born in Bethlehem) were named. Their names were not incidental. They were programmatic.

The Christological Connection

Now we need to talk about Jesus.

When the angel appears to Joseph in Matthew's Gospel and instructs him to name Mary's child Yahusha, Matthew adds an explanation: "for he will save his people from their sins." Matthew is making explicit what the Hebrew name already implied. Yahu saves, but now the salvation is not from Egypt or from Babylon but from sin itself, from the fundamental fracture between creation and Creator.

And here's where it all comes together. The early Christians, reading their Greek Scriptures, would have encountered both Joshua son of Nun and Jesus son of Mary. Now, we must be careful here: the Greek manuscripts we possess today are copies, not the originals penned by the apostles or the earliest Septuagint translators. Some early Septuagint fragments preserve the divine Name in Hebrew letters rather than transliterating it into Greek. So we cannot say with absolute certainty exactly what the first generation of believers saw on the page when they read about Joshua or spoke about Jesus.

But what we can say is this: by the time our earliest complete New Testament manuscripts were produced, the Greek form Iēsous appeared for both Joshua and Jesus. Whether this was original to the apostolic writings or developed in the copying tradition, the typological connection was unmistakable to readers of these texts. Joshua the warrior led Israel into the earthly Promised Land; Jesus the Messiah was leading his people into the true, the ultimate, the new-creation rest.

The connection wasn't lost on early Christian interpreters. They saw in Joshua's name and mission a preview, a shadow, of the greater salvation to come.

The name wasn't an accident. It was the whole point.

Reading the Letters as Pictures

The Ancient Pictographs

Now, some who study ancient Hebrew go a step further. They point out that before the alphabet became purely phonetic, the earliest Hebrew letters were pictographs. Little pictures that carried meaning.

For instance:

• 𐤉 (Yod): A hand or arm, representing action, power, making

• 𐤄 (He): A person with raised arms, breath, revelation, "behold!"

• 𐤅 (Waw): A nail or hook, connection, securing, joining

• 𐤔 (Shin): Teeth, consuming, pressing, destroying

• 𐤏 (Ayin): An eye, seeing, experiencing, knowing

If you read the name 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤔𐤏 (Yahusha) through this pictographic lens, you get something like: "The hand revealed, connecting, destroying [evil], so that eyes may see."

Now, I need to offer a word of caution here. We must be careful not to treat this as some sort of mystical code. The pictographic origins of Hebrew letters are real and historically attested, but we shouldn't build elaborate theological systems on them. The ancient Hebrews themselves, by the time of Moses and certainly by the time of the classical prophets, were using these letters primarily as phonetic symbols.

That said, there's something genuinely moving about recognizing that the very shape of the letters once carried memory. That when an ancient scribe formed the sign for yod, the image of a hand might have flickered in the mind, even if only subconsciously. The God who acts, whose hand is outstretched to save.

What Difference Does It Make?

On Pronunciation and Piety

So, after all this linguistic archaeology, what should we make of it? Does it matter how we pronounce the Name? Should English-speaking Christians start saying "Yahuah" and "Yahusha" instead of "God" and "Jesus"?

Here's my answer, and I hope it's both clear and charitable: It matters, but perhaps not in the way you think.

Based on my current understanding, it doesn't matter in the sense of being a salvation issue or test of orthodoxy. Scripture is clear that salvation comes through faith that Yahusha is the Son of God, not pronunciation. Yet some believers, particularly in the sacred name movement, argue that we should preserve the Hebrew names even in translation, just as we preserve names like Abraham and Moses. Their concern is legitimate: generic titles like "Lord" can obscure the personal, covenant name that God specifically gave to distinguish Himself from all other deities.

The New Testament writers, inspired by the Spirit, wrote in Greek and used Greek terms when addressing Greek audiences. The manuscript copies of Paul's letters that have come down to us overflow with references to Kyrios ("Lord") and Christos ("Christ" or "Messiah"). We know his source texts likely preserved the tetragrammaton in Hebrew letters, as early Septuagint manuscripts like Papyrus Fouad 266 demonstrate. But whether Paul himself wrote Kyrios in his original letters or used the tetragrammaton (which later scribes then rendered as Kyrios in the copying process), we cannot know with certainty. We're working from copies, not the apostolic autographs. What we can say is that by the time of our earliest manuscripts, the Greek title Kyrios appears consistently in place of the divine Name.

