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JEHOL(“hot stream”), orCh’ēng-tē-fu, a city of China, formerly the seat of the emperor’s summer palace, near 118° E. and 41° N., about 140 m. N.E. of Peking, with which it is connected by an excellent road. Pop. (estimate), 10,000. It is a flourishing town, and consists of one great street, about 2 m. long, with smaller streets radiating in all directions. The people are well-to-do and there are some fine shops. The palace, called Pi-shu-shan-chuang, or “mountain lodge for avoiding heat,” was built in 1703 on the plan of the palace of Yuen-ming-yuen near Peking. A substantial brick wall 6 m. in circuit encloses several well-wooded heights and extensive gardens, rockeries, pavilions, temples, &c. Jehol was visited by Lord Macartney on his celebrated mission to the emperor K’ienlung in 1793; and it was to Jehol that the emperor Hienfēng retired when the allied armies of England and France occupied Peking in 1860. In the vicinity of Jehol are numerous Lama monasteries and temples, the most remarkable being Potala-su, built on the model of the palace of the grand lama of Tibet at Potala.
JEHORAM,orJoram(Heb. “Yah[weh] is high”), the name of two Biblical characters.
1. The son of Ahab, and king of Israel in succession to his brother Ahaziah.1He maintained close relations with Judah, whose king came to his assistance against Moab which had revolted after Ahab’s death (2 Kings i. 1; iii.). The king in question is said to have been Jehoshaphat; but, according to Lucian’s recension, it was Ahaziah, whilst i. 17 would show that it was Jehoram’s namesake (see 2). The result of the campaign appears to have been a defeat for Israel (see on the incidentsEdom,Elisha,Moab). The prophetical party were throughout hostile to Jehoram (with his reform iii. 2 contrast x. 27), and the singular account of the war of Benhadad king of Syria against the king of Israel (vi. 24-vii.) shows the feeling against the reigning dynasty. But whether the incidents in which Elisha and the unnamed king of Israel appear originally belonged to the time of Jehoram is very doubtful, and in view of the part which Elisha took in securing the accession of Jehu, it has been urged with much force that they belong to the dynasty of the latter, when the high position of the prophet would be perfectly natural.2The briefest account is given of Jehoram’s alliance with Ahaziah (son of 2 below) against Hazael of Syria, at Ramoth-Gilead(2 Kings viii. 25-29), and the incident—with the wounding of the Israelite king in or about the critical year 842B.C.—finds a noteworthy parallel in the time of Jehoshaphat and Ahab (1 Kings xxii. 29-36) at the period of the equally momentous events in 854 (seeAhab). See furtherJehu.
2. The son of Jehoshaphat and king of Judah. He married Athaliah the daughter of Ahab, and thus was brother-in-law of 1. above, and contemporary with him (2 Kings i. 17). In his days Edom revolted, and this with the mention of Libnah’s revolt (2 Kings viii. 20 sqq.) suggests some common action on the part of Philistines and Edomites. The chronicler’s account of his life (2 Chron. xxi-xxii. 1) presupposes this, but adds many remarkable details: he began his reign by massacring his brethren (cf. Jehu son of Jehoshaphat, and his bloodshed, 2 Kings ix. seq.); for his wickedness he received a communication from Elijah foretelling his death from disease (cf. Elijah and Ahaziah of Israel, 2 Kings i.); in a great invasion of Philistines and Arabian tribes he lost all his possessions and family, and only Jehoahaz (i.e.Ahaziah) was saved.3His son Ahaziah reigned only for a year (cf. his namesake of Israel); he is condemned for his Israelite sympathies, and met his end in the general butchery which attended the accession of Jehu (2 Kings viii. 25 sqq.; 2 Chron. xxii. 3 seq., 7; with 2 Kings ix. 27 seq., note the variant tradition in 2 Chron. xxii. 8 seq., and the details which the LXX. (Lucian) appends to 2 Kings x.).
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12 Kings i. 17 seq.; see Lucian’s reading (cf. Vulg. and Pesh.). Apart from the allusion 1 Kings xxii. 49 (see 2 Chron. xx. 35), and the narrative in 2 Kings i. (seeElijah), nothing is known of this Ahaziah. Notwithstanding his very brief reign (1 Kings xxii. 51; 2 Kings iii. 1), the compiler passes the usual hostile judgment (1 Kings xxii. 52 seq.); seeKings (Books). The chronology in 1 Kings xxii. 51 is difficult; if Lucian’s text (twenty-fourth year of Jehoshaphat) is correct, Jehoram 1 and 2 must have come to their respective thrones at almost the same time.2In vii. 6 the hostility of Hittites and Mizraim (q.v.) points to a periodafter842B.C.(SeeJews, § 10 seq.)3These details are scarcely the invention of the chronicler; seeChronicles, andExpositor, Aug. 1906, p. 191.
