When Moses asked this question, God told him that he was to refer to Him as I Am Who I Am, and then added a shortened version, I Am, Exodus 3:14.  When Jesus later referred to Himself in this way saying, “Before Abraham was, I Am” in John 8:58, the Jews picked up stones to throw at Him presumably for blasphemy.

 

God also told Moses that He made Himself known to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai, or God Almighty, Exodus 6:3, which is a descriptor, but not His actual name.  He then said that He did not make Himself known to them by His name, and at this point in the Hebrew text where the actual name God provides for Himself is to be written out, we find what is called the tetragrammaton, meaning “four letters”.  The English equivalents to these Hebrew letters are “Y”, “H”, “W” and “H”.

 

Originally the Hebrew texts of the Law were written in consonants only, the vowels being supplied by the reader.  The name of God, however, was so sacred to the Hebrew people that they refrained from pronouncing it when reading the text or otherwise.  In time, therefore, the pronunciation of God’s name was lost altogether.

 

The Masora, or Masoretes, were highly skilled, disciplined scholars whose work was to protect and reproduce the exact text of what we now call the Old Testament.  To them is attributed the eventual insertion of the vowels from the word adonai meaning “lord” into the four letters of the tetragrammaton.  This was supposedly done to remind the reader of the holiness of the name.

 

Non-Hebrew readers, however, would simply see the insertions as opportunities to pronounce vowel sounds and so the word “Y-a-H-o-W-a-H” (Jehovah) was coined and remains in use to this day.