In preparation for preaching Wednesday, I was studying In Matthew 22:43-46, Jesus said, "How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?' And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions."
"The LORD said unto my Lord..."
I think it's common knowledge for most Bible readers that the word LORD in all caps in our English Bible, refers to the covenant name of God. Some modern translations have taken to replace *some* of those instances with Yahweh or Jehovah (that's a separate issue, and I won't address that here). For years, I've read scholars talk about the crime of the translators following the superstitions of the Jews by not translating God's name, but following the tradition of saying LORD. This is a subject that has fascinated me for well over a decade. I recently preached on the burning bush and dealt with God's name. LORD, I AM that I AM, YHWH was fresh on my mind as I read this passage.
Jesus quotes Psalm 110:1, “The LORD said unto my Lord…” In both the Old and New Testament, LORD is in all caps in my Bible. In the Psalms, LORD in Hebrew is the Tetragrammaton, the covenant name of God. Hebrew doesn’t have vowels, and until much later in history, they didn’t have vowel markers. The Tetragrammton, God’s name, is spelled in English letters, YHWH. Anytime in our English Bible you see LORD in all caps, it refers to the Divine name. It's not a hidden mystery and I think important to make sure we are aware of the reason for the small caps.
The question: should we or must we substitute LORD with YHWH in our reading or even work toward a translation of the Bible that makes the change? One evangelical author is adamant about getting a translation that changes all instances of LORD to the point of saying it's wrong and superstitious to continue such a foolish tradition. Have God's people been duped for millennia? Does my Bible have literally thousands of mistakes?
Not so fast. Let's think about the passage in Matthew. The Greek Word for LORD is κύριος (kyrios) and that’s the word translated Lord in all three places in Matthew 22:43-46. But if the King James is mistranslated and it should have been translated YHWH, why didn't the Lord correct it here or why didn't Matthew correct it?
Εἶπεν ὁ κύριος τῷ κυρίῳ μου Κάθου ἐκ δεξιῶν μου ἕως ἂν θῶ τοὺς ἐχθρούς σου ὑποπόδιον τῶν ποδῶν σου
See for yourself, the kyrios said to my kyrios. Not YHWH said to my kyrios.
Did Matthew misquote Jesus? Did Jesus say LORD? Was Matthew wrong in writing LORD?
Or, perhaps, Matthew, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote exactly what God wanted us to read. If we "go to the original", to what original will we go? The Greek which says kyrios or the Hebrew that says YHWH? If "LORD" is wrong, it also means Matthew is wrong. But, since Matthew was under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and the Word of God is innerant and infallible and Matthew wrote LORD quoting the Old Testament, it is not wrong for us to do likewise in the Old or the New Testaments.
It’s easy to point to Jewish superstitions in the Septuagint as the cause for the practice of writing LORD. But if that’s the reason its in the Bible now, why did Matthew commit the same "error"? Why didn't the New Testament authors, who were hardly afraid of ruffling the feathers of the Jews, not set the churches straight? Or, maybe, in God's providence, the people of God have not been wrongly reading God's Word for 2100+ years. You won't find Jesus or the apostles ever correcting Scripture when they quote the Old Testament even when they quoted their translations. We would be much better off following their practice and stop correcting our Bibles and let our Bibles correct us.
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