The Poetics of YHWH: Establishing Criteria for Identifying Intentional Allusions to the Divine Name in YHWH-Acronyms

The Hebrew Bible features 24 verses in which the initial letters of a four-word phrase form the divine name, Y-H-W-H. This paper proposes criteria for evaluating the intentionality of these acronyms drawing on the work of Roman Jakobson. Besides using this methodological approach, this article also brings to light allusions to the divine name that have not been discussed in exegetical scholarship before. With its differentiated and probabilistic approach, this paper suggests a differentiation between four levels of likelihood. Notably, the intentional use of this stylistic device is not limited to ‘poetic’ texts in the traditional sense. On a general level, this article also contributes to the question of identifying the intentionality of literary features as well as theological allusions in the Hebrew Bible.