A Perpetual Qere

Medieval scribes known as Masoretes are responsible for the vowel markings (or points) found in the manuscripts used for most modern printed copies of the Hebrew Bible. The tetragrammaton is typically marked in Masoretic Hebrew manuscripts as yhwh—a form that seems as if it should be pronounced “yehovah” or “jehovah.” However, the “pronunciation is grammatically impossible” in the Hebrew (Hirsch, “Jehovah,” 7:87). The written form yhwh is an example of a qere and kethiv, where the vowels indicate a reading that differs from what is written (Kelley, Mynatt, and Crawford, Masorah, 41). With yhwh, the vowel markings for אֲדֹנָי (adonay, “Lord”) have been placed under the consonants of the divine name yhwh to signal the reader to say adonai wherever yhwh appeared in the text.

Many examples of qerekethiv/ were explicitly marked by the Masoretes, but some were so common and standard that they were not marked. The vocalization of the divine name is an example of this unmarked kind, known as qere perpetuum, or “perpetual qere”; the vocalization alone signals that the word was always to be read differently than what appeared in the consonantal text (see Yeivin, Tiberian Masorah, 56–60; Kelley, Mynatt, and Crawford, Masorah, 42). The pronunciation of the name as “Jehovah” is based on this misunderstanding of how the medieval reading tradition (the vowel pointing) related to the older written Hebrew consonants. In ancient Hebrew, only the consonants of a text were written, and the vowels were supplied by the fluent reader. The oldest copies of the Hebrew Bible, such as those found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and ancient Hebrew inscriptions have no markings to indicate the proper pronunciation (though some consonants, called matres lectionis, came to be used to help indicate vowels).

By the Middle Ages, Jewish tradition discouraged pronunciation of the divine name as a way to prevent breaking the commandment about misusing God’s name (Exod 20:7). To keep the reader from pronouncing and thus profaning the sacred name of God, the Masoretes developed the convention of the perpetual qere for reading adonai when yhwh appeared in the text. This convention was adopted to prevent anyone who was reading the text aloud (most reading until the modern period was done aloud) from saying the divine name out loud.