“Seemliness of Jehovah” (decentia divina)

Looking into the root and meaning of the divine name Jah, Johannes Cocceius opened up a suggestive line of thought which later Protestant theologians developed further. And I think it deserves more consideration as a useful, fruitful way of thinking. Here are some quick notes to mark the trailhead.

Cocceius thought the name Jah came from a Hebrew root meaning “fitting” or “seemly.” Here’s a report on Cocceius’ deliberations; I take the summary from DeMoor’s Continuous Commentary because that’s available in English (thanks to Steven Dilday; original Latin here).

The Most Illustrious COCCEIUS, in his Lexico Hebraici, root יאה , thinks that it is able to be derived from the root י אָה , to be fitting/ seemly, so that it might primarily denote God’s beauty, comeliness; which root occurs only once in the Old Testament, Jeremiah 10:7, , כַ֥י לְַּךָ֖ יַּ א֑ תה for to thee doth it befit, where, nevertheless, 1. it is used not of that which it is fitting for God to offer; but of that which it is fitting to be offered to God by us.

DeMoor goes on to object to Cocceius’ derivation, introducing an alternative by Schultens but ultimately deciding the Cocceius is still correct about the meaning of the name even if he got there the wrong way.

The main point is that Cocceius and DeMoor think of the name Jah (by itself in Ps 68:5 or in combination with the name Jehovah in Isa 26) not simply as a mysterious contraction of the tetragrammaton, but as an indicator of something that corresponds to God in an appropriate way. It marks divine beauty or power in the sense of a manifestation of God that is befitting, appropriate, or somehow rightly corresponding to, God.

Little hints about this are scattered around in some Protestant theologies of the 18th century. But an especially clear and suggestive version of it occurs in Vitringa’s Fundamentals of Sacred Theology (newly available in English translation!). Look at aphorism 85 and 86:

“In God there is something most fitting to Him, and so beautiful and ornate, which in Scripture is called the seemliness of Jehovah or the glory of Jehovah. These are the pure perfections and virtues of God which exceedingly adorn God and harmoniously sound the ever-exhibited magnitude of God most intimately to us.”

(Here’s the Latin w/ the Hebrew in it, for giggles and wonder:)

Vitringa presupposes and telescopes the discussion among Protestant Hebraists about the name Jah or the compound name Jehovah Jah (Vitringa was himself an accomplished Hebraist and prolific commentator, see Vitringa on Isaiah in Latin here at decentia). What he offers is “decentia Jehova,” God’s seemliness, or the things that correspond appropriate to God.

Whatever may be true about the Hebrew root of Jah, Vitringa derives from his consideration of it a point of access to the divine perfections. And it occurs in in the theological context of this capacious notion: what corresponds to God? What, in God, corresponds to God appropriately?

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