Josephus wrote that the name of our Father in heaven consisted of four vowels. In his Book of Wars, Book 5, Chap. 5, para. 7 (or 5.5.7) Josephus described the garments of the priests in service at the temple. Speaking of the High Priest’s garments,

“A mitre also of fine linen encompassed his head, which was tied by a blue ribbon about which there was another golden crown, in which was engraven the sacred name [of God]: it consists of four vowels.” (Source: GutenbergPress)

(Note the square brackets around the words “of God.”  Brackets are used in quoted or translated documents to denote additions to the original. They have been inserted, and are not of the original writing. It is added for clarification.¹)

The Hebrew letters of the Tetragrammaton (TG for short) are correctly written in English from left to right as YHVH ⁽²⁾. The Vav (V) in modern Hebrew sounds like “v” in “vine.” But in ancient Hebrew had the “waw” or “ou” sound as in “rule.” ⁽³⁾  Since it is pronounced with a “w” sound, a breathing sound, the Latin script is YHWH.  There is no “w’ in the Hebrew alphabet.

The Yod and the Heh form the first two letters and is verified to be pronounced as “yah” ⁽⁴⁾ from Ex. 15:2:

“My strength and song is Jah, And He is become my salvation: This [is] my God, and I glorify Him; God of my father, and I exalt Him.” (YLT) 

“Yah is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. This is my God: I will glorify him; my father’s God: I will exalt him.” (CJB)

“Yah is my strength and my song. He is my Savior. This is my El, and I will praise him,   my father’s Elohim, and I will honor him.” (NOG)

“Yah is my strength and song. He has become my salvation. This is my God, and I will praise him; my father’s God, and I will exalt him.” (World English Bible)

And, again at Isa. 12:2:

“ Lo, God [is] my salvation, I trust, and fear not, For my strength and song [is] Jah Jehovah, And He is to me for salvation.”  (YLT)

“See! God is my salvation. I am confident and unafraid; for Yah Adonai is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation!” (CJB)

“Look! El is my Savior. I am confident and unafraid, because Yah is my strength and my song. He is my Savior.” (NOG)

^“Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust, and will not be afraid; for Yah, Yahweh, is my strength and song; and he has become my salvation.”  (World English Bible)

“Behold, O God my saving health, I will trust and not be afraid for JAH, the LORD, is my strength and my song; he also is become saving health unto me.” (Jubilee Bible 2000)

And, the Orthodox Jewish Bible translates Isa. 2:12 as

“Hinei, El is my Yeshuah (Salvation); I will trust, and not be afraid; for Hashem G-d is my strength and my zemirah; He also has become my Yeshuah (Salvation).”

“Praise ye Jah! … praise ye Jah!” (Psa, 150:1, 6, YLT) or Hallelu Yah!

We also have the patterns of the spellings of the Hebrew names in the Old Testament that end with “yah”: Isaiah (Yeshayah); Joshua (Yehoshuah); Jeremiah (Yermeyah); Josiah (Yoshiyah); Hezikiah (Hizikiyah); Zedekiah (Tzidkiyah), etc.  Isaiah’s name means Yah (God) is salvation, or salvation of the Lord.  Jeremiah’s name means Yah will lift up, or elevated of Yah. ⁽⁵⁾

Proper names are transliterated, not translated.  But, the translators could not spell the Hebrew names with the Hebrew letters in Greek or Latin alphabets.  So, they had to spell them phonetically.  In both Greek and Latin the “I” with a vowel made the “y” sound with that vowel. For example, “Ie” sounded like “yeh;” “Ia” sounded like “yah;” “Io” sounded like “yoh.” “Iesous” was the phonetic spelling of Jesus’ name in the Greek translation, and the original pronunciation would have been “Yeshuah.”  (Masculine names in the Greek do not end with an “ah” sound, but the case definitive “ous”.)  In Latin His name was translated as “Iesus” and sounded like “yaaasu.”

