Sabaoth

Judaism has different names given to God, which are considered sacred: (), (''Adonai'' ), ('' El'' ), ( ), ('' Shaddai'' ), and ( ); some also include I Am that I Am.This is the formulation of Joseph Karo (SA YD 276:9). Maimonides (MT Yesodei haTorah 6:2), Jacob ben Asher (AT YD 276), and Isaac Alfasi (HK Menachot 3b) also included I Am that I Am, as do many later authorities, including Moses Isserles (SA YD 276:9). The original lists are found in y. Megillah 1:9 and b. Shavuot 35a, with some MSs agreeing with each authority. Maimonides and followers give the number of names as seven; however, manuscript inconsistency makes it difficult to judge which are included. Authorities including Asher ben Jehiel (''Responsa'' 3:15), the Tosafists (b. Sotah 10a), Yechiel of Paris (cited ''Birkei Yosef, Oraḥ Hayyim'' 85:8), Simeon ben Zemah Duran, Yaakov ben Moshe Levi Moelin, and Moses Isserles (SA YD 276:13), include the term Shalom as well. Early authorities considered other Hebrew names mere epithets or descriptions of God, and wrote that they and names in other languages may be written and erased freely. Some moderns advise special care even in these cases, and many Orthodox Jews have adopted the chumras of writing "G-d" instead of "God" in English or saying Ṭēt- Vav (,  '9-6') instead of Yōd- Hē (, '10-5', but also ' Jah') for the number fifteen or Ṭēt-Zayin (, '9-7') instead of Yōd-Vav (, '10-6') for the Hebrew number sixteen.

Seven names of God

The names of God that, once written, cannot be erased because of their holiness are the Tetragrammaton, Adonai, El, Elohim, Shaddai, Tzevaot; some also include I Am that I Am. In addition, the name '' Jah''—because it forms part of the Tetragrammaton—is similarly protected. The tanna Jose ben Halafta considered "Tzevaot" a common name in the second century and Rabbi Ishmael considered "Elohim" to be one. All other names, such as "Merciful", "Gracious" and "Faithful", merely represent attributes that are also common to human beings.

Tetragrammaton

Also abbreviated ''Jah'', the most common name of God in the Hebrew Bible is the Tetragrammaton, . The Hebrew script is an abjad, and thus vowels are often omitted in writing. The Tetragrammaton is sometimes rendered with vowels, though it is not known which vowels were used originally. Direct transliteration is avoided in Jewish custom.

Modern Rabbinical Jewish culture judges it forbidden to pronounce this name. In prayers it is replaced by saying the word (, , Pluralis majestatis taken as singular), and in discussion by 'The Name'. Nothing in the Torah explicitly prohibits speaking the name and the Book of Ruth shows that it continued to be pronounced as late as the 5th century BCE. Mark Sameth argues that only a pseudo name was pronounced, the four letters (YHVH, YHWH) being a cryptogram which the priests of ancient Israel read in reverse as , 'he–she', signifying a dual-gendered deity, as earlier theorized by Guillaume Postel (16th century) and (19th century). It had ceased to be spoken aloud by at least the 3rd century BCE, during Second Temple Judaism. The Talmud relates, perhaps anecdotally, that this began with the death of Simeon the Just. Vowel points began to be added to the Hebrew text only in the early medieval period. The Masoretic Text adds to the Tetragrammaton the vowel points of Adonai or Elohim (depending on the context), indicating that these are the words to be pronounced in place of the Tetragrammaton (see Qere and Ketiv), as shown also by the pronunciation changes when combined with a preposition or a conjunction. This is in contrast to Karaite Jews, who traditionally viewed pronouncing the Tetragrammaton as a mitzvah because the name appears some 6800 times throughout the Tanakh; however, most modern Karaites, under pressure and seeking acceptance from mainstream Rabbinical Jews, now also use the term ''Adonai'' instead. The Beta Israel pronounce the Tetragrammaton as ''Yahu'', but also use the Geʽez term .

The Tetragrammaton appears in Genesis and occurs 6,828 times in total in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia edition of the Masoretic Text. It is thought to be an archaic third-person singular of the imperfective aspect of the verb "to be" (i.e., " eis/was/will be"). This agrees with the passage in Exodus where God names himself as " I Will Be What I Will Be" using the first-person singular imperfective aspect, open to interpretation as present tense ("I am what I am"), future ("I shall be what I shall be"), or imperfect ("I used to be what I used to be").

