Page 103 - New English Book L
P. 103
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I have purposely written the original Hebrew words
YaHWaH and Adon, in order to avoid any ambiguity and
misunderstanding in the sense conveyed by them. Such
sacred names written in religious Scripture should be left
as they are, unless you can find a thoroughly equivalent
word for them in the language into which you wish to
translate them. The tetra gram Yhwh used to be pronounced
Yehovah (Jehovah), but now it is generally pronounced
Yahwah. It is a proper name of God the Almighty, and
it is held so holy by the Jews that when reading their
Scriptures they never pronounce it, but read it “Adoni”
instead. The other name, “Elohim,” is always pronounced,
but Yahwah never. Why the Jews make this distinction
between these two names of the same God is a question for
itself, altogether outside the scope of our present subject.
It may, however, in passing, be mentioned that Yahwah,
unlike Elohim, is never used with pronominal suffixes,
and seems to be a special name in Hebrew for the Deity as
the national God of the people of Israel. In fact, “Elohim”
is the oldest name known to all Semites; and in order to
give a special character to the conception of the true God,
this tetragram is often conjointly with Elohim applied to
Him. The Arabic form, Rabb Allah, corresponds to the
Hebrew form, Yahwah Elohim.
The other word, “Adon,” signifies a “Commander, Lord,
and master,” or the same as the Arabic and Turkish nouns
Amir, sayyid, and Agha. Adon stands as the opposite term
of “soldier, slave, and property.” Consequently the first part
of the distich is to be rendered as “God said to my Lord.”
David (pbuh) , in his capacity of a monarch, was
himself the Lord and Commander of every Israelite and
the Master of the Kingdom. Whose “servant” was he,
then? David (pbuh) , being a powerful sovereign, could
not be, as a matter of fact, a slave or servant of any
living human being whatsoever. Nor is it imaginable