Yehoshua and the Shorter Form

Open almost any dictionary of Bible names, and under Yeshua you will read that it is a shortened form of Joshua. In Hebrew the longer name is Yehoshua (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ), Strong’s H3091, and the shorter is Yeshua, H3442. Many lexicons, commentaries and reference works explain the name of the Messiah in just this way.

That explanation has good grounds, and it is right in itself. Before we see what Scripture sets beside it, we should look at those grounds fairly.

One High Priest, Two Spellings

The clearest ground is a man we met in Chapter 6: the high priest who came back from Babylon with Zerubbabel. Scripture writes his name in two forms, yet he is one man.

In the books of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, he is called by the long form.

Haggai 1:1 In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, in the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, saying:

The YLV writes this long form as “Joshua,” and “Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest” is the Hebrew Yehoshua. Zechariah calls him by the same form (Zechariah 3:1, 3:8; 6:11).

In Ezra and Nehemiah, the same man has the short form.

Ezra 5:1-2 And Haggai the prophet, and Zechariah the son of Iddo, the prophets, prophesied to the Jews who were in Judah and in Jerusalem, in the name of the God of Israel who was over them. Then rose up Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Yeshua the son of Jozadak, and began to build the house of God which is in Jerusalem; and with them were the prophets of God helping them.

“Yeshua the son of Jozadak” is written with the same four letters as the name in the Gospels. And the verse just before it names the prophets who stood beside him in that work, Haggai and Zechariah, the very men whose books call him Yehoshua. It is one man, at one task and one time, with two spellings of his name. The YLV lets an English reader see this for himself: it prints the long form as “Joshua” and the short form as “Yeshua,” so the high priest of Haggai and Zechariah and the high priest of Ezra and Nehemiah appear under different names, while the father’s name, Jehozadak or Jozadak, shows that he is one man.

Zechariah 3:1 And he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him.

Here he stands “before the angel of the LORD” as “Joshua the high priest,” and in Ezra he is “Yeshua the son of Jozadak.” No one reading the two books side by side would think of two different high priests.

The Same Root

A second ground is the shared root. Both names carry the letters of yasha ישע yeh'-shah, the root of saving and salvation. Yehoshua and Yeshua share their second half, and both mean that the LORD saves.

A third ground lies in the sound. The long form has one more letter in the middle, the heh after the yod. When that middle heh drops out, the sound of the long name comes close to the short one.

Joshua Son of Nun

Scripture gives one more witness. Joshua the son of Nun, the man who led Israel into the land after Moses, is usually called by the long name. But in one verse of Nehemiah, he too is written with the short form.

Nehemiah 8:17 And all the assembly who had returned from the captivity made booths, and dwelt in the booths; for the sons of Israel had not done so from the days of Yeshua the son of Nun until that day. And there was very great joy.

The verse speaks of the time “from the days of Yeshua the son of Nun until that day.” In Hebrew this is the same four-letter name, H3442, that Ezra 3:2 uses for the high priest; Ezra 5:2, quoted above, stands in the Aramaic part of the book and spells the name with the same four letters. The son of Nun and the high priest both bore the long name and the short name. So it is true to say that Yeshua is the short form of Joshua. That explanation stands, and nothing in this book sets it aside.

Two Different Questions

Yet, quite apart from that explanation, one thing needs to be noticed. The name the New Testament carries, the name the angel gave, is precisely the four-letter Yeshua. Two names can share one meaning and still be spelled in different ways. So “Do these two names mean the same?” and “Which form of the name did the Messiah receive?” are two different questions.

The first question is answered by the abbreviation: yes, Yehoshua and Yeshua share the meaning “The LORD saves.” The second question is answered by the form of the name in that age. The Greek Iesous can stand for either form, as Hebrews 4:8 will show, but the name He bore is the four-letter Yeshua, the form the high priest of Ezra and Nehemiah bore, and the form we read letter by letter. That is why the meaning of His name can be shown from its own letters, yod and Shua, without having to go through the longer name at all. We do not need to deny the abbreviation. We only need to see that it answers a different question.

Joshua Did Not Give Them Rest

There is a second matter, and Scripture raises it itself. If two men can bear the same name, does the name make the man? The letter to the Hebrews answers.

Hebrews 4:8-9 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day afterward. So then, a Sabbatismos(Sabbath-rest) remains for the people of God,

The writer is speaking of Joshua the son of Nun, who led the people into the land. In the Greek of Hebrews, his name in this verse is Iesous (G2424), the same Greek word that Matthew uses for the name the angel gave (Matthew 1:21). Yet the writer says plainly that this Iesous did not give the people rest: “For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day afterward.” The rest that God promised still lay ahead: “So then, a Sabbatismos(Sabbath-rest) remains for the people of God.”

The premise of the passage is clear. Joshua the son of Nun, the man, and Yeshua the Savior are two different persons. The son of Nun carried a name that meant “The LORD saves,” but he did not bring them into the rest that remains. That two names share a meaning is one thing. That the man who bears the name is himself the Savior is another. Only One fulfilled what the name said.

Holding Both Together

So we can hold both truths without strain. The explanation that Yeshua is the short form of Joshua is valid, and the meaning of the name Joshua is right as well. Alongside it stand two matters of a different kind. The name the Messiah received is exactly the four-letter Yeshua, and its meaning stands from its own structure: yod for the LORD, Shua for salvation. And Hebrews 4:8 keeps Joshua the son of Nun apart from the Savior, even when the two names are spelled alike.

What dictionaries teach about the abbreviation is the common understanding. What this study adds is to treat the four-letter form as a separate matter and to let Hebrews 4:8 draw the line between the man and the Savior.

The name, then, says “The LORD saves.” But Isaiah goes further than a name can. In one short song he does not merely say that the LORD saves. He says that the LORD is salvation itself.