Rabbinic Judaism teaches that the name is forbidden to all except the High Priest of Israel, who should only speak it in the Holy of Holies of the Temple in Jerusalem on Yom Kippur. He then pronounces the name "just as it is written." As each blessing was made, the people in the courtyard were to prostrate themselves completely as they heard it spoken aloud. As the Temple has not been rebuilt since its destruction in 70 CE, most modern Jews never pronounce YHWH but instead read (, , , Pluralis majestatis taken as singular) during prayer and while reading the Torah and as HaShem 'The Name' at other times. Most English translations of the Bible write "the " for YHWH, and "the God" or "the Lord " for Adonai YHWH instead of transcribing the name. The Septuagint may have originally used the Hebrew letters themselves amid its Greek text, but there is no scholarly consensus on this point.

Adonai

(, , , taken as singular) is the possessive form of ('Lord'), along with the first-person singular pronoun enclitic. As with , Adonai's grammatical form is usually explained as a plural of majesty. In the Hebrew Bible, the word is nearly always used to refer to God (approximately 450 occurrences). As pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton came to be avoided in the Hellenistic period, Jews may have begun to drop the Tetragrammaton when presented alongside Adonai and subsequently to expand it to cover for the Tetragrammaton in the forms of spoken prayer and written scripture. Owing to the expansion of (the idea of "building a fence around the Torah"), the word itself has come to be too holy to say for Orthodox Jews outside of prayer, leading to its replacement by ('The Name').

The singular forms and ('my lord') are used in the Hebrew Bible as royal titles, as in the First Book of Samuel, and for distinguished persons. The Phoenicians used it as a title of Tammuz (the origin of the Greek Adonis). It is also used very occasionally in Hebrew texts to refer to God (e.g. Psalm 136:3.) Deuteronomy 10:17 has the Tetragrammaton alongside the superlative constructions "God of gods" (, literally, "the gods of gods") and "Lord of lords" (, "the lords of lords": ; JPS 2006: "For your God יהוה is God supreme and Lord supreme").

The final syllable of Adonai uses the vowel , rather than which would be expected from the Hebrew for 'my lord(s)'. Professor Yoel Elitzur explains this as a normal transformation when a Hebrew word becomes a name, giving as other examples Nathan, Yitzchak, and Yigal. As became the most common reverent substitute for the Tetragrammaton, it too became considered un-erasable due to its holiness. As such, most prayer books avoid spelling out the word , and instead write two () in its place.

The forms , , and
represent Ashkenazi Hebrew variant pronunciations of the word .

El

El appears in Ugaritic, Phoenician and other 2nd and 1st millennium BCE texts both as generic "god" and as the head of the divine pantheon. In the Hebrew Bible, El (, ) appears very occasionally alone (e.g. Genesis 33:20, , 'Mighty God of Israel', and Genesis 46:3, , 'El the God of thy father'), but usually with some epithet or attribute attached (e.g. , 'Most High El', , 'El of ', 'Everlasting El', , 'Living El', 'El my Shepherd', and 'El of Strength'), in which cases it can be understood as the generic "god". In theophoric names such as Gabriel ("Strength of God"), Michael ("Who is like God?"), Raphael ("God healed"), Ariel ("My lion is God"), Daniel ("My judgment is God"), Ezekiel ("God shall strengthen"), Israel ("one who has struggled with God"), Immanuel ("God is with us"), and Ishmael ("God hears/ will hear / listens/ will listen") it is usually interpreted and translated as "God".

El also appears in the form ().

Elohim

A common name of God in the Hebrew Bible is Elohim (, ), the plural of (). When Elohim refers to God in the Hebrew Bible, singular verbs are used. The word is identical to meaning gods and is cognate to the found in Ugaritic, where it is used for the pantheon of Canaanite gods, the children of El and conventionally vocalized as "Elohim" although the original Ugaritic vowels are unknown. When the Hebrew Bible uses not in reference to God, it is plural (for example, Exodus 20:2). There are a few other such uses in Hebrew, for example ''Behemoth''. In Modern Hebrew, the singular word ('owner') looks plural, but likewise takes a singular verb.

A number of scholars have traced the etymology to the Semitic root , 'to be first, powerful', despite some difficulties with this view. is thus the plural construct 'powers'. Hebrew grammar allows for this form to mean "He is the Power (singular) over powers (plural)", just as the word means 'owner' (see above). "He is lord (singular) even over any of those things that he owns that are lordly (plural)".

