Breaking The Jewish Code Perry Stone

treat our Bibles with dignity and respect as we would a living person. After all, Paul proclaimed that the “Word of God is living and powerful . . . ” (Heb. 4:12). The Sacred Name of God The same admonition can be given regarding verbal usage of the name of God. The revelation of God’s name was considered so sacred that God Himself established the third commandment: “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain” (Exod. 20:7). This law was so serious that if a Hebrew was caught abusing or speaking evil of God’s name, he was labeled a blasphemer and was stoned for his disrespect (Lev. 24:11–14). Today, we often carelessly say things like, “Dear God . . . O God . . . My Lord . . . ” Although these phrases are repeated as a casual comment or a sudden reaction to some negative situation, we must guard against accidentally misusing the name of God. In Hebrew, the sacred, divine name of God is spelled with four Hebrew letters: yod , hei , vav , and hei , or, in English, YHVH . This four-lettered name is called the tetragrammaton , which means “four letters.” This name, YHVH , is found 6,823 times in the Hebrew Bible. Hebrew scholars and rabbis all agree that the exact pronunciation of these four letters has been lost throughout the centuries. Some suggest the name is pronounced Yehovah or Yahweh , while westerners say Jehovah , replacing the first letter Y ( yud in Hebrew) with the English letter J, which does not exist in the Hebrew alphabet. It