The Old Testament’s General Teaching On Prayer

In Old Testament days, who prayed true prayers to the true God? Well, when we are dealing with that part of the Bible we must keep in mind that God didn’t reveal Himself in that era as fully as He would in the New Testament era. So, with that understood, the answer is: In Old Testament days, it was the people of Israel who got prayer right as they prayed exclusively to their one “LORD.”

This title “LORD” is the translation (more accurately, the substituting) for the Hebrew consonants “Yhwh.” These consonants are given over 5,000 times as the name of God in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. Translators indicate the word’s use by capitalizing all the letters in “LORD.”

Since no vowels were used in ancient Hebrew writing, and since the way the Old Testament Jews pronounced “Yhwh” has been lost to history, the scholarly world has been left to attempt to fill in the correct vowels to the name. From this has come the name Yahweh.

Perhaps you are asking, “But how was the pronunciation of the name lost to history?” It was the result of the incredible reverence the Jews had for that name. Sometime around 300 B.C. they stopped pronouncing it altogether lest they run the risk of breaking the commandment about not taking the name in vain. Whenever
they came to the name in their reading, they spoke the word Adonai instead, which means “Lord.”

Eventually the Jewish scribes took the Hebrew vowels from Adonai and combined them with the consonants Yhwh. The result of this combining was ultimately translated from Hebrew into German and then into English. From all this came the familiar English name Jehovah.

I realize that this is a tad confusing, but don’t get bogged down in the translation minutia. The main point is that during the days of the Old Testament the Jews were the people who prayed legitimate prayers to the legitimate God. They prayed to their “LORD” (Yahweh, Jehovah). Deuteronomy 6:4-9 is the Jewish Shema, their ancient confession of faith. Even now devout Jews recite its words twice daily. And the heart of the passage is found in verse 4: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one!”

In light of the Shema, Old Testament believers prayed to the one “Lord” of Israel. Scripture’s examples of such prayers are far too numerous to list, but perhaps the most famous is the prayer King Solomon prayed to dedicate the Jewish temple (1 Kings 8:22-53). That prayer covers thirty-two verses!