12 Kings i. 17 seq.; see Lucian’s reading (cf. Vulg. and Pesh.). Apart from the allusion 1 Kings xxii. 49 (see 2 Chron. xx. 35), and the narrative in 2 Kings i. (seeElijah), nothing is known of this Ahaziah. Notwithstanding his very brief reign (1 Kings xxii. 51; 2 Kings iii. 1), the compiler passes the usual hostile judgment (1 Kings xxii. 52 seq.); seeKings (Books). The chronology in 1 Kings xxii. 51 is difficult; if Lucian’s text (twenty-fourth year of Jehoshaphat) is correct, Jehoram 1 and 2 must have come to their respective thrones at almost the same time.
2In vii. 6 the hostility of Hittites and Mizraim (q.v.) points to a periodafter842B.C.(SeeJews, § 10 seq.)
3These details are scarcely the invention of the chronicler; seeChronicles, andExpositor, Aug. 1906, p. 191.
JEHOSHAPHAT(Heb. “Yahweh judges”), in the Bible, son of Asa, and king of Judah, in the 9th centuryB.C.During his period close relations subsisted between Israel and Judah; the two royal houses were connected by marriage (seeAthaliah;Jehoram, 2), and undertook joint enterprise in war and commerce. Jehoshaphat aided Ahab in the battle against Benhadad at Ramoth-Gilead in which Ahab was slain (1 Kings xxii.; 2 Chron. xviii.; cf. the parallel incident in 2 Kings viii. 25-29), and trading journeys to Ophir were undertaken by his fleet in conjunction no doubt with Ahab as well as with his son Ahaziah (2 Chron. xx. 35 sqq.; 1 Kings xxii. 47 sqq.). The chronicler’s account of his war against Moab, Ammon and Edomite tribes (2 Chron. xx.), must rest ultimately upon a tradition which is presupposed in the earlier source (1 Kings xxii. 47), and the disaster to the ships at Ezion-Geber at the head of the Gulf of Aḳaba preceded, if it was not the introduction to, the great revolt in the days of Jehoshaphat’s son Jehoram, where, again, the details in 2 Chron. xxi. must rely in the first instance upon an old source. Apart from what is said of Jehoshaphat’s legislative measures (2 Chron. xix. 4 sqq.; cf. the meaning of his name above), an account is preserved of his alliance with Jehoram of Israel against Moab (2 Kings iii.), on which seeJehoram;Moab. The “valley of Jehoshaphat” (Joel iii. 12) has been identified by tradition (as old as Eusebius) with the valley between Jerusalem and the mount of Olives.
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JEHOVAH(Yahweh1), in the Bible, the God of Israel. “Jehovah” is a modern mispronunciation of the Hebrew name, resulting from combining the consonants of that name,Jhvh, with the vowels of the wordădōnāy, “Lord,” which the Jews substituted for the proper name in reading the scriptures. In such cases of substitution the vowels of the word which is to be read are written in the Hebrew text with the consonants of the word which is not to be read. The consonants of the word to be substituted are ordinarily written in the margin; but inasmuch as Adonay was regularly read instead of the ineffable name Jhvh, it was deemed unnecessary to note the fact at every occurrence. When Christian scholars began to study the Old Testament in Hebrew, if they were ignorant of this general rule or regarded the substitution as a piece of Jewish superstition, reading what actually stood in the text, they would inevitably pronounce the name Jĕhōvāh. It is an unprofitable inquiry who first made this blunder; probably many fell into it independently. The statement still commonly repeated that it originated with Petrus Galatinus (1518) is erroneous; Jehova occurs in manuscripts at least as early as the 14th century.
The form Jehovah was used in the 16th century by many authors, both Catholic and Protestant, and in the 17th was zealously defended by Fuller, Gataker, Leusden and others, against the criticisms of such scholars as Drusius, Cappellus and the elder Buxtorf. It appeared in the English Bible in Tyndale’s translation of the Pentateuch (1530), and is found in all English Protestant versions of the 16th century except that of Coverdale (1535). In the Authorized Version of 1611 it occurs in Exod. vi. 3; Ps. lxxxiii. 18; Isa. xii. 2; xxvi. 4, beside the compound names Jehovah-jireh, Jehovah-nissi, Jehovah-shalom; elsewhere, in accordance with the usage of the ancient versions, Jhvh is represented by Lord (distinguished by capitals from the title “Lord,” Heb.adonay). In the Revised Version of 1885 Jehovah is retained in the places in which it stood in the A. V., and is introduced also in Exod. vi. 2, 6, 7, 8; Ps. lxviii. 20; Isa. xlix. 14; Jer. xvi. 21; Hab. iii. 19. The American committee which cooperated in the revision desired to employ the name Jehovah wherever Jhvh occurs in the original, and editions embodying their preferences are printed accordingly.