Theologians who dispute this claim cite the hypothesis that plurals of majesty came about in more modern times. Richard Toporoski, a classics scholar, asserts that plurals of majesty first appeared in the reign of Diocletian (CE 284–305). Indeed, Gesenius states in his book ''Hebrew Grammar'' the following:

The Jewish grammarians call such plurals ... or ; later grammarians call them , , or .

This last name may have been suggested by the ''we'' used by kings when speaking of themselves (compare 1 Maccabees 10:19 and 11:31); and the plural used by God in Genesis 1:26 and 11:7; Isaiah 6:8 has been incorrectly explained in this way. It is, however, either ''communicative'' (including the attendant angels: so at all events in Isaiah 6:8 and Genesis 3:22), or according to others, an indication of ''the fullness of power and might'' implied. It is best explained as a plural of ''self-deliberation''. The use of the plural as a form of respectful address is quite foreign to Hebrew.

Mark S. Smith has cited the use of plural as possible evidence to suggest an evolution in the formation of early Jewish conceptions of monotheism, wherein references to "the gods" (plural) in earlier accounts of verbal tradition became either interpreted as multiple aspects of a single monotheistic God at the time of writing, or subsumed under a form of monolatry, wherein the god(s) of a certain city would be accepted after the fact as a reference to the God of Israel and the plural deliberately dropped.

The plural form ending in can also be understood as denoting abstraction, as in the Hebrew words (, 'life') or (, 'virginity'). If understood this way, means 'divinity' or 'deity'. The word is similarly syntactically singular when used as a name but syntactically plural otherwise. In many of the passages in which occurs in the Bible, it refers to non-Israelite deities, or in some instances to powerful men or judges, and even angels (Exodus 21:6, Psalms 8:5) as a simple plural in those instances.

Shaddai

(, , ) is one of the names of God in Judaism, with its etymology coming from the influence of the Ugaritic religion on modern Judaism. is conventionally translated as "God Almighty". While the translation of as 'god' in Ugaritic/ Canaanite languages is straightforward, the literal meaning of is the subject of debate.

Tzevaot

Tzevaot, Tzevaoth, Tsebaoth or Sabaoth (, , ,  "Armies"), usually translated "Hosts", appears in reference to armies or armed hosts of men but is not used as a divine epithet in the Torah, Joshua, or Judges. Starting in the Books of Samuel, the term "Lord of Hosts" appears hundreds of times throughout the Prophetic books, in Psalms, and in Chronicles.

The Hebrew word was also absorbed in Ancient Greek (, ) and Latin (, with no declension). Tertullian and other Fathers of the Church used it with the meaning of "Army of angels of God".

Ehyeh

() is the first of three responses given to Moses when he asks for God's name in the Book of Exodus. The King James Version of the Bible translates the Hebrew as "I Am that I Am" and uses it as a way to describe God.
The word is the first-person singular imperfect form of , 'to be'. Biblical Hebrew does not distinguish between grammatical tenses. It has instead an aspectual system in which the imperfect denotes any actions that are not yet completed, Accordingly, can be rendered in English not only as "I am that I am" but also as "I will be what I will be" or "I will be who I will be", or "I shall prove to be whatsoever I shall prove to be" or even "I will be because I will be". Other renderings include: Leeser, "I Will Be that I Will Be"; Rotherham, "I Will Become whatsoever I please", Greek, (), "I am Being/the Existing One" in the Septuagint, and Philo, and Revelation; Latin, , "I am Who I am."

The word is a relative pronoun whose meaning depends on the immediate context, so that "that", "who", "which", or "where" are all possible translations of that word.Seidner, 4.

Other names and titles

Baal

meant ' owner' and, by extension, 'lord', ' master', and 'husband' in Hebrew and the other Northwest Semitic languages. In some early contexts and theophoric names, it and (; "My Lord") were treated as synonyms of Adon and Adonai. After the time of Solomon and particularly after Jezebel's attempt to promote the worship of the Lord of Tyre Melqart, however, the name became particularly associated with the Canaanite storm god Baʿal Haddu and was gradually avoided as a title for Yahweh. Several names that included it were rewritten as ("shame"). The prophet Hosea in particular reproached the Israelites for continuing to use the term:

Elah

(, pl. or ; ) is the Aramaic word for God and the absolute singular form of , . The origin of the word is from Proto-Semitic and is thus cognate to the Hebrew, Arabic, Akkadian, and other Semitic languages' words for god. is found in the Tanakh