YHWH (Yahweh)

YHWH (יהוה) is the personal, covenant name of God in the Hebrew Bible — the so-called Tetragrammaton, 'four letters'. It is revealed to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:14–15), explained as connected to the verb 'to be' (ehyeh asher ehyeh, 'I am who I am'), and given as the name by which God is to be remembered through every generation. It appears more than 6,800 times in the Hebrew text. By the Second Temple period the name was considered too holy to pronounce; readers would substitute Adonai ('my Lord') or Hashem ('the Name'). The Masoretes preserved this practice in writing by pointing the consonants of YHWH with the vowels of Adonai, which medieval Christians misread as 'Jehovah'. Modern scholarship reconstructs the original pronunciation as 'Yahweh'. English translations follow Jewish reverence by rendering it as 'the LORD' in small capitals, distinguishing it from the title Adonai.