YHVH in the Megami Tensei franchise represents the God of the Abrahamic religions. Thought by scholars to have originally been a minor Semitic war and storm god, and a national god of the Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah, he was worshiped alongside other Canaanite deities such as Asherah, Baal, and El. Centuries later YHVH became conflated with El, gaining epithets such as El Shaddai. Over time YHVH would become seen as the supreme creator of the universe and all that is in it, and is now considered by the Abrahamic religions to be the only god: the existence of all other gods is rejected. These religions teach that YHVH is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, and a benevolent deity. Most Christian denominations consider God to be a trinity of one God in three persons (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), but this doctrine is rejected in Judaism, Islam, and nontrinitarian Christianity.
Design
YHVH is usually depicted as a floating human head whose color varies depending on game. The head is blue in Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei II and Kyūyaku Megami Tensei, and the head is yellow in Shin Megami Tensei II and Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse. His eyes have black sclera and white irises in Megami Tensei II and Kyūyaku Megami Tensei, black sclera and red irises in Shin Megami Tensei II, and white sclera and no irises or pupils in Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse. He has long, pointed ears in Shin Megami Tensei II. In Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, the head has a pattern of triangles on it.
YHVH receives a second form in Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse. This is not a true form, but rather a demonized form forced upon him to deprive him of his true power.[1] In this form he appears as a four winged serpent with various animals emerging from flames and surrounding a demonic head at the center that represent various biblical stories.[2] Notably, the insect represents the plague of locusts in the book of Exodus,[3] the serpent from Genesis that tempted Adam and Eve with knowledge,[4] and the goat references the sacrifices performed in His name. When attacking a humanoid specter emerges from the flames writhing in fury.
As Tokyo Millennium is a theocracy governed by the Messian Church, the city is centered around the worship of God, otherwise known as YHVH. Supposedly, the city is aligned to God's will, and according to the Messian Church, God will soon send the people a Messiah that will guide them to create the Millennium Kingdom, a utopia where people can live in peace forever.
After seeing all the atrocities committed by the Center and invading the Center HQ, Aleph comes across one of the Center Elders, who calls out the other Elders' actions and says that their efforts to create the Millennium Kingdom are against God's will. Once Aleph strikes down the three Elders, who in actuality are the three Archangels Uriel, Raphael, and Michael, a dying Michael pleads to God to save them and deliver justice unto Aleph's party, which summons a being claiming to be YHVH, who also attacks the party for daring to oppose it's will. After Aleph defeats the perceived god, the non-hostile Elder reveals herself to be the Archangel Gabriel and explains that though the other Elders had initially tried to bring about the Millennium Kingdom according to God's will, their vision of God and the Millennium Kingdom became perverted, and the Millennium they ended up creating strayed far from God's true vision of it. God had also promised that He would send a Messiah to save the people, but seeing that this Messiah was not coming soon enough, Michael, Uriel, and Raphael attempted to artificially create the Messiah themselves, which was in direct opposition to God's will, causing Him to abandon them and contact only Gabriel to order her to separate from her fellow Archangels to follow His true will.
Later, when Aleph is brought to Keter Castle to meet Lucifer, the demon lord informs him that not only was Tokyo Millennium, contrary to the Elders' belief, in opposition to God's will, but also that the YHVH Aleph had defeated at the Center was not the real God; It was a fake generated from the fervent belief the Elders' held that they were following God's will. Lucifer also informs him of the impending return of God's tool of judgment, Satan, who, in the distant past, was defeated by God and split in half, with one of those halves being Seth. God had him sealed away until the time he is needed arrives, a time Lucifer suspects is drawing near as Seth is beginning to awaken.
After this, Aleph is brought to Eden, Zayin's new base located at the top of the Center HQ. There, multiple people who have heard the voice of God, chosen regardless of their origin or class, have been assembled to be part of a new world where God's true Millennium Kingdom will be created, a goal Zayin asks Aleph to help bring to fruition.
Later, on the Neutral route, Lucifer reveals to Aleph that his weapon, the Kuzuryu, was given to him by God under the orders that he use it to destroy humanity, which Lucifer pretended to obey while secretly planning to use it for his own purposes. God eventually found out about Lucifer's treachery however and had Gabriel secretly install a new weapon into Eden instead, the Megiddo Ark, which will cleanse the Earth of everyone apart from God's chosen people in Eden. In the Neutral and Chaos routes, Aleph's party infiltrates the Ark to stop it from firing, along the way defeating God's avatars Sabaoth, Shaddai, and Elohim. At the top of the Ark, Aleph's party confronts Satan, who, on the Neutral route, will briefly assume the appearance of his former self Zayin to explain why the situation had escalated to this state, with the reason being that God had abandoned Tokyo Millennium. Despite their cries for a Messiah, God never sent one to humanity because it was never His intention to do so; He knew that so long as humanity held knowledge, they would continue to turn away from Him, and so when the Archangels took matters into their own hands and started the Messiah Project, He gave the fifth and final member of the project, Zayin, the soul of Satan, so that he would judge and punish all who were not chosen to be part of the new world. After Satan's defeat on the Chaos and Neutral routes, YHVH speaks directly to the party, ordering the ones who killed Satan to show themselves to Him. As they enter His realm, they finally face God Himself. On the Chaos route, YHVH admonishes Lucifer for disobeying Him, determining that not a speck of his former status as an Archangel remains. On the Neutral route, YHVH severely belittles and disparages Aleph and Hiroko, calling Aleph an evil human created against the law of His life, and viewing Hiroko the same for bearing him with her body. In both routes, he calls them demons who have joined hands with the devil and unleashes His wrath upon the party.
