Profaning God’s Name​—By Not Using It

JEHOVAH dealt mercifully with the people of Israel for the sake of his own name, that it might not be profaned among the nations. (Ezekiel 20:9, 13, 14, 22) In time, however, the Israelites refrained from using God’s name, so that eventually its pronunciation was lost. This disuse of God’s name was tantamount to profaning it.

Regarding this, R. Laird Harris remarked: “It is a most curious fact that the ancient pronunciation of the name of the God of Israel has been totally lost. Israel’s faith was the only worthy faith in antiquity. It was the world’s first monotheism and is the only ancient faith to have become truly a world religion. It was unique in being wholly spiritual and without a material representation of the deity. It was also unique, unfortunately, in its loss of the pronunciation of the deity’s name. The situation is strange indeed and would hardly have been forecast by those sincere men who felt that they dared not pronounce the ineffable name lest they should profane it. The result seems really to have been a profanation of a different kind. Not to use the name of God seems to profane it just as the coarse use of the Name would have done. But the facts are plain. The ancient Hebrews, naturally, pronounced and wrote the name of God.”​—The Law and the Prophets, edited by John H. Skilton, Nutley, New Jersey, 1974, page 215.

The Israelites knew that should they forget Jehovah’s name, God himself would “search this out.” (Psalm 44:20, 21) Subsequently, when this happened, he “turned his attention to the nations to take out of them a people for his name.” (Acts 15:14) While we today do not know precisely how to pronounce the divine name in Hebrew, a suitable and an adequate rendering of the Tetragrammaton (the four Hebrew consonants representing the name) into English is Jehovah. Today, more than three million people are known as Jehovah’s Witnesses, and they are happy to bear the name of their God and to be identified with it.