Several centuries before the Christian era the name Jhvh had ceased to be commonly used by the Jews. Some of the later writers in the Old Testament employ the appellative Elohim, God, prevailingly or exclusively; a collection of Psalms (Ps. xlii.-lxxxiii.) was revised by an editor who changed the Jhvh of the authors into Elohim (seee.g.xlv. 7; xlviii. 10; l. 7; li. 14); observe also the frequency of “the Most High,” “the God of Heaven,” “King of Heaven,” in Daniel, and of “Heaven” in First Maccabees. The oldest Greek versions (Septuagint), from the third centuryB.C., consistently useΚύριος, “Lord,” where the Hebrew has Jhvh, corresponding to the substitution of Adonay for Jhvh in reading the original; in books written in Greek in this period (e.g.Wisdom, 2 and 3 Maccabees), as in the New Testament,Κύριοςtakes the place of the name of God. Josephus, who as a priest knew the pronunciation of the name, declares that religion forbids him to divulge it; Philo calls it ineffable, and says that it is lawful for those only whose ears and tongues are purified by wisdom to hear and utter it in a holy place (that is, for priests in the Temple); and in another passage, commenting on Lev. xxiv. 15 seq.: “If anyone, I do not say should blaspheme against the Lord of men and gods, but should even dare to utter his name unseasonably, let him expect the penalty of death.”2
Various motives may have concurred to bring about the suppression of the name. An instinctive feeling that a proper name for God implicitly recognizes the existence of other gods may have had some influence; reverence and the fear lest the holy name should be profaned among the heathen were potent reasons; but probably the most cogent motive was the desire to prevent the abuse of the name in magic. If so, the secrecy had the opposite effect; the name of the god of the Jews was one of the great names in magic, heathen as well as Jewish, and miraculous efficacy was attributed to the mere utterance of it.
In the liturgy of the Temple the name was pronounced in the priestly benediction (Num. vi. 27) after the regular daily sacrifice (in the synagogues a substitute—probably Adonay—was employed);3on the Day of Atonement the High Priest uttered the name ten times in his prayers and benediction. In the last generations before the fall of Jerusalem, however, it was pronounced in a low tone so that the sounds were lost in the chant of the priests.4
After the destruction of the Temple (A.D.70) the liturgical use of the name ceased, but the tradition was perpetuated in the schools of the rabbis.5It was certainly known in Babylonia in the latter part of the 4th century,6and not improbably much later. Nor was the knowledge confined to these pious circles; the name continued to be employed by healers, exorcists and magicians, and has been preserved in many places in magical papyri. The vehemence with which the utterance of the name is denounced in the Mishna—“He who pronounces the Name with its own letters has no part in the world to come!”7—suggests that this misuse of the name was not uncommon among Jews.
The Samaritans, who otherwise shared the scruples of the Jews about the utterance of the name, seem to have used it in judicial oaths to the scandal of the rabbis.8
The early Christian scholars, who inquired what was the true name of the God of the Old Testament, had therefore no great difficulty in getting the information they sought. Clement of Alexandria (d.c.212) says that it was pronouncedΙαουε.9Epiphanius (d. 404), who was born in Palestine and spent a considerable part of his life there, givesΙαβε(one cod.Ιαυε).10Theodoret (d.c.457),11born in Antioch, writes that the Samaritans pronounced the nameΙαβε(in another passage,Ιαβαι), the JewsΑἳα.12The latter is probably not Jhvh butEhyeh(Exod. iii. 14), which the Jews counted among the names of God; there is no reason whatever to imagine that the Samaritans pronounced the name Jhvh differently from the Jews. This direct testimony is supplemented by that of the magical texts, in whichΙαβε ζεβυθ(Jahveh Ṣebāōth), as well asΙαβα, occurs frequently.13In an Ethiopic list of magical names of Jesus, purporting to have been taught by him to his disciples,Yāwēis found.14Finally, there is evidence from more than one source that the modern Samaritan priests pronounce the nameYahwehorYahwa.15
There is no reason to impugn the soundness of this substantially consentient testimony to the pronunciation Yahweh or Jahveh, coming as it does through several independent channels. It is confirmed by grammatical considerations. The name Jhvh enters into the composition of many proper names of persons in the Old Testament, either as the initial element, in the form Jeho- or Jo- (as in Jehoram, Joram), or as the final element, in the form-jahuor-jah(as in Adonijahu, Adonijah). These various forms are perfectly regular if the divine name was Yahweh, and, taken altogether, they cannot be explained on any other hypothesis. Recent scholars, accordingly, with but few exceptions, are agreed that the ancient pronunciation of the name was Yahweh (the first h sounded at the end of the syllable).
