Five Books on the Nature of God,
or
On the Divine Attributes
or
On the Divine Attributes
By Girolamo Zanchi
Translated by Patrick J. O'Banion
Book 1, Chapter 13, Part 3
Volume 1 is available for order now
from Merchant Royal Press
As God’s Proper Name, יהוה is
Appropriate for None but Him
In the fourth place, what we proposed is clearly apparent, namely, that this name is God’s proper and essential name, such that it is suitable only for Him and is not appropriate for any created thing. For, what is there that can be found or contrived, besides God, that is an eternal, most simple and perfect essence, subsisting of itself and by means of itself, creator and source of all things and first cause of all being, preserver and governor of all things, which (finally) is utterly steadfast by nature and in all its promises, such that whatever it once willed it also always wills and which actually does and really accomplishes whatever it wills? But we have showed that all these things are signified by the name Jehovah. Accordingly, this name is suitable for God, and no one else.
Some Hebrew philologists allege another reason on the basis of grammar.[1] They say that proper names (that is, names predicated of one properly) do not receive a prefixed emphatic
(or: indicative) ה, nor is anything affixed to the end of the word,nor are they in the plural, nor are they ever in a construct state [in regimine]. These are all remarks made by the philologists. They say that the name Jehovah is treated in the same way in the Scriptures. First, it is never read with an emphatic (or: indicative) ה in this way: היהוה (meaning: this Jehovah or that Jehovah). Next, it is never read with anything suffixed to it in this way: יהפהר or יהוהבב as is the case with אלהים. And moreover, it also lacks a plural: יהוהים, unlike Elohim. Finally, it is never read in a construct state, saying: Jehovah of Abraham or Jehovah of Isaac or Jehovah of Jacob, as is the case with Elohe Abraham [Ex. 3:15]. And if we sometimes find something like Jehovah Zebaoth [the Lord of Hosts], in Jeremiah 11[:20] and elsewhere, then we should always understand [the implicit presence of] the name Elohim or Adonai, which is how it generally appears in the Holy Bible: I am Jehovah, God of Hosts [Elohe Zebaoth][2] and Jehovah, the God of Abraham [Ex. 3:15]. Hence, the name Jehovah is God’s proper and essential name, by which name His essence is properly signified. However, the first explanation is better founded and more theological.
Indeed, the proposition is confirmed by the clear testimonies of the Scriptures. He says to Moses: This is what you will say to the sons of Israel: אלהי אבתיכם, יהוה (Jehovah, the God of your fathers), the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, has sent me to you.” This is My name forever, and this is My memorial unto all ages (Ex. 3:15). By these words, He indicated that the name Jehovah is His proper name, by which, having once heard it, men were for all time to be reminded of that God who led the people out of Egypt. And in the Prophets, He again and again set Himself apart from all false gods and from all created things by this name. To be sure, that is something that He would not have done if Jehovah were not His proper name, which He conferred upon Himself.
Here is that well known passage in the Prophet Amos: Seek Jehovah, He who makes the Pleiades and Orion (that is, who, by the rising and setting of certain stars, changes the severity of winter into the sweetness of spring), who turns the dark of night into morning (that is, who turns the deepest and darkest night into the morning light) and who conversely makes the day to grow dark unto night, who summons the waters of the sea and pours them out upon the face of the earth; His name is Jehovah (Amos 5:8). Amos teaches that the name Jehovah is the proper name of Him who rules the whole world and, hence, that it is not appropriate for any creature.
And Isaiah 42:8 says: I am Jehovah, הוא (that) is My name, and I will not give this My glory to another. First, He says: I am Jehovah, as if to say: I alone am not merely called, but truly am, Jehovah (that is, eternal essence). Next, He adds: And this is My name, as if to say: Since I alone truly am Jehovah, the name “Jehovah” is likewise appropriate for Me alone, and thus it is My name—My proper name. Third, He adds: I will not give this My glory (namely, the deity or eternal essence signified by the name Jehovah) to another. For it cannot be shared with any created thing in such a way that it becomes and truly is God and Jehovah. Hence, it follows that, properly speaking, this name cannot be shared with anything that has been made. From this it follows that Jehovah is God’s most proper name.
