a form of the name of God in Judaism and Christianity, referring to the divine being worshipped in these religions.
From Hebrew 'YHWH' (the Tetragrammaton), the personal name of God in Jewish tradition. Medieval Christian scholars, not knowing how to properly pronounce the unspoken Hebrew letters, created 'Jehovah' by combining the consonants of YHWH with vowels from 'Adonai' (Lord). It's essentially a scholarly guessing game from centuries ago.
Jehovah is literally a mistake—a beautiful historical accident! Jewish tradition forbade speaking God's name, so scholars just added random vowels to the consonants YHWH, creating a word that was never actually meant to be pronounced. It shows how pronunciation and names are human constructions, not fixed truths.
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