In His Name

For many Christians, we pray “in the name of Jesus”. Why?

John 14:13-14 MKJV
(13) And whatever you may ask in My name, that I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
(14) If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.

John 15:16 MKJV
You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you and ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you shall ask of the Father in My name, He may give it to you.

John 16:23 MKJV
And in that day you shall ask Me nothing. Truly, truly, I say to you, Whatever you shall ask the Father in My name, He will give you.

Jesus’s Name

When we look up “Jesus” in the Strong’s Concordance

G2424 – Original Greek: Ἰησοῦς – Transliteration: Iesous – Phonetic: ee-ay-sooce’ – Definition: Jesus = Jehovah is salvation 1. Jesus, the son of God, the saviour of mankind, God incarnate – Origin: of Hebrew origin H3091 – TDNT entry: 07:44,4 – Part(s) of speech: Noun Masculine – Strong’s: Of Hebrew origin [H3091]; Jesus (that is Jehoshua) the name of our Lord and two (three) other Israelites: – Jesus.

And, in Hebrew:

H3091 – Original: יהושׁע יהושׁוּע – Transliteration: Yehowshuwa` – Phonetic: yeh-ho-shoo’-ah – Definition: Joshua (Yeshua) or Jehoshua (Yehoshua) = Jehovah is salvation (Note: “Je” or “Jo” is an English transliteration of “Ye”).

When you look up the word salvation, it is the Hebrew word י וּ שׁע ה Yeshû‛âh which means salvation.

Yehovah (God’s Name) is telling us that He has become Yeshuah, the one who is killed on the tree for our sins.

It is really a compound name (two words together form a name).

Yehovah’s (God’s) name, and
What He does,

Jesus’ Hebrew Name, Yeshuah, means “Yehovah saves.”

Salvation (Yeshua) comes from the verb to save (Yasha), which is the “shua” part of Yeshua’s name.

Yeshua is the shortened form of Yehoshua, just like Pete is the shortened form of Peter.

“Yeho” is the “Yehovah” (he was, is and will be) part of Yehoshua’s name, while “shua” is the “he saves” part of Yehoshua’s name.

So, He who was, is and will be is the one who saves – Yeshua!

So, Jesus’ name in Hebrew is Yehoshua, and the shortened friendly version is Yeshua.

The Hebrew name Yeshua translates into Greek as Iésous. This is the name that the angel Gabriel commanded Joseph to name Mary’s child:

Matthew 1:21 MKJV
And she shall bear a son, and you shall call His name JESUS: for He shall save His people from their sins.

The name Jesus is a simply a Greek form of Joshua, a common name among Jews. The same verse also alludes to the meaning of the name: the Lord was to be named Jesus because “he will save his people from their sins.” The name Jesus means “The Lord Saves” or “The Lord Is Salvation.” Whether you spell it Jesus or Jesu or Joshua or Yeshua, the meaning stays the same.

Names can and do translate. Changing a name from one language to another does not change the meaning of the name, nor does it change the character or identity of the person. Elizabeth becomes Elixabete, Isabella, Zsoka, or Eliska, depending on the language. But she remains the same girl. A man named Stephen can be called Stephanos, Stefan, Estevao, Teppo, or Estebe, depending on where in the world he is. But he is the same person, regardless of what we call him. Similarly, Jesus and Yeshua refer to the same Person.

We use the name Jesus, an Anglicized transliteration of the Greek, because Greek is the language that Matthew and Mark and Luke and John wrote their Gospels in and because English is the language we speak. The best translation of Iésous into modern English is “Jesus.”

The following is Adapted from an article by David Biven with kind permission of Bridges for Peace

The first letter in the name Yeshua (“Jesus”) is the yod (י). (Note: Hebrew is read Right to Left.) Yod represents the “Y” sound in Hebrew. Many names in the Bible that begin with yod are mispronounced by English speakers because the yod in these names was transliterated in English Bibles with the letter “J” rather than “Y”. This came about because in early English the letter “J” was pronounced the way we pronounce “Y” today. All proper names in the Old Testament were transliterated into English according to their Hebrew pronunciation, but when English pronunciation shifted to what we know today, these transliterations were not altered. Thus, such Hebrew place names as ye-ru-sha-LA-yim, ye-ri-HO, and yar-DEN have become known to us as Jerusalem, Jericho, and Jordan; and Hebrew personal names such as yo-NA, yi-SHAI, and ye-SHU-a have become known to us as Jonah, Jesse, and Jesus.

The yod is the smallest letter of the alphabet, which is why Yeshua used it in His famous saying in Matt 5:18: “Until heaven and earth pass away not one yod (“iota” in the Greek text) or one kots will pass from the Torah.” For emphasis, Yeshua incorporated in this saying a well-known Hebrew expression: lo’ yod ve-LO’ ko-TSO shel yod, “not a yod and not a ‘thorn’ of a yod,” i.e., not the most insignificant and unimportant thing. When Yeshua declared that heaven and earth might sooner disappear than the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet, or the smallest stroke of a letter, He was simply saying that the Torah (“Law” or “Teaching”) of Moses would never cease to be.

The second sound in Yeshua’s name is called tse-RE, and is pronounced almost like the letter “e” in the word “net”. Just as the “Y” sound of the first letter is mispronounced in today’s English, so too the first vowel sound in “Jesus”. Before the Hebrew name “Yeshua” was transliterated into English, it was first transliterated into Greek. There was no difficulty in transliterating the tse-RE sound since the ancient Greek language had an equivalent letter which represented this sound. And there was no real difficulty in transcribing this same first vowel into English. The translators of the earliest versions of the English Bible transliterated the tse-RE in Yeshua with an “e”. Unfortunately, later English speakers guessed wrongly that this “e” should be pronounced as in “me,” and thus the first syllable of the English version of Yeshua came to be pronounced “Jee” instead of “Yeh”. It is this pronunciation which produced such euphemistic profanities as “Gee” and “Geez”.

