The incommunicable and most sacred name of the Supreme Being.  While the term Elohim (God or Deity) is applied not only to the true God, but also to the imaginary beings or their representations—idols worshipped among the heathen—nay, more, while it is sometimes used as a respectful title of ordinary rulers or magistrates (Psalm lxxxii. 1, 6), the term Jehovah is confined to the one living and true God.  The time-honoured spelling, Jehovah, around which so many hallowed associations have gathered that it cannot now be altered, is not correct.  In Hebrew, without vowel points, it stands simply YHVH.  The word will be pronounced in different ways according to the vowel points supplied.  At a period of considerable antiquity, vowel points were inserted which were known to be incorrect.  The Jews, impressed with the danger of taking the sacred name "in vain," that is, "lightly," believed that they could avoid the sin if, by supplying incorrect vowel points, they guaranteed that the name to which they thus acted disrespectfully was not the real name of the Deity.  The vowel points were not arbitrarily supplied.  They were, in most cases, taken from the word Adonai (Lord), a peculiarity as to Hebrew vowels and consonants, however, necessitating that instead of a, o, and a, the vowels should become e, o, and a.  But when Adonai was prefixed to Jehovah, as in Obad. 1, then the vowels taken were those of Elohim, viz., e, o, and i, the word becoming Yehovih.  After a time the real pronunciation of the word Yehovah was forgotten, and the Jewish scholars, called Masoretes, about the seventh century, gave the erroneous punctuation increased currency, so that it figures in all modern Hebrew Bibles.  Efforts have been made in recent times to discover the original and correct form of the word Jehovah.  Many, following Gesenius, consider it to have been Yahveh, which in English would be written Jahveh, but the Assyrian monuments seem to suggest Yahu, in English Jahu.  A well known passage (Exod. vi. 3) seems to assert that the patriarchs knew only one name for the Supreme Being, viz., El Shaddai (God Almighty) and that the name Jehovah had not been communicated to them.  But against this interpretation there stands the fact, apparent even to the English reader, that Jehovah is found in Gen. xxii. 14, while the student of the Hebrew Bible knows that it begins at Gen. ii. 4, and afterwards occurs frequently.  The meaning of the passage in Exodus may be this.  The aspect in which the patriarchs viewed the Supreme Being was simply as One possessed of Almighty power.  The additional revelation of His character, suggested by the word Jehovah, escaped their notice.  Moses and his successors should not similarly fall in apprehension; they should know that in Jehovah they had the special Protector of Israel and their Covenant God.
     ¶ Those who hold the document hypothesis with regard to the authorship of Genesis and the other books of the Pentateuch, term the writer who often uses the name Jehovah, the Jehovist; and discriminate him from the Elohist, who uses the name Elohim instead. (The Sunday School Teacher's Bible Manual, Hunter, 1894)