יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ

Disclaimer: The numbers in this post were not checked with the rigor I usually use to check numbers. Be warned.

The phrase יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ appears 234 times in Deut, and only 10 times in the other four books of the Torah. When we think of the division between D & the other sources, it is a little more complicated. 5 of the 10 occurrences in Gen – Nu are in Ex 20, a chapter I am arguing should be considered part of D. If we accept this argument, then the phrase appears 239 times in D and 5 times in the other 4 books. Another issue is that the phrase appears 3 times in Deut 27:5-7a. There’s a machlokes scholars on that section, some assigning it to D, others to JE. Personally, I do not see any particularly compelling reason to assume it is not D. If we assume that section is D, then the score ends up being 239 D, 5 JE, 0 P. Further complicating matters is that one of the JE verses - Ex 15:26 – is reminiscent of D in many ways. This would mean that although D is only 20% of the Torah, it represents approximately 98% of the יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ’s. And, RJM, I’m not saying the other authors’ couldn’t use this conjugation. They had the word יְהוָהָ and the word אֱלֹהֶיךָ. They could easily put them together, and did 5 times. But, I’m saying D really liked to do that and the other authors did not.

One possible counter argument is that phrase is only appropriate in D because D is written in 2nd person. There are chiefly three counter argument:

1. Much of the rest of the Torah is also in 2nd person.

2. Grammatically, one can also use יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים in 2nd person.

3. If this were so, we would expect the other sources to use comparable phrases, with different conjugations, with similar frequencies. Thus, for example, we might expect to see יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים t956 (=239 x 4) times in the other sources. This is not so at all. Let us consider some other conjugations:


Hashem Elokim - 21 times in JE, 0 times in D & P (note – 20 of those 21 times are in Gen 2-4)
Hashem Elokeinu - 21 times in D, once in JE, never in P.
Ani Hashem Elokiehem – 4 times in P, never elsewhere
Ani Hashem Elokiechem 27 times in P, once in D.
Hashem Elokiehem (no ani) once in JE, never elsewhere
Hashem Elokeichem (no ani) 75 times in D, 5 in JE, 3 in P
Hashem Eloki (my God) – thrice in D, once in JE
Hashem Elokei (the God of) – 8 times in D, 19 times in the other sources (note, all 8 in D are in the phrase, “the God of your/their fathers, a phrase that appears 3 times in the other sources)


Even if we add all these up together, D still wins by a score of 247 to 85 (or, 80% of the occurrences) despite being only 20% of the Torah.
But, it’s not clear at all to me why we should be adding them up so blindly. Clearly, the different authors favor certain conjugations. That, in and of itself, is noteworthy.


Here’s a chart that summarized the data. (note, the entry for Hashem Elokim (other) should say 21, but I am too lazy to fix it)