Why isn't the Name YHWH in Quran?

 بِسۡمِ اللّٰہِ الرَّحۡمٰنِ الرَّحِیۡمِ

In the Name of Allah, the Rahman, the Merciful

At the burning bush, Allah spoke to Moses and revealed to him:

اِنَّنِیۡۤ اَنَا اللّٰہُ لَاۤ اِلٰہَ اِلَّاۤ اَنَا فَاعۡبُدۡنِیۡ

I am I, Allah, there is no god except Me, so worship Me

(Surah 20, Ayah 14)

The words Innani Ana, which literally mean “I am Me” especially in conjunction with the narrative of what Allah said to Moses at the burning bush is certainly a confirmation and indication of what is mentioned about the Name of God in the Book of Exodus:

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר אֱלֹהִים֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר אֶֽהְיֶ֑ה וַיֹּ֗אמֶר כֹּ֤ה תֹאמַר֙ לִבְנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה שְׁלָחַ֥נִי אֲלֵיכֶֽם

And God said unto Moses, I Am That I Am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you

(Exodus 3:14)

The words Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh meaning “I am that I am” are referred to in the Quran as Innani Ana “I am Me”. In this Biblical verse, God says His name is Ehyeh “you shall say to the sons of Israel, Ehyeh has sent me”. This is the meaning of God’s greatest Name, the Ism al-A’zam in Islamic tradition, regarding which the Prophet Muhammad said that It can be found, among other places, in Surat Ta Ha:

اسْمُ اللَّهِ الأَعْظَمُ الَّذِي إِذَا دُعِيَ بِهِ أَجَابَ فِي سُوَرٍ ثَلاَثٍ الْبَقَرَةِ وَآلِ عِمْرَانَ وَطَهَ

“The Greatest Name of Allah, which if called by He responds is in three Surahs: al-Baqarah, Ale Imran and Ta Ha.” (Sunan Ibn Majah)

The Ayah I have quoted in which Allah says انني انا “I am Me” to the Prophet Moses is the fourteenth verse of Surat Ta Ha.

Now the divine Name YHWH occurs in the Hebrew Bible a little under seven thousand times. It is the most frequent and repeated Name of God in the Old Testament, outnumbering the Name Elohim which occurs a under three thousand times.

Exodus 3:14 is essentially giving the etymological significance and meaning of the divine Name YHWH, and therefore so is the fourteenth Ayah of Surat Ta Ha in the Quran.

So it is a valid question as to why doesn’t the divine Name YHWH occur directly and plainly in the Holy Quran? Why instead is there an Islamic tradition from the Sunnah about the Ism al-A’zam (Greatest Name) though it is never spelled out plainly what that Name is?

I believe the reason for this is that the divine Name YHWH (even I am not spelling it out plainly for a reason) is because the Name is so holy, being the Greatest Name of all the many Names of God, that Islam does not want the people, especially Muslims, speaking or pronouncing it casually. This in fact indicated in the Third Commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of YHWH thy God in vain; for YHWH will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain” (Exodus 20:7).

By at least a little before the time of Jesus, the Septuagint, or Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible in circulation, had Kyrios, Greek for Lord, written in place of the divine Name YHWH. This was a Jewish tradition, at least by that time, that the divine Name YHWH should not be uttered out of reverence and fear, a tradition that the Jews have preserved till the present.

Likewise, the divine Name YHWH never appears even once in the New Testament. In those places where the New Testament quotes a passage from the Old Testament in which the divine Name YHWH is mentioned, it has substituted it with Kyrios.

For instance, John the Baptist quotes Isaiah 40:3, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord [Kyriou]” (Matthew 3:3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4). Isaiah 40:3, in the original Hebrew, has the divine Name YHWH, but the Gospels have rendered it Kyrios in Greek, meaning Lord, in keeping with the tradition of not uttering or writing the divine Name YHWH. 

Jesus quotes the Shema, “Hear O Israel; the Lord [Kyrios] our God is one Lord [Kyrios]” (Mark 12:29)

From this we can conclude that Jesus likely did not utter the divine Name YHWH, at least not casually or frequently, but instead, like the Pharisees, would have said Adonai. He would have said the Shema the way Jews say it today, not saying the divine Name YHWH, but substituting it with Adonai “my Lord”.

It is, therefore, strange that some Christians today insist on uttering and fully pronouncing the divine Name YHWH. The Jehovah’s Witnesses have made this point one of their salient features in dissenting from normative Christianity. They often argue that “Apostate Christendom” is guilty of having removed the name Jehovah from the translation of the Bible (and they have restored the name Jehovah in their New World Translation), but fail to explain why that name never once occurs in the Greek New Testament, even in a Hellenized form, which would be Iao. Jehovah itself is an Anglicization of a possible pronunciation of YHWH, though not the one most scholars contend is the actual one.

The Holy Quran, like the Gospels and the New Testament, has not plainly referred to the divine Name YHWH, not because it is unfamiliar with or denies the Name, but because it wants to discourage Muslims from saying or writing it down casually due its extreme holiness since it is the Ism al-A’zam (Greatest Name), thereby preventing unintentional sacrilege.

And Allah and His Apostle know best!