Genebrardus seems to have been the first to suggest the pronunciationIahué,16but it was not until the 19th century that it became generally accepted.
Jahveh or Yahweh is apparently an example of a common type of Hebrew proper names which have the form of the 3rd pers. sing, of the verb.e.g.Jabneh (name of a city), Jābīn, Jamlēk, Jiptāḥ (Jephthah), &c. Most of these really are verbs, the suppressed or implicit subject being ’ēl, “numen, god,” or the name of a god; cf. Jabneh and Jabnĕ-ēl, Jiptāḥ and Jiptaḥ-ēl.
The ancient explanations of the name proceed from Exod. iii. 14, 15, where “Yahweh17hath sent me” inv.15 corresponds to “Ehyeh hath sent me” inv.14, thus seeming to connect the name Yahweh with the Hebrew verbhāyāh, “to become, to be.” The Palestinian interpreters found in this the promise that God would be with his people (cf.v.12) in future oppressions as he was in the present distress, or the assertion of his eternity, or eternal constancy; the Alexandrian translationἘγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν ... Ὁ ὢν ἀπέσταλκέν με πρὸς ὑμᾶς, understands it in the more metaphysical sense of God’s absolute being. Both interpretations, “He (who) is (always the same),” and “He (who) is (absolutely, the truly existent),” import into the name all that they profess to find in it; the one, the religious faith in God’s unchanging fidelity to his people, the other, a philosophical conception of absolute being which is foreign both to the meaning of the Hebrew verb and to the force of the tense employed. Modern scholars have sometimes found in the name the expression of the aseity18of God; sometimes of his reality, in contrast to the imaginary gods of the heathen. Another explanation, which appears first in Jewish authors of the middle ages and has found wide acceptance in recent times, derives the name from the causative of the verb; He (who) causes things to be, gives them being; or calls events into existence, brings them to pass; with many individual modifications of interpretation—creator, life-giver, fulfiller of promises. A serious objection to this theory in every form is that the verbhāyāh, “to be,” has no causative stem in Hebrew; to express the ideas which these scholars find in the name Yahweh the language employs altogether different verbs.
This assumption that Yahweh is derived from the verb “to be,” as seems to be implied in Exod. iii. 14 seq., is not, however, free from difficulty. “To be” in the Hebrew of the Old Testament is nothāwāh, as the derivation would require, buthāyāh; and we are thus driven to the further assumption thathāwāhbelongs to an earlier stage of the language, or to some older speech of the forefathers of the Israelites. This hypothesis is not intrinsically improbable—and in Aramaic, a language closely related to Hebrew, “to be” actually ishāwā—but it should be noted that in adopting it we admit that, using the name Hebrew in the historical sense, Yahweh is not a Hebrew name. And, inasmuch as nowhere in the Old Testament, outside of Exod. iii., is there the slightest indication that the Israelites connected the name of their God with the idea of “being” in any sense, it may fairly be questioned whether, if the author of Exod. iii. 14 seq., intended to give an etymological interpretation of the name Yahweh,19his etymology is any better than many other paronomastic explanations of proper names in the Old Testament, or than, say, the connexion of the nameἈπόλλωνwithἀπολούων,ἀπολύωνin Plato’sCratylus, or the popular derivation fromἀπόλλυμι.
A roothāwāhis represented in Hebrew by the nounshōwāh(Ezek., Isa. xlvii. 11) andhawwāh(Ps., Prov., Job) “disaster, calamity, ruin.”20The primary meaning is probably “sink down, fall,” in which sense—common in Arabic—the verb appears in Job xxxvii. 6 (of snow falling to earth). A Catholic commentator of the 16th century, Hieronymus ab Oleastro, seems to have been the first to connect the name “Jehova” withhōwāhinterpreting itcontritio, sive pernicies(destruction of the Egyptians and Canaanites); Daumer, adopting the same etymology, took it in a more general sense: Yahweh, as well as Shaddai, meant “Destroyer,” and fitly expressed the nature of the terrible god whom he identified with Moloch.
The derivation of Yahweh fromhāwāhis formally unimpeachable, and is adopted by many recent scholars, who proceed, however, from the primary sense of the root rather than from the specific meaning of the nouns. The name is accordingly interpreted, He (who) falls (baetyl,βαίτυλος, meteorite); or causes (rain or lightning) to fall (storm god); or casts down (his foes, by his thunderbolts). It is obvious that if the derivation be correct, the significance of the name, which in itself denotes only “He falls” or “He fells,” must be learned, if at all, from early Israelitish conceptions of the nature of Yahweh rather than from etymology.
