Shem ha-Meforash שם המפורש

Shem ha-meforash (שם המפורש, “the Explicit Name”) is the four-letter Name (YHWH) in its full pronounced form: explicitly articulated by the priests in the Temple service, especially by the High Priest on the Day of Atonement, and withheld from ordinary utterance in post-Temple liturgy, where substitutes (Adonai, ha-Shem) are used. In the Heikhalot corpus, which is dense with recited Names, the shem ha-meforash is the supreme instance of the theurgic-recitative register: the Name is not merely referred to but performed, and its correct articulation is held to be operative.

Etymology

A construct phrase: shem (name) plus ha-meforash, the passive participle of the root P-R-SH, “to make distinct, separate, explicit, specify.” Meforash means “made explicit, distinctly articulated, specified.” The phrase thus names the Name in its explicitly-pronounced form, as distinct from the Name written but not uttered. The same root yields perush (commentary, explication) and the verb for stating something plainly.

Why not “the Tetragrammaton”

The controlled rendering is the Explicit Name, and the divine name, God’s name, and the Tetragrammaton are excluded. “Tetragrammaton” is a Greek philological term (“the four-letter thing”) that imports a letter-counting abstraction and locates the Name in its written form, exactly opposite to the meforash-sense of explicit pronunciation. “The divine name” and “God’s name” are too generic and lose the technical force of meforash. The Ineffable Name is admissible where the not-to-be-uttered sense is foregrounded; the articulated Name in halakhic registers concerning priestly utterance.

Contested meanings

The Heikhalot literature complicates the Name-theology of normative Judaism by surrounding the canonical Names (YHWH, Adonai, Elohim) with a dense apparatus of angelological theonyms (TWTRWSYʾY YHWH, ADRYHRWN YHWH, and many others) recited in fixed counts and configurations. Whether these theurgic Name-chains are continuous with the priestly shem ha-meforash tradition or a distinct development is part of the broader debate over the corpus’s relation to Temple religion. Naomi Janowitz (The Poetics of Ascent, 1989) analyzed the Heikhalot Name-recitation through speech-act theory, arguing that the corpus treats the recited Name as constitutively performative rather than merely referential.

Primary sources

• Mishnah Yoma 6:2 — the High Priest pronouncing the Explicit Name on the Day of Atonement.
• Mishnah Sotah 7:6, Tamid 7:2 — the priestly utterance of the Name in the Temple.
• Heikhalot Rabbati (Schäfer Synopse) — the recited theonyms and Name-chains of the theurgic ascent.

Scholarly literature

• Naomi Janowitz, The Poetics of Ascent (SUNY Press, 1989) — the performative theory of Heikhalot Name-recitation.
• Michael D. Swartz, Scholastic Magic: Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, 1996) — Names and ritual in the corpus.
• Peter Schäfer, The Hidden and Manifest God (SUNY Press, 1992) — the Name-theology of the Heikhalot literature.

Hekhal Editorial. "Shem ha-Meforash." Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition. Last modified May 2, 2026. https://hekhal.org/lexicon/shem-ha-meforash.

Hekhal Editorial. 2026. "Shem ha-Meforash." Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition. https://hekhal.org/lexicon/shem-ha-meforash.

Hekhal Editorial. "Shem ha-Meforash." Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition, May 2, 2026, hekhal.org/lexicon/shem-ha-meforash.

Hekhal Editorial. (2026). Shem ha-Meforash. Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition. https://hekhal.org/lexicon/shem-ha-meforash

@misc{hekhal-lexicon-shem-ha-meforash-2026,
  author       = {{Hekhal Editorial}},
  title        = {{Shem ha-Meforash}},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {{Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition}},
  url          = {https://hekhal.org/lexicon/shem-ha-meforash},
  urldate      = {[date accessed]}
}