6: Why Is “LORD” Often In All Caps In The Bible?

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7: Who Was Melchizedek?

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Welcome back to the Ready for Eternity podcast, I'm Eddie Lawrence. Have you ever noticed that often the letters in the word

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LORD are all uppercase in the Bible, and other times the

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Bible only capitalizes the first letter? Both LORD in all caps and LORD with only the first letter capitalized refer to God, but why is there a difference?

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In this episode, let's answer the question, why is LORD often in all caps in the

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Bible? Bible translators use all capital letters when translating the four -letter

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Hebrew name for God. Ancient Hebrew had no written vowels. Of course, they pronounced the vowels, but the written

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Hebrew alphabet only had consonants. Because of this,

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God's name was spelled YHWH in ancient

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Hebrew. In English, YHWH is often accompanied with the vowels

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A and E, resulting in Yahweh. During the later

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Old Testament period, the ancient Jews came to believe that God's name was too holy to be spoken out loud, and as time passed, they actually forgot how to pronounce

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God's name. Eventually, everyone who knew what vowels belonged in God's name had passed away, and because their alphabet lacked written vowels, they lost the knowledge of the correct pronunciation of God's name.

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Translators of English Bibles have chosen to respect the Jewish custom of not spelling out

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God's name. Therefore, rather than transliterating the Hebrew letters that are the equivalent of YHWH in English, they simply use the word

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LORD in all capital letters. So, when you see LORD in all caps in the

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Bible, it is referring to God's proper name. That we pronounce

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YHWH. Scholars refer to God's four -letter name as the

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TETRAGRAMMATON. We don't know with certainty what the correct pronunciation of the

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TETRAGRAMMATON is. Likewise, the meaning of the TETRAGRAMMATON is difficult to nail down precisely.

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Scholars believe its meaning is some variation of I exist because I exist, or I will exist because I will exist, or I am who

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I am, I will be who I will be, and I am that which exists.

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It is this name that God revealed to Moses at the burning bush. He told

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Moses to tell those who asked his name that it is I am.

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Then Moses said to God, If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask me,

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What is his name? What shall I say to them? God said to Moses, I am who

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I am, and he said, Say this to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you.

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Exodus 3 13 and 14 In the recent past, it was common to hear

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God's proper name pronounced Jehovah by English speakers. This is actually a misnomer.

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The word Jehovah was introduced into English Bibles by William Tyndale. Jehovah appeared in a few early

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English translations, most notably the King James version. But where did this word

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Jehovah come from? The Jews who wished to respect God's name would say

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Adonai whenever they encountered the Tetragrammaton in the Old Testament scriptures.

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Adonai is the Hebrew word for Lord. The Jewish scribes adopted a practice of adding additional letters to the name

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YHWH in the scriptures.

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Whenever they wrote the name YHWH, they placed the vowels from the word

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Adonai in between the consonants of the Tetragrammaton. The result was

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Y -A -H -O -W -A -H.

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If you say this word out loud, it's easy to hear the beginnings of the

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English word Jehovah. If it had been spoken out loud, it would have sounded like Y -A -H -O -W -A -H.

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The Jews never pronounced this. It was just a made -up word which was used as a visual cue when someone was reading the scriptures out loud to say

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Adonai instead of YHWH. So what does Lord in mixed case mean?

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Lord with a capital L with the remaining letters in lowercase. The word Lord refers to someone of higher rank.

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Lord was a term of respect similar to the way we may use Sir today, or maybe the way we would use the word

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Boss, someone who's in a superior position. The Bible applies the word Lord to humans as well as to God.

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The context of the passage will make it clear who is under consideration. Now you know the difference between Lord in all uppercase and Lord in mixed case.

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And you know where the English word Jehovah came from. or reach out on Twitter.

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That's all for now. Keep studying your Bible, growing closer to God, and getting ready for eternity.