The Power of Language--by Linden Malki

The first mention of a Name for God comes where He appears to Abraham, in Genesis 17, as "El Shaddai." An earlier word for "God" as a descriptive noun, "Elohim", is used in the earliest mentions of God. There are many words used for the Hebrew God and His attributes throughout Scripture, but the Name that was revealed to Moses in Exodus 3 is the one that is considered to be the most specific. It is often described in Jewish sources as the Tetragrammon, or Four Letters, YHWH. The ancient Hebrew language does not include written vowels, so scholars are not sure how it is pronounced, but the most commonly agreed pronunciation is "Yahweh". Because of the third commandment warning about possible misuse of the Name, it is not used in Jewish communities. Where is does appear in Scripure readings, it was most commonly read as "Adonai", which is the title "Lord." Many ancient manuscripts have notes for the reader of the vowels for "Adonai" as a reminder.  Early translators did not realize what these meant, so they added the vowels to YHWH, which led to the common translation as "Jehovah", now recognized as a mistranslation. The concept of "Adonai" by Jewish readers has become almost as sacred as the original Tetragrammon, and modern Jews commonly use the term "HaShem", which means "The Name."

The other Name which has sacred meaning is "Yeshua", which came into English through Greek as "Jesus." The original Hebrew version is what is now translated as "Joshua".  I find it interesting that English speakers almost never use the name "Jesus" as a personal name, while "Joshua" is fairly common, and "Jesus"  (pronounced "Heysus") is very commonly used in Spanish. One common interpretation of the Third Commandment, traditionally read as "Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord Thy God in vain", is that the use of the names and titles for God should not be used lightly or without their proper respect--in other words, as exclamations or expressions of negative emotional expletives. We all know people who have gotten in the habit of sprinkling their conversations with Biblical words used as curses or thoughtless descriptions without respect for their original meanings. (My mom was very sensitive about this, because we had neighbors whose idea of raising kids was to yell cuss words at them periodically, and anything that Mom considered vulgar or sacrilegious would get me restricted to the back yard for a week at a time.) So I have always been very sensitive to language, and have found that silly substitutes like "Oh, Rats!" or "Piffle!" got more attention than real bad words. Use of swear words in movies is often excused by writers that say that is just a recognition of "how people talk", but don't realize that people who do talk carelessly don't even notice it;  and people that don't, notice it enough that it messes up their appreciation of the dialogue.
Names, and language in general, can have great power! We need to be aware of our conversation and not misuse names and words that can be misunderstood.