Why He Used the Greatest Name

“I have sinned, according to one of my reviewers, in the introduction of the word ‘Jehovah’ instead of ‘the Lord,’ which has for centuries been its customary equivalent.”

This was the comment of J. J. Stewart Perowne in the preface to the second edition of his translation of the book of Psalms, first published in 1864. The reviewer, writing in the Saturday Review of July 2, 1864, objected to the use of God’s name in the translation, as it was no longer used in either the Jewish or the Christian churches. He claimed that the name Jehovah is too closely associated with the Jews and that another word should be used, such as “Lord” or “God,” “which has nothing local or national about it.”

Perowne did not agree with these arguments, since he did not “wish to efface a single character” of God’s revelation to man. He rightly contended that translators who render the Hebrew divine name “Lord” fail to distinguish between two Hebrew words.

Further, Perowne asserted that there were very good authorities who favored the restoration of the divine name. He quoted the famous English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

“Why continue the translation of the Hebrew into English at second hand, through the medium of the Septuagint? Have we not adopted the Hebrew word Jehovah? Is not the Κύριος, or Lord, of the Septuagint, a Greek substitute in countless instances for the Hebrew, Jehovah? Why not, then, restore the original word; and in the Old Testament religiously render Jehovah, by Jehovah; and every text in the New Testament, referring to the Old, by the Hebrew word in the text referred to?”

Perowne admitted that the exact pronunciation of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton has been lost, but he remarked: “If owing to merely superstitious scruples the name fell out of use in the Jewish Church, and if owing to a too slavish copying of the Greek and Latin Versions our own [English] Version lost the word, these are reasons of no force whatever against a return to the original use.” Perowne favored the form “Jehovah” because it was well known. Since then a number of more modern translations have also used the divine name. The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures uses the name Jehovah more than 7,200 times in the Hebrew and the Christian Greek Scriptures.

In his translation of the Psalms, Perowne tried to adhere “closely to the form of the Hebrew, both in its idiom and in the structure of the clauses.” When translating Psalm 69, verses 5 and 6, he saw the need to distinguish between the Hebrew words for “God” (ʼElo·himʹ), “Lord” (ʼAdho·naiʹ), and “Jehovah”: “O God [ʼElo·himʹ], Thou knowest my foolishness, and my guiltiness hath not been hid from Thee. Let not them that wait on Thee be ashamed through me, O Lord [ʼAdho·naiʹ], Jehovah (God of) hosts. Let not them be confounded, through me, that seek Thee, O God of Israel.”