Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/12

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PREFACE.
vii

hold scientific love of truth and progress to be the exclusive privilege of their own tendencies, will find in this new thoroughly revised edition of my Commentary much that is instructive, and much that is more correctly apprehended. The fact that I have still further pressed the Oriental learning of Fleischer and Wetzstein into the service of Biblical science will not be unwelcome to my readers. But that I have also laid Jewish investigators under contribution is due to my desire to see the partition wall between Synagogue and Church broken down. The exposition of Scripture has not only to serve the Church of the present, but also to help in building up the Church of the future. In this spirit I commend the present work to the grace and blessing of the God of the history of redemption.

Delitzsch

Erlangen, 7th July 1867.




Note on יהוה .

Jahve is (1) the traditional pronunciation, and (2) the pronunciation to be presupposed in accordance with the laws of formation and of vowel sounds. It is the traditional, for Theodoret and Epiphanius transcribe Ἰαβέ . The mode of pronunciation Ἀϊά (not Ἰαβά ), on the contrary, is the reproduction of the form of the name

, and the mode of pronunciation Ἰαῶ of the form of the name יהו , which although occurring only in the Old Testament in composition, had once, according to traces that can be relied on, an independent existence. Also the testimonies of the Talmud and post-talmudical writings require the final sound to be —ָה , and the corresponding name by which God calls Himself, אָֽהְיֶה , is authentic security for this ending. When it is further con-