A more fundamental question is whether the name Yahweh originated among the Israelites or was adopted by them from some other people and speech.21The biblical author of the history of the sacred institutions (P) expressly declares that the name Yahweh was unknown to the patriarchs (Exod. vi. 3), and the much older Israelite historian (E) records the first revelation of the name to Moses (Exod. iii. 13-15), apparently following a tradition according to which the Israelites had not been worshippers of Yahweh before the time of Moses, or, as he conceived it, had not worshipped the god of their fathers under that name. The revelation of the name to Moses was made at a mountain sacred to Yahweh (the mountain of God) far to the south of Palestine, in a region where the forefathers of the Israelites had never roamed, and in the territory of other tribes; and long after the settlement in Canaan this region continued to be regarded as the abode of Yahweh (Judg. v. 4; Deut. xxxiii. 2 sqq.; 1 Kings xix. 8 sqq. &c.). Moses is closely connected with the tribes in the vicinity of the holy mountain; according to one account, he married a daughter of the priest of Midian (Exod. ii. 16 sqq.; iii. 1); to this mountain he led the Israelites after their deliverance from Egypt; there his father-in-law met him, and extolling Yahweh as “greater than all the gods,” offered (in his capacity as priest of the place?) sacrifices, at which the chief men of the Israelites were his guests; there the religion of Yahweh was revealed through Moses, and the Israelites pledged themselves to serve God according to its prescriptions. It appears, therefore, that in the tradition followed by the Israelite historian the tribes within whose pasture lands the mountain of God stood were worshippers of Yahweh before the time of Moses; and the surmise that the name Yahweh belongs to their speech, rather than to that of Israel, has considerable probability. One of these tribes was Midian, in whose land the mountain of God lay. The Kenites also, with whom another tradition connects Moses, seem to have been worshippers of Yahweh. It is probable that Yahweh was at one time worshipped by various tribes south of Palestine, and that several places in that wide territory (Horeb, Sinai, Kadesh, &c.) were sacred to him; the oldest and most famous of these, the mountain of God, seems to have lain in Arabia, east of the Red Sea. From some of these peoples and at one of these holy places, a group of Israelite tribes adopted the religion of Yahweh, the God who, by the hand of Moses, had delivered them from Egypt.22
The tribes of this region probably belonged to some branch of the great Arab stock, and the name Yahweh has, accordingly, been connected with the Arabichawā, “the void” (between heaven and earth), “the atmosphere,” or with the verbhawā, cognate with Heb.hāwāh, “sink, glide down” (through space);hawwā“blow” (wind). “He rides through the air, He blows” (Wellhausen), would be a fit name for a god of wind and storm. There is, however, no certain evidence that the Israelites in historical times had any consciousness of the primitive significance of the name.
The attempts to connect the name Yahweh with that of an Indo-European deity (Jehovah-Jove, &c.), or to derive it from Egyptian or Chinese, may be passed over. But one theory which has had considerable currency requires notice, namely, that Yahweh, or Yahu, Yaho,23is the name of a god worshipped throughout the whole, or a great part, of the area occupied by the Western Semites. In its earlier form this opinion rested chiefly on certain misinterpreted testimonies in Greek authors about a godἸάω, and was conclusively refuted by Baudissin; recent adherents of the theory build more largely on the occurrence in various parts of this territory of proper names of persons and places which they explain as compounds of Yahu or Yah.24The explanation is in most cases simply an assumption of the point at issue; some of the names have been misread; others are undoubtedly the names of Jews. There remain, however, some cases in which it is highly probable that names of non-Israelites are really compounded with Yahweh. The most conspicuous of these is the king of Hamath who in the inscriptions of Sargon (722-705B.C.) is called Yaubi’di and Ilubi’di (compare Jehoiakim-Eliakim). Azriyau of Jaudi, also, in inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser (745-728B.C.), who was formerly supposed to be Azariah (Uzziah) of Judah, is probably a king of the country in northern Syria known to us from the Zenjirli inscriptions as Ja’di.
Friedrich Delitzsch brought into notice three tablets, of the age of the first dynasty of Babylon, in which he read the names ofYa-a’-ve-ilu,Ya-ve-ilu, andYa-ū-um-ilu(“Yahweh is God”), and which he regarded as conclusive proof that Yahweh was known in Babylonia before 2000B.C.; he was a god of the Semitic invaders in the second wave of migration, who were, according to Winckler and Delitzsch, of North Semitic stock (Canaanites, in the linguistic sense).25We should thus have in the tablets evidence of the worship of Yahweh among the Western Semites at a time long before the rise of Israel. The reading of the names is, however, extremely uncertain, not to say improbable, and the far-reaching inferences drawn from them carry no conviction. In a tablet attributed to the 14th centuryB.C.which Sellin found in the course of his excavations at Tell Ta’annuk (the Taanach of the O.T.) a name occurs which may be read Ahi-Yawi (equivalent to Hebrew Ahijah);26if the reading be correct, this would show that Yahweh was worshipped in Central Palestine before the Israelite conquest. The reading is, however, only one of several possibilities. The fact that the full form Yahweh appears, whereas in Hebrew proper names only the shorter Yahu and Yah occur, weighs somewhat against the interpretation, as it does against Delitzsch’s reading of his tablets.
