In unpointed Biblical Hebrew, most vowels are not written, but some are indicated ambiguously, as certain letters came to have a secondary function indicating vowels (similar to the Latin use of I and V to indicate either the consonants /j, w/ or the vowels /i, u/). Like all letters in the Hebrew script, the letters in YHWH originally indicated consonants. Transcription of the divine name as ΙΑΩ in the 1st-century BCE Septuagint manuscript 4Q120 (or often a silent letter at the end of a word) , or placeholder for "O"/"U" vowel (see mater lectionis) The letters, properly written and read from right to left (in Biblical Hebrew), are:
Observant Jews and those who follow Talmudic Jewish traditions do not pronounce יהוה nor do they read aloud proposed transcription forms such as Yahweh or Yehovah instead they replace it with a different term, whether in addressing or referring to the God of Israel. The books of the Torah and the rest of the Hebrew Bible except Esther, Ecclesiastes, and (with a possible instance of the short form יה in verse 8:6) the Song of Songs contain this Hebrew name. While there is no consensus about the structure and etymology of the name, the form Yahweh is now accepted almost universally. The four letters, written and read from right to left, are yodh, he, waw, and he. The Tetragrammaton ( / ˌ t ɛ t r ə ˈ ɡ r æ m ə t ɒ n/ from Ancient Greek τετραγράμματον ( tetragrámmaton) ' four letters'), or Tetragram, is the four-letter Hebrew word יהוה (transliterated as YHWH), the name of the national god of Israel. The Tetragrammaton in Phoenician (12th century BCE to 150 BCE), Paleo-Hebrew (10th century BCE to 135 CE), and square Hebrew (3rd century BCE to present) scripts