Properly speaking, this name cannot be shared with anything that has been made. From this it follows that Jehovah is God’s most proper name.
Now, insofar as the Photinians hurl certain passages from the Scriptures at us whereby they attempt to prove that the name Jehovah was actually shared with some creatures—such as angels, altars, Jerusalem, and the ark—all these objections are responded to at length in the book on the Trinity.[3] Indeed, based on the circumstances of those passages, we show that those things were appealed to by the name Jehovah in a metonymical manner,[4] namely, because they were symbols of the presence of Jehovah God. Nor, in fact, were they actually called by the name Jehovah in a simple manner.
For instance—if I may repeat just one example—the altar that Moses built in Exodus 17[:15] was not called Jehovah. Rather, the altar was erected in remembrance of the fact that Jehovah was Moses’s banner or protection, for the words are thus: And Moses built an altar, and he called its name “Jehovah my banner” or “my protection.” Does anyone fail to see that the noun Jehovah is not predicated of the altar but that it is (as they say) a subject and that the true Jehovah is thereby signified but that the noun 
banner is a predicate and is predicated of the true Jehovah? In fact, this whole statement—Jehovah is my banner—was like a title imposed and (as it were) affixed to that altar, just as similar sayings are often either painted or engraved on palaces and temples. Certainly, that altar was adorned with this title so that it might be a perpetual monument and memorial of the deed accomplished.
I say the same thing with regard to Jerusalem in Jeremiah 36:16 and Ezekiel 48:35. The whole phrase Jehovah is our righteousness and Jehovah is there was a cognomen with which the Lord wanted His church to be adorned such that the name Jehovah not be predicated of the city or of the church. (In fact, in both passages the name Jehovah is a subject about which something is predicated.) Rather, He wanted the entire collocation—Jehovah is our righteousness and Jehovah is there (that is, He dwells in eternity)—to adorn Jerusalem or the church as a maxim, as has been explained at length and clearly elsewhere.
Therefore, it remains settled that the name יהוה is the proper name of God in such a way that it is appropriate for no one but Him.
The Name יהוה Is Appropriate for the Son
and the Holy Spirit as well as the Father
The fifth point follows easily from this, namely that Christ and the Holy Spirit are true Jehovah God, since that name is attributed to them in the Scriptures simply, without figure of speech, and (for that reason) properly. We have sufficiently confirmed this already with many clear testimonies. Hence, to heap up many testimonies on this point would be redundant and faulty. Accordingly, a single one will more than suffice.
In Isaiah 6:9[–10], He who appeared to Isaiah and told him Go… Blind the heart of this people is simply and without figure of speech called יהוה. No one denies this, for anyone who did so would also be denying that the Father, simply and without any figure of speech, is called and is Jehovah. And yet, Jehovah is not only the Father but also the Son and the Holy Spirit. With regard to the Son, John 12:41 testifies. And with regard to the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Paul testifies in Acts 28:25. For me, this one passage is the equal of a thousand arguments, for it has yet to be eluded by any interpretation, despite all the antichrists exerting their strength and each of their tricks to the fullest against this passage in order to slip out of it.
[1] See, for example, the discussion in the work of the eleventh-century Iberian rabbi Abraham Ben Meir Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra’s Commentary on the Pentateuch: Exodus, trans. Arthur M. Silver and H. Norman Strickman (Menorah, 1996), 65–66.
[2] The phrase LORD God of Hosts appears in various passages, among them 1 Kings 19:10; Pss. 59:5; 80:4, 19; 84:8; and 89:8; and Amos 5:15.
[3] De tribus Elohim, pt. 2, bk. 2, ch. 2 (OOT, 1:429–33).
[4] μετωνυμικῶς.