It would not be at all surprising if, in the great movements of populations and shifting of ascendancy which lie beyond our historical horizon, the worship of Yahweh should have been established in regions remote from those which it occupied in historical times; but nothing which we now know warrants the opinion that his worship was ever general among the Western Semites.
Many attempts have been made to trace the West Semitic Yahu back to Babylonia. Thus Delitzsch formerly derived the name from an Akkadian god, I or Ia; or from the Semitic nominative ending, Yau;27but this deity has since disappeared from the pantheon of Assyriologists. The combination of Yah with Ea, one of the great Babylonian gods, seems to have a peculiar fascination for amateurs, by whom it is periodically “discovered.” Scholars are now agreed that, so far as Yahu or Yah occurs in Babylonian texts, it is as the name of a foreign god.
Assuming that Yahweh was primitively a nature god, scholars in the 19th century discussed the question over what sphere of nature he originally presided. According to some he was the god of consuming fire; others saw in him the bright sky, or the heaven; still others recognized in him a storm god, a theory with which the derivation of the name from Heb.hāwāhor Arab.hawāwell accords. The association of Yahweh with storm and fire is frequent in the Old Testament; the thunder is the voice of Yahweh, the lightning his arrows, the rainbow his bow. The revelation at Sinai is amid the awe-inspiring phenomena of tempest. Yahweh leads Israel through the desert in a pillar of cloud and fire; he kindles Elijah’s altar by lightning, and translates the prophet in a chariot of fire. See also Judg. v. 4 seq.;Deut. xxxiii. 1; Ps. xviii. 7-15; Hab. iii. 3-6. The cherub upon which he rides when he flies on the wings of the wind (Ps. xviii. 10) is not improbably an ancient mythological personification of the storm cloud, the genius of tempest (cf. Ps. civ. 3). In Ezekiel the throne of Yahweh is borne up on Cherubim, the noise of whose wings is like thunder. Though we may recognize in this poetical imagery the survival of ancient and, if we please, mythical notions, we should err if we inferred that Yahweh was originally a departmental god, presiding specifically over meteorological phenomena, and that this conception of him persisted among the Israelites till very late times. Rather, as the god—or the chief god—of a region and a people, the most sublime and impressive phenomena, the control of the mightiest forces of nature are attributed to him. As the God of Israel Yahweh becomes its leader and champion in war; he is a warrior, mighty in battle; but he is not a god of war in the specific sense.
In the inquiry concerning the nature of Yahweh the name Yahweh Sebaoth (E.V., TheLordof Hosts) has had an important place. The hosts have by some been interpreted of the armies of Israel (see 1 Sam. xvii. 45, and note the association of the name in the Books of Samuel, where it first appears, with the ark, or with war); by others, of the heavenly hosts, the stars conceived as living beings, later, perhaps, the angels as the court of Yahweh and the instruments of his will in nature and history (Ps. lxxxix.); or of the forces of the world in general which do his bidding, cf. the common Greek renderings,Κύριος τῶν δυνάμεωνandΚ. παντοκράτωρ, (Universal Ruler). It is likely that the name was differently understood in different periods and circles; but in the prophets the hosts are clearly superhuman powers. In many passages the name seems to be only a more solemn substitute for the simple Yahweh, and as such it has probably often been inserted by scribes. Finally, Sebaoth came to be treated as a proper name (cf. Ps. lxxx. 5, 8, 20), and as such is very common in magical texts.
Literature.—Reland,Decas exercitationum philologicarum de vera pronuntiatione nominis Jehova, 1707; Reinke, “Philologisch-historische Abhandlung über den Gottesnamen Jehova,” inBeiträge zur Erklärung des Alten Testaments, III. (1855); Baudissin, “Der Ursprung des GottesnamensἸάω,” inStudien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte, I. (1876), 179-254; Driver, “Recent Theories on the Origin and Nature of the Tetragrammaton,” inStudia Biblica, I. (1885), 1-20; Deissmann, “Griechische Transkriptionen des Tetragrammaton,” inBibelstudien(1895), 1-20; Blau,Das altjüdische Zauberwesen, 1898. See alsoHebrew Religion.