On the Law route, Aleph and Satan successfully fire the Megiddo Ark, cleansing the Earth for God's chosen to repopulate on. After this, YHVH calls out to them, ordering them to come before Him. As the party goes into His realm to receive YHVH's praise for their work, Satan reveals that he still has one more person to judge: YHVH Himself, enraging the god and making Him unleash His wrath onto the party just as He does on the Neutral and Chaos routes. Regardless of the route Aleph takes, as YHVH is defeated and dying, He warns that humanity is not strong enough to live without anything to rely on or cling to, and as they continue to yearn for His salvation, He will be revived by the Great Will time and time again.
YHVH's face has a graphical bug below his lower lip in Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei II due to an incorrect tile being assigned. This is fixed in the fan translation.
In-game
Intended
Nomenclature
The name YHVH[a] (also rendered as YHWH or JHVH), referred to as the Tetragrammaton (Greek for "[name of] four letters"), is used in the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament as the personal name of God. The name is derived from the Hebrew verb meaning "to be,"[b][5] which is alluded to in Exodus 3:14 with God telling Moses "I am who I am."[c][5]
Over time, the name YHVH became considered too sacred to say aloud, and so in speaking began to be replaced with Adonai (my Lord);[d] as such, in English versions of the Bible, it is conventionally translated as "the Lord," with the small capitals distinguishing uses of YHVH in the original Hebrew from uses of Adonai. Another traditional way of rendering the name YHVH in English is "Jehovah"; this spelling originates from Jewish scribes putting the vowel marks for Adonai onto the Tetragrammaton in the Masoretic text[e] in order to indicate that it is pronounced Adonai, after which the Tetragrammaton was transcribed into the Latin alphabet with those vowels.[6] When the name accompanies an already existing Adonai, the Tetragrammaton is pronounced as Elohim, meaning "God" as a proper noun.[f] The scholarly consensus for the original pronunciation of the name is "Yahweh."[g][7]
↑Hebrew: יְהֹוָה, romanized *yŏhōwâ; actually pronounced ʾăḏōnāy. The first vowel is simplified from a patach and sheva together (which makes a reduced /a/ sound) to a plain sheva.
↑"The corrupted figure that appears depending on the player’s choices; it is, therefore, not the true god’s form. Depending on the way Christianity was propagated, the inconvenient local gods were slandered and degraded. These gods were given the extreme forms of demons, the animals and reptiles they disliked, but in this game irony has it that YHVH’s second form is degraded by the very entities he hated." - Masayuki Doihttps://dijehtranslations.wordpress.com/2016/08/12/970/
↑"The first form was the head of the first man, Adam, created in his own image. However, the second form turns into a strange chimera that resembles a demon. The goat wanted by god in the Scriptures, the snake that tempted Eve in Eden or the swarm of locusts that appeared in the Exodus, threatening the Pharaoh if he refused to free the Jews, all can be seen in this form. Each part of the chimera is connected to the other." - Masayuki Doihttps://dijehtranslations.wordpress.com/2016/08/12/970/
↑“This is what Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, says: ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go, that they may serve me. Or else, if you refuse to let my people go, behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts into your country, and they shall cover the surface of the earth, so that one won’t be able to see the earth. They shall eat the residue of that which has escaped, which remains to you from the hail, and shall eat every tree which grows for you out of the field. Your houses shall be filled, and the houses of all your servants, and the houses of all the Egyptians, as neither your fathers nor your fathers’ fathers have seen, since the day that they were on the earth to this day.’” - Exodus 10:3–6 (WEB)
↑Genesis 3. Retrieved November 1, 2024. Bible Gateway.
↑ 5.05.1"Rather, the consensus of scholarship is certainly correct that yhwh represents a verbal form, with the y- representing the third masculine singular verbal prefix of the verb hyh 'to be.'
The foundation for this consensus is the revelation of the divine name in Exodus 3:14, a notoriously difficult passage where God declares 'I am who I am' (ʾehyeh ʾăšer ʾehyeh)." The Origin and Character of God: Ancient Israelite Religion through the Lens of Divinity (2020), Theodore J. Lewis. Published by Oxford University Press. p. 214. ISBN-13: 978-0190072544.
↑"The strong consensus of biblical scholarship is that the original pronunciation of the name YHWH that God goes on to use in verse 15 was 'Yahweh.'" The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (2018), Robert Alter. Published by W. W. Norton & Company. Vol. 3 p. 240. ISBN-13: 978-0393292503.
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