Why do you not translate the Divine Name as Jehovah or Yahweh in the NET Bible?

Actually the final decision of how to render YHWH and its derivatives has not been made yet at the editorial level; you must remember that with the OT documents on our web site you are reading unedited drafts which will not necessarily appear this way in their final published form. Actually yours is one of a number of requests we have received regarding the translation of YHWH as "LORD" which appears in some of the documents.

The current alternative we are considering is Yahweh. "Jehovah" is a form resulting from the combination of one set of consonants (in the Hebrew text) with the vowels from another entirely different word, producing a form which would have been totally unknown to the ancient rabbis. When they saw the vowels they read the other word, refusing out of reverence to pronounce the Divine Name. In the history of the Bible's translation into English some of this reluctance to pronounce the Name may have influenced English translators to use "LORD" in all capitals for the Name, and that usage has now become accepted and traditional. Our editorial board has up till now leaned in the traditional direction, fearing that a name like "Yahweh" while technically correct would be so foreign to most English readers who were not Hebrew students that it would be off-putting. But I know several of the editorial board have expressed a preference for "Yahweh" and that may end up to be the final choice.

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