It is the same for the OT names. The English translators created the “J” by adding the bottom hook to distinguish it from the Greek and Latin “i” which was already used in the English for the long “eeee” sound.  That is why you hear many people try to pronounce the Greek spelling of Jesus’ name as “eee-aaa-sous”. They don’t understand the combination of the “i” with the vowel makes the “y” sound in the Greek and Latin.  So, in the English translations the “J” became the “y” sound, and is still used that way today in the German pronunciations of Jesu sounding like “Yaasu.”

Over time, the English language changed and the spelling became “Jehovah” in most English bibles.

From “The History of the Tetragrammaton” –

“It is this four-letter Hebrew word that William Tyndale would eventually translate into the name Jehovah. Unfortunately, Tyndale was unfamiliar with the word’s history. Because of the perceived holiness of God’s name, many observent Jews never uttered it aloud. Instead, they say haShem (“the name”) or Adonai (“my Lord”), a tradition that dated back to at least the Hellenistic period (c. 332–37 BCE). This was so important that when the Hebrew vowel system was invented in the Middle Ages, the rabbis that penned the scriptures chose to add the vowels for Adonai onto the Tetragrammaton as a reminder not to say God’s true name out loud. It was these Hebrew texts that Tyndale used to make his translations, which ultimately became the basis for the Old Testament of the King James Version of the Bible in 1611. And the rest is history.”  (Source: Biblicalarchaeology)

But, Tyndale spelled the TG as “Iehouah” at Ex. 6:3. (Source: Biblecollectors)

This is the phonetic spelling of the Hebrew letters. “Ieh” for the “yeh” sound; “ou” for the long “oo” sound as in “rule;” and the last “ah” is the “ah” sound in “father.”  The entire sound of that phonetic spelling would have been “Yeh-oo-ah” or “Yah-oo-ah.” 

However, Josephus said “four vowels.” Vowels are breathing sounds. That means four breathing sounds were used to pronounce God’s name.

Ex. 3:14, “… I Am who I Am…” (Interlineaer)  Or, “… ‘eh-yeh a-ser ‘eh-yeh…” Strong’s Heb. 1961, “הָיָה”, transliterated as “hayah”, to be or to become. ⁽⁶⁾

“ God [is] a Spirit, …”  (John 4:24, YLT)

” the spirit it is that is giving life; the flesh doth not profit anything; the sayings that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life;” (John 6:63, YLT)

Spirit equals breath, or speaking; life equals breath. God breathed life into Adam (Gen. 2:4). God’s Spirit is God’s breath, pneuma. ⁽⁷⁾

Breathing the complete name of Yah is a four vowel sound. Inhale – hayah; exhale – ooah. Or, “hayah ouah”.   Some prefer “eeyah ouah.” ⁽⁸⁾

The issue I have is the sound of the second part of the common spelling “Yahweh.”  We have good support for the YH as “Yah.”  Then why is the VH where the “vav” was pronounced in ancient Hebrew as “waw” or “ou” not said as “waw” or “ouah”?  I believe we should give serious consideration to the breathing sound of the Spirit, as “Yah ou ah”, not “Yah waaay.”

Some evidence for this is from the names of enslaved peoples and conquered lands listed in the Egyptian hieroglyphic texts at the temples of Thutmosis III, Amenhotep II, Thutmosis IV, Amenhotep III, Akenaton, Seti I, Ramses II, Merneptah, and Rameses III. 

Excerpt from “The Name Yahweh in Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts,” para. 8 under “The Term Shasu”:

“It is generally accepted that the term Shasu means nomads or Bedouin people, referring primarily to the nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples of Syria-Palestine. There are two significant hieroglyphic references in New Kingdom Period texts to an area called “the land of the Shasu of Yahweh.”…. While the term Shasu is used primarily for semi-nomadic Semitic herders who lived north of Egypt, it also has a secondary usage in some New Kingdom texts for the geographic areas where the Shasu lived. When used geographically in Egyptian texts, the hieroglyphic word t3 is used, and this word should be translated as “land of.” In the case of these two references that we are discussing, the Egyptian phrase is t3 sh3sw ya-h-wa, ie. “the land of the Shasu of Yahweh.” Source: Biblearchaeology

