Why does this translation say “Jehovah”?

The short answer. Behind the English word “Lord” in most Bibles stands an actual name — the personal name of God, four Hebrew letters, יהוה (YHWH), that the text uses some 6,800 times. This translation prints it as Jehovah rather than hiding it behind the title “the Lord.” Here is the whole story — the name, why it got covered over, and why “Jehovah” and not “Yahweh.”

God’s personal name in the Hebrew Bible is written with four consonants — יהוה, Y‑H‑W‑H — which is why it is called the Tetragrammaton (“four letters”). It first appears in this translation at Genesis 2:4, paired with Elohim (“God”) as YHWH Elohim, and from there it runs through the whole Hebrew Bible about 6,800 times — far more often than any title. It is not a generic word for “god” (that is Elohim); it is a name, the way “Abram” is a name.

Sometime in the centuries before Christ, Jewish reverence for the name hardened into a practice of not pronouncing it aloud. When a reader reached YHWH in the text, he said Adonai (“my Lord”) instead. That spoken substitution became the written one nearly everywhere:

• the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint) put Kyrios, “Lord”;
• the Latin Vulgate put Dominus, “Lord”;
• and the King James Version set the English pattern still followed almost everywhere: print the name as “the Lord” in small capitals — so a reader can tell the divine name from the ordinary word “Lord” (Adonai).

So “the Lord” in your Bible is not a translation of the name — it is a substitute for it, a title standing where the text actually put a name. Reverent, and nearly universal — but it does hide the name.

Here is the twist: because the name went unspoken for so long, its original pronunciation was lost. Hebrew was written with consonants only; the vowel marks were added centuries later by scribes called the Masoretes — and when they came to YHWH, they did not write the name’s own vowels (which they were not saying), they wrote the vowels of Adonai, as a reminder to say “Adonai.” So the written form carries one word’s consonants and another word’s vowels.

“Yahweh” is the modern scholarly reconstruction of the original — pieced together from early Greek writers who did spell it out (Clement of Alexandria wrote Iabe) and from the way the name appears inside other names (Yeho‑shua, Isai‑ah). It is very likely close to right.

“Jehovah” is what you get if you read those hybrid letters literally — YHWH’s consonants with Adonai’s vowels — a reading that took shape in the Middle Ages and became standard in English from around the sixteenth century. Strictly, it is a form that was never spoken in ancient Israel. But it has been the English name of God for some four to five hundred years: it stands in the KJV itself (Exodus 6:3; Psalm 83:18; Isaiah 12:2; 26:4), runs through the whole ASV of 1901, fills the hymnbook (“Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah”), and is the NWT’s single most defining choice.

Three honest options, then: keep “the Lord” (traditional, but it hides the name); restore “Yahweh” (the scholar’s best reconstruction); or restore “Jehovah” (the long‑accepted English form of the name). This translation takes the third road — Jehovah — because it does the main thing worth doing, puts the name back where the text has a name, and does it in the form that has been at home in English for four centuries and that readers already recognize. It is not the scholar’s reconstruction, and the notes do not pretend otherwise; it is the traditional English name, chosen on purpose — the same instinct that keeps “Jesus” and “Isaiah” rather than re‑spelling every familiar name from scratch.

A small, consistent code follows from it, and you will see all of it in the text:

• Jehovah = the name YHWH (where other Bibles print “the Lord”).
• Lord Jehovah = Adonai YHWH, the title “Lord” joined to the name (as at Genesis 15:2; older Bibles print “Lord God”).
• Lord (ordinary type) = Adonai, the title on its own; God = Elohim.

The same instinct raises a fair question about Jesus — whose name in his own tongue was Yeshua (“Yahweh saves”). This project keeps “Jesus,” the form the New Testament’s own Greek authors wrote (Iēsous) and the form English has used for centuries — restoring the divine name in the Old Testament, while leaving the familiar personal names where readers already know them. So: the name of God is restored; the names of people are left as they stand.