This past Sunday I had an extended phone conversation with my 91 year-old uncle, who is one of the most stubborn people on the planet. I love my uncle dearly, but he is exceedingly obstinate by his own admission. I try not to get into arguments with him, because even if I “win,” nothing is accomplished. He never backs off of his opinion.
But…when he told me that no Christian should say or sing “hallelujah” because it means praise Jehovah, I had trouble keeping my mouth shut. His reasoning is that Jehovah is not really the one true God, because Jehovah and Yahweh come from the equivalent of the Hebrew letters YHWH, which he claims represent 4 different gods. His claim is that each of the 12 tribes of Israel had a different god, and that at some point 4 of these god’s initials were combined to form YHWH which becomes Jehovah or Yahweh. When I pointed out that in my multiple readings of the entire Bible, including the Old Testament history of the 12 tribes of Israel, I have never seen this notion, he changed the subject.
Since then, I have been thinking again about YHWH and Yahweh. Several years ago while exercising on my NordicTrack, I realized that my heavy breathing sounded a great deal like Yahweh. I inhaled and said “yah.” I exhaled and said “weh.” This was a sort of epiphany for me, as I pondered:
*The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Genesis 2:7
*The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life. Job 33:4
*And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. Acts 17:25
What if every human breath is intended by God to speak His name? Yah-weh, Yah-weh, Yah-weh….we pant it when we are exerting ourselves. We whisper it in our sleep. It is the first thing we do in life and the last thing we do before death.
I have seen these significant moments close up on multiple occasions. A baby is born and has not yet breathed. The baby’s body is flaccid; limbs hang down without any apparent muscle tone. The baby’s color is white with blue tinges. It has an almost plastic appearance. Then the miracle of breath occurs. Suddenly the baby is pink; arms and legs contract. The much anticipated cry means the baby is alive. At the other end of the life span, an older person struggles for breath. He may stop breathing for a few seconds and then with a gasp begin again. But finally, there is that one last breath followed by silence. Color quickly leaves the skin. The body becomes nothing more than a shell, which once contained a living being.
Yah-weh, Yah-weh,
With every breath I acknowledge you.
The pagan,
The agnostic,
The atheist,
The believer,
None of us can stop breathing,
And with every breath,
We speak your name.