Since Yeshua is spelled “Jeshua” and not “Jesus” in most English versions of the Old Testament (for example in Ezra 2:2 and 2 Chronicles 31:15), one easily gets the impression that the name is never mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures. Yet ‘Yeshua’ appears there twenty-nine times, and is the name of at least five different persons and one village in the southern part of Yehudah (“Judah”).

In contrast to the early biblical period, there were relatively few different names in use among the Jewish population of the Land of Israel at the time of the Second Temple. The name Yeshua was one of the most common male names in that period, tied with Eleazer for fifth place behind Simon, Joseph, Judah, and John. Nearly one out of ten persons known from the period was named Yeshua.

The first sound of the second syllable of Yeshua is the “sh” sound. It is represented by the Hebrew letter shin. However Greek, like many other languages, has no “sh” sound. Instead, the closest approximation, the Greek sigma, was used when transcribing “Yeshua” as “Iesus”. Translators of English versions of the New Testament transliterated the Greek transcription of a Hebrew name, instead of returning to the original Hebrew. This was doubly unfortunate, first because the “sh” sound exists in English, and second because in English the “s” sound can shift to the “z” sound, which is what happened in the case of the pronunciation of “Jesus”.

The fourth sound one hears in the name Yeshua is the “u” sound, as in the word “true”. Like the first three sounds, this also has come to be mispronounced but in this case it is not the fault of the translators. They transcribed this sound accurately, but English is not a phonetic language and “u” can be pronounced in more than one way. At some point the “u” in “Jesus” came to be pronounced as in “cut,” and so we say “Jee-zuhs.”

The “a” sound, as in the word “father,” is the fifth sound in Jesus’ name. It is followed by a guttural produced by contracting the lower throat muscles and retracting the tongue root- an unfamiliar task for English speakers. In an exception to the rule, the vowel sound “a” associated with the last letter “ayin” (the guttural) is pronounced before it, not after. While there is no equivalent in English or any other Indo-European language, it is somewhat similar to the last sound in the name of the composer, “Bach.” In this position it is almost inaudible to the western ear. Some Israelis pronounce this last sound and some don’t, depending on what part of the dispersion their families returned from. The Hebrew Language Academy, guardian of the purity of the language, has ruled that it should be sounded, and Israeli radio and television announcers are required to pronounce it correctly. There was no letter to represent them, and so these fifth and sixth sounds were dropped from the Greek transcription of “Yeshua,” -the transcription from which the English “Jesus” is derived.
So where did the final “s” of “Jesus” come from? Masculine names in Greek ordinarily end with a consonant, usually with an “s” sound, and less frequently with an “n” or “r” sound. In the case of “Iesus,” the Greeks added a sigma, the “s” sound, to close the word. The same is true for the names Nicodemus, Judas, Lazarus, and others.
English speakers make one further change from the original pronunciation of Jesus’ name. English places the accent on “Je,” rather than on “sus.” For this reason, the “u” has shortened in its English pronunciation to “uh.”

In the West, a child’s name is often chosen for its pleasant sound, or because another family member had it. The Jews of the Second Temple period also named after relatives (Luke 1:59-63). However, almost all Jewish names have a literal meaning. Occasionally this is seen in English names too, such as Scott (a person from Scotland), Johnson (son of John), and Baker (bread maker). But with Hebrew names it is the rule, rather than the exception.
The name Yeshua means The LORD’s Salvation, or Cry Out to the LORD for Help. It is the short version of Yahushua, literally “YHWH saves (or turns) us”. In comparison, prior to being transliterated from the Hebrew Bible, the name (Iesous) did not exist in Greek. Through multiple translations and changes in pronunciation, a tradition of saying “Jesus” has obscured His name, “Yeshua.” It has shifted His perceived message and identity from Hebrew to Greek.

Do I use Jesus (English) or Yeshua (Hebrew) when I pray?

Ever since I became a Christian, I would pray in the name of Jesus or close my prayers in Jesus’ name. Amen. I also learned that God had a name, Jehovah (English translation). Recently, I have been delving deeply into the Hebrew to help me understand the Old Testament. As a result, when I pray I can naturally slip between using the name, Jesus and Yeshua, and Yehovah, God, Lord. I do the same now too when writing.

To do this is never a salvation issue. It was, it is and always has been a matter of choice. No one should ever force you to say it one way or the other. It is your choice. All of us were called by Yehovah when we called Him God with a capital “G”. If it was a false god we used the lower case “g” to signify that.

So, when you pray, ask in Jesus’ name, or, Joshua, Yeshua, Yehoshua or Iesous. It’s okay… the important thing is that you pray in His Name!

God’s Name

As an interesting aside, when I was exploring God’s Name in Hebrew, I discovered the following.

Every Hebrew letter is associated with a word/meaning… usually a word where the letter first appears in Torah.

Hebrew is written Right to Left, English of course, Left to Right.

So, let’s look at Yehovah, God’s Name:

יְהוָה = Yehovah

יְ
= Hand

ה
= Reveal/ Behold
וָ
= Nail
ה
= Reveal/ Behold

Translating the Name of Yehovah using the letters of the Tetragrammaton¹ it reads as:

Hand Behold, Nail Revealed.

-OR-

Behold the Hand and Reveal the Nail.

Yehovah’s Name reveals the Nail in Yeshua’s hand(s).

Let that sink in.

Let’s now let’s return to: A Menu of Important Things.

1
Tetragrammaton is a word that means “four letters” and refers to the four Hebrew consonants יהוה that represent God’s name.