Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Name of God

Rev. Martyn McGeown

(I)

The Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs) of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society charge the Christian church with colluding in removing the name “Jehovah” from the Bible, since, e.g., the Authorized Version (AV) renders the name “Jehovah” over 7,000 times as “Lord.” Moreover, they claim that, since their New World Translation (NWT) retains the original name “Jehovah,” they alone are God’s faithful followers.

It is true that in the AV the word “Jehovah” does not appear in the New Testament and occurs in only a few places in the Old Testament (e.g., Ps. 83:18); otherwise, it is translated Lord in upper case letters. But the issue here is not the translation of the Hebrew word, rendered Jehovah (AV), but the meaning of the name itself. For example, a man might use the word, “Jesus,” and sing enthusiastically, “JESUS, He’s the one for me,” but if he does not believe that

“Jesus” is the only, complete, all-sufficient, effectual Saviour of His people (Matt. 1:21), he does not really believe in “Jesus” at all. Or a person might call Jesus, “Lord, Lord,” but unless by “Lord” he means Master, Owner, Redeemer, and lives in submission and obedience to Him, his using the word “Lord” is vain hypocrisy (Matt. 7:21; Luke 6:46).

What, then, does the name Jehovah mean? God Himself explained it to Moses in Exodus 3:14: “I AM THAT I AM ... Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” The JWs’ translation, the NWT, mistranslates it this way, “I SHALL PROVE TO BE WHAT I SHALL PROVE TO BE.” The Hebrew verb is hayah which means “to be” and in its verb form (qal imperfect) it may, in itself, be translated as “I am,” “I shall be” or “I was.” In the Greek Septuagint (LXX) translation, used by the Jews in Christ’s day and quoted by the apostles in the inspired New Testament, it is rendered in words which can only mean “I am” (ego eimi). The NWT’s “I SHALL PROVE TO BE” is, therefore, hardly an accurate translation.

That God identifies Himself with a name derived from the Hebrew verb meaning “to be,” best translated “I am,” teaches us important truths about the Being of God. First, God is absolutely independent. He derives His Being from Himself and maintains His Being of Himself. He needs nothing outside of Himself (Rom. 11:33-36). Second, God is eternal or timeless: God is. No creature can say, “I AM.” To be accurate, every creature must say, “I am becoming.” In the short time that you have taken to read these lines, a large number of cells in your body have died, your blood has circulated around your body and the air in your lungs has been exchanged for fresh supplies. That is not true of God. He does not need air, food or anything else, and His divine essence never changes. Third, the name Jehovah, I AM, tells us that God is absolutely dependable. He never reneges on His promises. He is the God we can trust fully, whose purposes are always the same. Thus He came to Moses at the burning bush and declared that the lapse of over 400 years had not caused Him to change His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. One Watchtower publication says of the name Jehovah that it means “He can become whatever He pleases in order to fulfil whatever role is necessary.” The same publication says that Jehovah is a God of “innumerable roles.” This is not the meaning of Jehovah, I AM or ego eimi.

The JWs claim to believe the divine, verbal inspiration of the Old and New Testaments. They complain that God’s name, Jehovah, has been removed from the Old Testament, and they claim that they have restored the word to its proper place. But here is a startling fact: the word Jehovah never appears in the New Testament Greek, even when the writers are quoting from the Old Testament where the Hebrew text has the word rendered Jehovah. Every time the writers of the New Testament Scriptures quote the Old Testament, they use the Greek word kurios, which means “Lord.” If the Holy Spirit thought that the word “Lord” was an unacceptable translation of Jehovah, would He have not “corrected” that in the New Testament? After all, there are times when the writers of the New Testament modify the Septuagint translation from which they quote (the Septuagint translation is not inspired, you know). Why, then, did the Holy Spirit not have the New Testament writers substitute the word Jehovah for kurios, as the JWs’ translation, the NWT, has done?

Let me give some examples. Quoting Deuteronomy 6:13, Christ says, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God” (Matt. 4:10). The Hebrew of Deuteronomy has Jehovah; the Septuagint has kurios (Lord). What does Matthew write, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? Kurios (Lord)—not Jehovah! In Acts 2:21, Peter quotes Joel 2:32, “Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord.” The Hebrew of Joel has Jehovah; the Septuagint has kurios (Lord). What does Luke, the human penman of Acts, write, by the Holy Ghost? Kurios (Lord)—not Jehovah! In Romans 10:16, Paul quotes Isaiah 53:1, “Lord, who hath believed our report?” The Hebrew of Isaiah has Jehovah; the Septuagint has kurios (Lord). What does Paul write, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? Kurios (Lord)—not Jehovah! If the word Jehovah must be used, why does the Holy Spirit never use it in the New Testament?

