The learned Lutheran Professor Hengstenberg, in his excellent Dissertation on the Names of God in the Pentateuch, can be consulted too. He there points out that long before Moses – also the Patriarchs Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are represented as using the name Jehovah (Genesis 9:26 & 15:2,7 & 22:14 & 27:7 & 28:20f) – and that God Himself, in speaking to them, also makes use of it.
Hengstenberg deduces the name Jahweh or Jehovah from the future tense of the verb haavaah (-yaah), meaning ‘to be.’ He regards2 this derivation of the name Jehovah as confirmed "by all the passages of Scripture in which a derivation of the name is either expressly given or simply hinted…. Every thing created, remains not like itself – but is continually changing under circumstances. God only, because He is the Being, is always the same. And, because He is always the same, is ‘the Being’ – ‘the Being,’ the existing One, or absolute Being….