Literature.—Reland,Decas exercitationum philologicarum de vera pronuntiatione nominis Jehova, 1707; Reinke, “Philologisch-historische Abhandlung über den Gottesnamen Jehova,” inBeiträge zur Erklärung des Alten Testaments, III. (1855); Baudissin, “Der Ursprung des GottesnamensἸάω,” inStudien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte, I. (1876), 179-254; Driver, “Recent Theories on the Origin and Nature of the Tetragrammaton,” inStudia Biblica, I. (1885), 1-20; Deissmann, “Griechische Transkriptionen des Tetragrammaton,” inBibelstudien(1895), 1-20; Blau,Das altjüdische Zauberwesen, 1898. See alsoHebrew Religion.
(G. F. Mo.)
1This form,Yahweh, as the correct one, is generally used in the separate articles throughout this work.2See Josephus, Ant. ii. 12, 4; Philo,Vita Mosis, iii. 11 (ii. §114, ed. Cohn and Wendland); ib. iii. 27 (ii. §206). The Palestinian authorities more correctly interpreted Lev. xxiv. 15 seq., not of the mere utterance of the name, but of the use of the name of God in blaspheming God.3Siphrê, Num. §§ 39, 43;M. Sotah, iii. 7;Sotah, 38a. The tradition that the utterance of the name in the daily benedictions ceased with the death of Simeon the Just, two centuries or more before the Christian era, perhaps arose from a misunderstanding ofMenaḥoth, 109b; in any case it cannot stand against the testimony of older and more authoritative texts.4Yoma, 39b;Jer. Yoma, iii. 7;Kiddushin, 71a.5R. Johanan (second half of the 3rd century),Kiddushin, 71a.6Kiddushin, l.c. =Pesaḥim, 50a.7M. Sanhedrin, x. 1; Abba Saul, end of 2nd century.8Jer. Sanhedrin, x. 1; R. Mana, 4th century.9Strom.v. 6. Variants:Ια ουε, Ια ουαι; cod. L.Ιαου.10Panarion, Haer. 40, 5; cf. Lagarde,Psalter juxta Hebraeos, 154.11Quaest.15 in Exod.;Fab. haeret. compend.v. 3,sub fin.12Αϊαoccurs also in the great magical papyrus of Paris, 1. 3020 (Wessely,Denkschrift. Wien. Akad., Phil. Hist. Kl., XXXVI. p. 120), and in the Leiden Papyrus, xvii. 31.13See Deissmann,Bibelstudien, 13 sqq.14See Driver,Studia Biblica, I. 20.15See Montgomery,Journal of Biblical Literature, xxv. (1906),49-51.16Chronographia, Paris, 1567 (ed. Paris, 1600, p. 79 seq.).17This transcription will be used henceforth.18A-se-itas, a scholastic Latin expression for the quality of existing by oneself.19The critical difficulties of these verses need not be discussed here. See W. R. Arnold, “The Divine Name in Exodus iii. 14,”Journal of Biblical Literature, XXIV. (1905), 107-165.20Cf. alsohawwāh, “desire,” Mic. vii. 3; Prov. x. 3.21SeeHebrew Religion.22The divergent Judaean tradition, according to which the forefathers had worshipped Yahweh from time immemorial, may indicate that Judah and the kindred clans had in fact been worshippers of Yahweh before the time of Moses.23The formYahu, orYaho, occurs not only in composition, but by itself; seeAramaic Papyri discovered at Assuan, B 4, 6, 11; E 14; J 6. This is doubtless the original ofἸάω, frequently found in Greek authors and in magical texts as the name of the God of the Jews.24See a collection and critical estimate of this evidence by Zimmern,Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, 465 sqq.25Babel und Bibel, 1902. The enormous, and for the most part ephemeral, literature provoked by Delitzsch’s lecture cannot be cited here.26Denkschriften d. Wien. Akad., L. iv. p. 115 seq. (1904).27Wo lag das Paradies?(1881), pp. 158-166.
1This form,Yahweh, as the correct one, is generally used in the separate articles throughout this work.
2See Josephus, Ant. ii. 12, 4; Philo,Vita Mosis, iii. 11 (ii. §114, ed. Cohn and Wendland); ib. iii. 27 (ii. §206). The Palestinian authorities more correctly interpreted Lev. xxiv. 15 seq., not of the mere utterance of the name, but of the use of the name of God in blaspheming God.
3Siphrê, Num. §§ 39, 43;M. Sotah, iii. 7;Sotah, 38a. The tradition that the utterance of the name in the daily benedictions ceased with the death of Simeon the Just, two centuries or more before the Christian era, perhaps arose from a misunderstanding ofMenaḥoth, 109b; in any case it cannot stand against the testimony of older and more authoritative texts.
4Yoma, 39b;Jer. Yoma, iii. 7;Kiddushin, 71a.
