God would later remind Moses: “I am Yahweh. To Abraham and Isaac and Jacob I appeared as El Shaddai; I did not make myself known to them by my name Yahweh” (Exod. 6:2–3 JB). The Israelites considered the name too holy to be spoken by human lips. Whenever they needed to say Yahweh, they substituted the word Adonai, which means “Lord.” If the name needed to be written, the scribes would take a bath before they wrote it and destroy the pen afterward.2 God never gives a definition of the word Yahweh,
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