The Origins of the Words "Yahweh" and "Jehovah"
The words “Yahweh” and “Jehovah” are actually synonyms of Hebraic origin, derived from the root consonants YHWH (the Hebrew language has no vowels) - the name of God in the Hebrew tongue. The consonants "YHWH" are formed by the following Hebrew letters:
“Yod” (or “Jod,” since the letters Y, J & I are interchangeable in Hebrew and pronounced the same), the 10th letter of the Hebrew alphabet...
“He” (pronounced “hay”), the 5th letter of the Hebrew alphabet...
“Wau” (or “Vau,” since V & W are also interchangeable), the 6th letter...
and the 5th letter “He” again, forming the word “Yod He Wau He,” the sacred, forbidden Hebrew name of God; the divine Hebrew tetragrammaton that faithful Jews are not allowed to say, even to this day.
When the ancient Hebrew lexicographers added vowels to YHWH, they borrowed the vowels of the powerful Egyptian and Phoenician Sun God deities. When the vowels of the Egyptian Sun God Aten were added, YHWH became Y(A)HW(E)H...
When the vowels of the Phoenician Sun God Adonai were added, YHWH became Y(A)H(O)W(A)H, which finally became “JEHOVAH,” which translates “I am” and “The Eternal One” in Hebrew. The Hebrew word is “hawah,” from which the name YHWH is derived. “Hawah” means “existence,” or "to be."
The Biblical account of Exodus states that the prophet Moses was personally ordered – by his God – to initiate the great Israelite exodus-from-Egypt plan. At this Moses asks the rather odd question: “If I go to the Israelites and tell them that the God of their forefathers has sent me to them, and they ask me his name, what shall I say?” The celebrated and awesome reply, recorded in Exodus 3:14, is: “I AM, THAT (IS WHO) I AM...You must tell the Israelites this, that it is Jehovah the God of their forefathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Jacob, who has sent you to them.”
The actual spelling of the forbidden sacred name transliterates as “YHWH” – but “Jehovah” is the form in which the name “I am” is generally read. At this point an intriguing linguistic possibility springs to mind:
It is quite possible that the Israelites in Egypt, having heard that the glorious king within the golden mountain – the legendary occupant of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh – was named “HWFW” (i.e., “Khufu”) in Egyptian, may have noticed a striking similarity between the name “HWFW” and “YHWH,” their own expression for “I am.”
Thereafter they would naturally have used the term, and it needed only the advent of a Moses - his initiation into the pyramid’s mysteries, and his consequent conviction that its message enshrined the Divine will for his own people and for mankind as a whole - to produce the concept of a Divine “I am.”
Except that in Moses’ case the whole concept of the (nonexistent) “god” within the Earth-symbolizing pyramid was expanded to refer to the (equally invisible) Lord of the physical Earth itself – a greater “I am” whose immediate purpose was to lead his servant-nation Israel to its Promised Land. In other words, Moses might equally well have seen the Great Pyramid of Gizeh as the “Mountain of Jehovah.”
Now it is well known – and the Hebrew text is quite explicit on the point – that the name “YHWH” derives directly from the Hebrew word “hawah," as aforementioned. And from the Egyptian “HWFW” to the Hebrew “hawah” is linguistically an extremely short step. Thus it is entirely possible, linguistically, that the name of the divine “I am” could have arisen in the first instance on the basis of the Egyptian name “HWFW,” which is historically the older of the two. Thus in YHWH we may actually have a Hebrew version of the Egyptian name HWFW!
These ancient titles were in all probability no more than separate – if related – ciphers for a single, underlying reality:
"Yahweh," "Jehovah" and "Khufu," in short, were one and the same...