5R. Johanan (second half of the 3rd century),Kiddushin, 71a.
6Kiddushin, l.c. =Pesaḥim, 50a.
7M. Sanhedrin, x. 1; Abba Saul, end of 2nd century.
8Jer. Sanhedrin, x. 1; R. Mana, 4th century.
9Strom.v. 6. Variants:Ια ουε, Ια ουαι; cod. L.Ιαου.
10Panarion, Haer. 40, 5; cf. Lagarde,Psalter juxta Hebraeos, 154.
11Quaest.15 in Exod.;Fab. haeret. compend.v. 3,sub fin.
12Αϊαoccurs also in the great magical papyrus of Paris, 1. 3020 (Wessely,Denkschrift. Wien. Akad., Phil. Hist. Kl., XXXVI. p. 120), and in the Leiden Papyrus, xvii. 31.
13See Deissmann,Bibelstudien, 13 sqq.
14See Driver,Studia Biblica, I. 20.
15See Montgomery,Journal of Biblical Literature, xxv. (1906),49-51.
16Chronographia, Paris, 1567 (ed. Paris, 1600, p. 79 seq.).
17This transcription will be used henceforth.
18A-se-itas, a scholastic Latin expression for the quality of existing by oneself.
19The critical difficulties of these verses need not be discussed here. See W. R. Arnold, “The Divine Name in Exodus iii. 14,”Journal of Biblical Literature, XXIV. (1905), 107-165.
20Cf. alsohawwāh, “desire,” Mic. vii. 3; Prov. x. 3.
21SeeHebrew Religion.
22The divergent Judaean tradition, according to which the forefathers had worshipped Yahweh from time immemorial, may indicate that Judah and the kindred clans had in fact been worshippers of Yahweh before the time of Moses.
23The formYahu, orYaho, occurs not only in composition, but by itself; seeAramaic Papyri discovered at Assuan, B 4, 6, 11; E 14; J 6. This is doubtless the original ofἸάω, frequently found in Greek authors and in magical texts as the name of the God of the Jews.
24See a collection and critical estimate of this evidence by Zimmern,Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, 465 sqq.
25Babel und Bibel, 1902. The enormous, and for the most part ephemeral, literature provoked by Delitzsch’s lecture cannot be cited here.
26Denkschriften d. Wien. Akad., L. iv. p. 115 seq. (1904).
27Wo lag das Paradies?(1881), pp. 158-166.
JEHU,son of Jehoshaphat and grandson of Nimshi, in the Bible, a general of Ahab and Jehoram, and, later, king of Israel. Ahaziah son of Jehoram of Judah and Jehoram brother of Ahaziah of Israel had taken joint action against the Aramaeans of Damascus who were attacking Ramoth-Gilead under Hazael. Jehoram had returned wounded to his palace at Jezreel, whither Ahaziah had come down to visit him. Jehu, meanwhile, remained at the seat of war, and the prophet Elisha sent a messenger to anoint him king. The general at once acknowledged the call, “drove furiously” to Jezreel, and, having slain both kings, proceeded to exterminate the whole of the royal family (2 Kings ix., x.). A similar fate befell the royal princes of Judah (seeAthaliah), and thus, for a time at least, the new king must have had complete control over the two kingdoms (cf. 2 Chron. xxii. 9). Israelite historians viewed these events as a great religious revolution inspired by Elijah and initiated by Elisha, as the overthrow of the worship of Baal, and as a retribution for the cruel murder of Naboth the Jezreelite (seeJezebel). A vivid description is given of the destruction of the prophets of Baal at the temple in Samaria (2 Kings x. 27; contrast iii. 2). While Jehu was supported by the Rechabites in his reforming zeal, a similar revolt against Baalism in Judah is ascribed to the priest Jehoiada (seeJoash). In the tragedies of the period it seems clear that Elisha’s interest in both Jehu and the Syrian Hazael (2 Kings viii. 7 sqq.) had some political significance, and in opposition to the “Deuteronomic” the commendation in 2 Kings x. 28 sqq., Hosea’s denunciation (i. 4) indicates the judgment which was passed upon Jehu’s bloodshed in other circles.
In the course of an expedition against Hazael in 842 Shalmaneser II. of Assyria received tribute of silver and gold from Ya-u-a son of Omri,1Tyre and Sidon; another attack followed in 839. For some years after this Assyria was unable to interfere, and war broke out between Damascus and Israel. The Israelite story, which may perhaps be supplemented from Judaean sources (seeJoash), records a great loss of territory on the east of the Jordan (2 Kings x. 32 seq.). Under Jehu’s successor Jehoahaz there was continual war with Hazael and his son Benhadad, but relief was obtained by his grandson Joash, and the land recovered complete independence under Jeroboam.