What we do know is this: The Jerusalem council didn't require Gentile believers to learn Hebrew pronunciation. The gospel went out in Greek and was translated into countless languages precisely because God intended to reach all nations. The question is not whether translation is legitimate, but whether a personal name should be translated or transliterated, and whether a generic title adequately represents a specific, revealed name.

But it does matter in the sense that understanding the original names helps us understand the story. Helps us see what was at stake, what was being claimed, what was being revealed.

When we recognize that "Jesus" derives from a Hebrew name meaning "Yahu saves," we're not just learning etymology. We're grasping the whole narrative arc of Scripture. We're seeing that the child born in Bethlehem is the culmination of a promise that stretches back through Joshua, through Moses, through Abraham, all the way to Eden. We're understanding that his coming is not an arbitrary religious event but the answer to the question Israel has been asking for centuries: "Will Yahu truly save his people?"

The Application

Here's how I'd suggest we use this knowledge:

First, let it deepen your reading of Scripture. When you encounter Joshua in the Old Testament, remember: his name proclaims that Yahu saves. When you read about Jesus in the New Testament, hear the Hebrew name echoing behind the Greek. This is not a new god or a new religion but the fulfillment of Israel's ancient hope.

Second, let it shape your worship. I'll be honest with you: the more I've studied these names and understood their significance, the more I find myself using them. Not out of obligation or a sense that God won't hear me otherwise, but because speaking "Yahuah" and "Yahusha" connects me to something ancient and specific. To the sound Moses heard at the burning bush, to the declaration Joshua's name made in the wilderness, to the Hebrew that Mary would have spoken over her son.

Does that mean there's something wrong with saying "Lord" and "Jesus"? I genuinely don't know. These forms have served countless faithful believers for centuries, and God has clearly worked through them. But I also can't ignore what we've uncovered: that "Lord" is a generic title Scripture warns against (when used for Baal), while YHWH is a specific, personal, covenant name. That makes me wonder.

What I can tell you is this: you don't have to resolve all these questions immediately. Let the knowledge settle. If you find yourself, in a moment of prayer or worship, wanting to speak the Hebrew, do it. If you're teaching others and want to show them the connection between Joshua and Jesus, use the names. If you're comfortable continuing with the traditional forms, God knows your heart. This isn't about achieving perfect pronunciation; it's about moving toward deeper understanding and connection.

Third, let it inform your evangelism. When you tell people about Jesus, you're not peddling a foreign deity invented by the early church. You're proclaiming that the one Creator God, the God of Israel, has kept his covenant promise. The name itself is a bridge: from Adam's fall to Abraham's call, from Moses' deliverance to Jesus' resurrection. "Yahu saves" is not a tribal slogan but a universal claim: the God who made all things is putting all things right.

The Name and the Person

Let me bring this to a close.

Names, as I said at the beginning, mattered in the ancient world. They still should. But what matters more than the name is the Person to whom the name points.

I've raised questions in this book about generic titles versus the specific covenant name. I've shown you the linguistic evidence, the manuscript practices, the theological significance. And I've been honest about my own journey toward using the Hebrew forms more often. But here's what I need you to hear: your relationship with God does not hang on perfect pronunciation or resolving every scholarly debate about divine names.

Whether you find yourself drawn to say Yahuah or remain comfortable with the LORD, whether you speak Yahusha or Jesus, you're reaching toward the one true God who revealed himself to Moses, who bound himself in covenant to Israel, who promised through the prophets that he would return to Zion. And you're speaking of the one through whom that God has now, astonishingly, kept every promise, fulfilled every prophecy, accomplished salvation not just for one nation but for the whole groaning creation.

The linguistic study is valuable. The historical investigation is important. But never let it become a substitute for knowing the living God himself. The point of knowing the Name is to know the Named One.

And here's the good news, the gospel, if you will: Yahu has saved. The salvation embedded in Joshua's name, promised in every prophet who bore a theophoric name, has broken into history in the person of Jesus. The name announced it; the life, death, and resurrection accomplished it; and the Spirit applies it even now to all who believe.

So yes, study the Hebrew. Trace the linguistic patterns. Marvel at the way God embedded his promise into the very names of his people. But then (and this is crucial) worship the One to whom all those names point.

Because in the end, what saves us is not pronouncing the Name correctly.

What saves us is the God who bears the Name, and the Messiah in whom that God has acted.

Yahu saves.

He always has. He always will.

Soli Deo Gloria