But the angel of YHWH said to him, "Why do you ask my name, seeing it is incomprehensible?
The name YHWH is very old and we may assume that the source texts that later added up to the Torah we now have contained it. And it is equally likely that the Book of the Covenant, which Moses read aloud to the Israelites, contained it too (Exodus 24:7). But at some point in time, people began to believe that the name YHWH was so holy, that normal mortals better not pronounce it. In stead, wherever the text called for YHWH, a reader would pronounce the Hebrew word for lord: Adonai. And so, what started out as a wonderfully pious idea made the pronunciation of God's personal name vanish from human consciousness.
Here at Abarim Publications, we prefer to transliterate God's name directly to the unpronounceable "YHWH," and whenever we're called to read it out loud, we say adonai or lord.
The temple of YHWH
YHWH is the second creation Name of God. God's Name changes from Elohim to YHWH Elohim in Genesis 2:4 and the reason for this change is examined in our article on the Chaotic Set Theory.
The Hebrews were the first to incorporate vowels in their written text, and by doing this the previously esoteric art of writing and reading became available to the masses. The seemingly casual command to 'write' something on doors or foreheads included the invention of a writing system that could be learned by everybody. A very big deal, and resulting in the most powerful tool of data preservation up to this common age.
Hebrew theology is by far the most influential ever, and this is in part due to the Hebrew invention of vowel notation. This power (this theology) contrasted others by use of the vowel notation, using symbols that were already used and until then only represented consonants, namely the letters ו (waw), י (yod) and ה(he). And to give an example: the word דוד is either the word dod, meaning beloved (and the ו is a vowel), or it is the word dud, meaning jar (and the ו is again a vowel), or it is the word dawid, which is the name David (and the ו is a consonant).
These letters became markers for both the Hebrew identity and the Hebrew religion, including the various names for God. One of these names is the famous Tetragrammaton יהוה (YHWH), which actually exists only of vowels. The Phoenicians had invented the consonantal alphabet to which the Hebrews added the vowels, and the story of Solomon and Hiram's mostly Phoenician temple in which YHWH came to dwell obviously reflects the birth of modern script (1 Kings 8:10-11). Writing didn't depend on a perishable human brain to retain data, which is why the Psalmist triumphantly exclaimed: "will You not allow Your Holy One [i.e. the Word] to undergo decay" (Psalm 16:10, 49:9, Acts 2:27)
The name YHWH is utterly exceptional in many ways, including the fact that we don't know how to pronounce it (if it contains of only vowels, it may have sounded like: AAEEIIOOUU!!). Still, it's not at all unlike the famous Hindu mantra OM, which also represents the whole of everything whilst consisting of three phonetic components (hence the alternative spelling of AUM).
The word אל (El) was the name of the prominent Canaanite god, whose name was either derived of or became the common word for god in general. The plural of this word is אלים; gods. With the addition of the letter ה, creating the word אלהים, the Hebrews not only stated essential monotheism (by naming a single God after the plural word "gods") but also marked their God as theirs: Elohim is the singular pantheon of the vowel-people.
Something similar occurred when the name of patriarch Abram (אברם) was expanded with the he into Abraham אברהם, and the name of matriarch Sarai (שרי) was expanded with the he to Sarah (שרה).
Etymology of the name YHWH
The name YHWH may be an artificial construct of the Hebrew language's available vowels, which would be equivalent to our AEIOU (and even if the name YHWH existed before the Hebrews began to note vowels, they may have chosen for their vowel-symbols the letters that made up the name of their God). But it may also be a proper word, derived of some verb, which coincidentally came out existing of only vowels. If that is so, the etymology of YHWH is utterly unclear, and therefore subject to much debate.
The key scene in this respect seems to be Exodus 3:13-15, where God names Himself first: אהיה אשר אהיה (I AM WHO I AM), then אהיה (I AM), and finally יהוה (YHWH) and states that this is his name forever and a memorial name to all generations.
It has been long supposed that YHWH was derived from the verb that is used to make I AM, namely היה(haya), meaning to be or to become, or rather from an older form and rare synonym of haya, namely הוה, hawa, hence y-hawa or yahweh, the proper imperfect of the verb, thus rendering the name either BEING or HE IS. (But note that the Hebrew language is far more dynamic than our modern languages. The verb to be indicates an action that intimately reveals the nature of the one who is doing the acting. For more on this, see our article To Be Is To Do):