I am using the number 3 in place of the real symbol in the Egyptian writing since I do not have those available.  That symbol sounds like “ah” in “father.” Notice that the Egyptian “sh3sw” is written in English as Shasu.  The “w” is generally rendered as a long “u” sound of “rule.” The “e” which is sometimes written as a 9, is also the “ah” sound, as in Amon-Re, sometimes written as Amon-Ra, or Amun-Ra.⁽⁹⁾

The Egyptian hieroglyphics show the sounding letters of God’s name as “ya-h-wa”, which would sound like “Ya-ha-wah,” not “Ya-waay. The ancient Egyptian lists the hieroglyphics as “yh” or “yhw.” It is the researchers, archaeologists, and Egyptologists who associate the designated letters with today’s commonly used spelling as Yahweh, and many people assume the Latin and European long “aaa” sound for the second half.

Also from this same article, 16^th para under The Land of Shasu:

“Astour observes that the name Yahweh also appears in a topographical list at Medinet Habu (12th century B.C.) with the variant spelling yi-ha. This constitutes a third reference in hieroglyphic texts to Yahweh.”

The variant spelling “yi-ha” corresponds to the drawn out breathing sound of the first syllable “ee-yah”.  I believe that an assumption has been made based upon the Latin pronunciation of the “e” in “weh” to say it as “way,” as the “e” in Latin and other European languages is the long “aaa” sound.

From Cambridge University Press, 17 Sept. 2020 is the article titlted “2 – Yhw3 of Shasu-Land

“Summary

At the center of any evaluation of early evidence for Yahweh must stand a pair of related texts from New Kingdom Egyptian sites in northern Sudan: one from Soleb, during the reign of Amenhotep III (ca. 1390-1352); and the second from ‘Amarah West, during the reign of Ramses II (ca. 1279-1213). Both are monumental inscriptions for display on temples, lists of places and peoples that create a map of Egypt’s world.  This material is far older than any potential reference to Yahweh, and if the name Yhw3 does match the deity rendered as Yhwh, even if it did not yet identify a god, it becomes the chronological starting point for all historical evaluation.” Source: Cambridge

Again using the number 3 here to represent the symbol at the end of Yhw, that symbol is the “ah” sound.  Yahwah, not Yahway.

In slow motion, breathing His name, Yhwh is “ee yah ou ah”, or possibly “ee yah ou uh” which becomes four vowel sounds to which Josephus most probably referred.

Notes:

1) The Rules for Using …Brackets – Grammar-Monster

2) Strong’s Heb. 3068 – Yhvh – Biblehub

3) The Letter Vav in the Hebrew Aplhabet – hebrewtoday

4) Strong’s Heb. 3050, “Yah” – Biblehub

5) Biblical Name Vault – Abarim-Pub

6) Strong’s Heb. 1961 “hayah” – Biblehub

7) Strong’s Gr. 4151, pneuma – Biblehub

8) The Name and the Sound of Breath – SoundofBreath

9) The Pronunciation of Ancient Egyptian – https://friesian.com/egypt.htm

(See the notes under the table about mid-way through the article.

References:

1. Handling the Tetragrammaton… BibleCollectors

2) Breathing God’s Name – HebrewforChristians

3) The History of the Tetragrammaton – BiblicalArchaeology

4) Understanding the Tetragrammaton – ChristianLibrary

5) The Tetragrammaton in Egyptian Sources – Facts and Fiction,

p. 108, para. 1, “One might consider the missing final <h>, but this may not have been considered as distinctive, since it is positioned in the absolute final position. Similar phenomena are attested with the representation of other words.”

p.108, under heading 2.5, “Kurt Sethe, in his study on “traces of the Persian rule,” translated the place name p3-t3 Y-h-t of the stele Berlin 1107 as “the land of the Jews.”⁹⁷ Henri Gauthier included it without further discussion as the possible writing of Y-h = Jahwe (Yhwh) into his Dictionnaire Géographique,⁹⁸ and Jean Leclant quoted it in 1963 as a parallel for the “Y-h-w” of the Soleb-lists.’

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