Moreover, the JWs’ translation, the NWT, adds to the New Testament the name Jehovah, even when the Old Testament is not being quoted. For example, the NWT translates kurios (Lord) as Jehovah in the following passages: II Peter 3:9, “Jehovah [kurios] is not slow respecting his promise;” Acts 13:48, “they began to rejoice and to glorify the word of Jehovah [kurios];” Revelation 1:8, “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says Jehovah [kurios] God.” Other examples could be given. In the book of Revelation alone, Jehovah is added at least ten times (4:8, 11; 11:17; 15:3-4; 16:7; 18:8; 19:6; 21:22; 22:5-6). However, when kurios refers to Jesus Christ, it is never translated Jehovah (e.g., Phil. 4:5; I Thess. 4:15-17). This shows the bias of the NWT version. I Thessalonians 4 is a particularly interesting example in the NWT: “For this is what we tell you by Jehovah’s [kurios] word that we the living who survive to the presence of the Lord [kurios] shall in no way precede those who have fallen asleep in death, because the Lord [kurios] himself shall descend ... be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord [kurios] in the air and thus we shall always be with the Lord [kurios]” (vv. 15-17). Notice, the first kurios is translated Jehovah, but the other examples of kurios in the same context are translated Lord. Why? Because clearly they refer to Jesus Christ and the JWs will not recognise His Deity, that Christ is Jehovah God!

(II)

The Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs) claim that, when Jesus proclaimed the name of God in Israel (John 17:26), He taught the JW (and Unitarian) view of the divine name “Jehovah.” Instead, Christ taught them who God is and what kind of God He is, through His words and deeds, for He, as the incarnate Son, is the revelation of the Triune God (1:14; 14:9). To know God’s name is not merely to know the letters which make up the word “Jehovah,” but to know God Himself, His attributes, wonders, works and promises in Christ, and to fellowship with Him in His Son (John 17:3; I John 1:3; 5:20). Nowhere in the gospels do we read of Jesus calling God “Jehovah.” Even in John 17, the greatest of Christ’s recorded prayers, He addresses God as “Father” (vv. 1, 5, 21, 24), “holy Father” (v. 11) and “righteous Father” (v. 25). In the prayer which He taught His disciples, He has us address God as “Our Father which art in heaven” (Matt. 6:9). Why not “Jehovah,” if that is the preferred, if not the only acceptable, name of God?

The essence of the name “Jehovah” appears in the New Testament. Five times in Revelation, God is addressed as Him “which is, and which was, and which is to come” (1:4, 8) or “which was, and is, and is to come” (4:8) or “which art, and wast, and art to come” (11:17) or “which art, and wast, and shalt be” (16:5). These allusions to Exodus 3:14 and the name “Jehovah” clearly refer to God’s unchangeable eternity and faithfulness.

In John 8, Jesus affirms, “Abraham rejoiced to see my day” (v. 56), to which the unbelieving Jews retort in scorn, “Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?” (v. 57). Christ’s response so shocks the Jews that they pick up stones to put Him to death on the spot for blasphemy. Here is the JWs’ New World Translation (NWT) of what Jesus said: “Before Abraham came into existence, I have been.” The KJV rightly translates, “Before Abraham was, I am” (v. 58). Why does the NWT mistranslate the Greek (ego eimi) as “I have been,” instead of “I am”? Because the JWs refuse to believe that Jesus is Jehovah and they want to sever the obvious link between John 8:58 and Exodus 3:14, where ego eimi is used in the Septuagint (LXX)!

As we have seen, though the New Testament does not contain the word “Jehovah,” the truth of Jehovah is writ large all over the New Testament. It is found even in the name “Jesus,” which means Jehovah-salvation, Jehovah is salvation or Jehovah Saviour. That is why Peter declares of Jesus that “there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). That, too, is why Paul can state, in obvious allusion to Isaiah 45:23, that God has given Christ “a name which is above every name,” so that “every knee should bow ... [and] every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:9-11).

The JWs use the word “Jehovah” in their prayers, worship, Bible perversion and proselytizing, but they do not truly confess Jehovah, because their “Jehovah” is not the sovereign, unchanging, faithful, Triune God of Scripture. The Jehovah’s Witnesses could more accurately be called the False Witnesses for they are guilty of taking God’s name in vain.