Since, then, those two names [Osee and Joshua] signify (as I said) the same thing, it is now rightly asked why out of the one the other was made. For in the same language, although synonyms have the same force, yet not without cause is one put for another in the proper appellations of men. These four have the same notion: Nicodemus, Demonicus, Laonicus, Nicolaus — for all signify “conqueror of the people” (or “house of the people,” as Scaliger, not long ago, interpreted [it] against me in his Elenchus; or “tamer of the people”) — yet if anyone should call me by any of the first three names (as a certain heretic Doctor did, when, inflamed by I know not what wrath, he had prepared a book against our Society [the Jesuits]), I would not answer to it. Why, then, was Iehosua made out of Hosea? Nearly all note that something great and blessed is portended when God adds some one of the letters of His sacred tetragrammaton name Iehova to someone — just as, above, it was seen that He added he (ה) to Abraham. But another cause of this addition is mentioned in that same [chapter], Genesis 17; and if, by an addition of this kind, something great [is signified]
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and auspicious were portended, would not, by a subtraction, something abject and inauspicious be shown? And therefore Sara would have been wretchedly and very badly punished by God, had she lost the first letter of that sacred name, Iod (as was said above, question 4). R. P. Salmerón, in the cited place, says that by the addition of this Iod a certain communication of divinity and of perpetuity is often marked. But by that very [fact], Sara would have been despoiled of so great a gift, and that incestuous Ammon, son of David, would have been increased with the same — [Ammon] who (2 Kings [2 Samuel] 13, verse 20) is called Aminon [with the added letter]. These [objections] can indeed be thus raised; nevertheless it must be confessed that one and the same letter does not everywhere have one and the same force, but what [force] it has in this or that place is to be sought from the circumstances — as I also remember I said above (chapter 1, question 2, [reply] to the fifth), about the sense of some phrase. This letter, therefore, of which the question now is [the Iod], sometimes performs the function of a pronoun. And so, when God wished to amplify the dignity of Abraham’s wife, He said, “I will not [have] her called any longer Sarai” — that is, “my princess” — “but,” infinitely or absolutely, “Sara,” that is, “Princess.” For this is much greater than that; since any [one] of the menservants and maidservants could call her “Sarai,” that is, “my mistress,” “my princess,” but not precisely and without restriction “Sara,” that is, “Princess.” Otherwise, the same Iod is paragogic, as is noted by the Hebrew Grammarians; and otherwise [it is] a meiotic or diminutive [particle], as in Aminon. It is permissible, therefore, to agree with those who judge that, by that sacred name, something great and auspicious — and a certain foretaste of divinity and eternity — is signified [as] attributed to Joshua. For this addition of this letter to the former name was neither made in vain nor for reproach, but for praise and glory. And this Rupert too seems to me to assert (chapter 13 on Joshua), and before him, in the cited place, St. Jerome, when he says: “Osee, in our tongue, sounds ‘saviour’; which name Joshua, son of Nun, also had, before the appellation was changed for him by God; and there was added to his name ‘the Lord,’ so that he might be called ‘the Saviour of the Lord.’” How was “the Lord” added to the former name Osee, according to this holy Father? How, out of merely “Saviour,” was made “the Saviour of the Lord”? Surely no otherwise than that the leading letter of that tetragrammaton name — which, as I set forth [on] Exodus 6, is almost always rendered “the Lord” by our Interpreter and by the Seventy — was prefixed to that old name; and even today, among the Rabbis, those two letters sometimes signify “the Lord God.” Yet, if anyone wished, he might also be of the opinion that it seemed to St. Jerome that, by the addition of this letter, there was added the mark and signification of the name [which] not rarely also [is] κύριος, and “the Lord” (as [in] Psalm 117 [118], three or four times). And he is called “the Saviour of the Lord,” not because he saves the Lord, but because through him the Lord saves.
But I add yet four [things]. The first is: [that] this was done by divine instinct and prophecy, so that Joshua might be — not in the thing only, but by the very name too — a figure and most express type of the true Saviour, and our Lord, JESUS CHRIST; concerning which [more] fully later (question 6). The second: Iod is the least of all the Hebrew letters, as is handed down in Lucian (dialogue On the Judgment of the Vowels), in appearance…
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…[in appearance] the least and vilest, and it designates our lowest, vilest nature, which — that He might save us — the Lord JESUS CHRIST assumed. But wittily, rather than truly, the Rabbis of the Jews wrote an apologue about this least letter’s being joined to this name, in the Jerusalem Talmud (Seder 2, Tractate Sanhedrin, ch. 9, tome 2, folio 20, column 3). For they feign that Iod itself complains at God’s tribunal that it is very badly treated: [that] it had once been in the name Sarai, [but] now, by the greatest injury, has been thrust out. [It complains] of Solomon, in that, [although] it is written Deuteronomy 17, “The king shall not multiply wives to himself” (לא ירבה), he took away the Iod and made [it] “לו ירבה” [lo yirbeh], that is, “he shall multiply wives to himself.” But the Supreme Judge answers it three things. First: [that] it had been in a woman’s name, but would hereafter be in a man’s — and the supreme man’s, namely in Joshua’s appellation. Second: [that] it had once been at the end, [but] would now be at the beginning. Third: [that] Iod has indeed the value of the number ten, but in Sarah and in Abraham it is compensated by the addition of a double he (ה ה), which are twice five. St. Epiphanius (heresy 8, p. 14, Greek) teaches, by the three lowest strokes, that Iod signifies “tens,” which were the symbol or type of IESUS, whose first letter is Iod. Fourth [Tertium in the print, but the third of these points]: Thus that Iod was so added to the former name Osee that it thrust out none of its letters, took away nothing, but left the name whole out of its own letters. Our nature too was united to the divine hypostasis and nature in such a way that it changed nothing of that [divine nature], took nothing at all from it; but our Lord retained that [divine nature] whole, and at the same time took ours to Himself. In sound, indeed — which is wont to be uttered by vowels, and today among the Hebrews is expressed by points — something seems changed (for once it was Osee, afterward it was called Iehosua), unless one should wish to side with the Abulensis, about whom above. But by that very [fact] is signified that change which was made in JESUS CHRIST, composed to a certain extent out of those two natures, when — on account of the accession of the new nature — God is born, grows up, walks, hungers, thirsts, dies. [Fourth, truly]: Although Iod is the least of letters, yet among the Hebrews, Syrians, and Chaldeans it is the fount and origin of them all, from which they themselves are composed and formed, as Postellus shows in the book On the Letters of the Phoenicians. And our humanity, though itself vile, yet when it is joined to Osee himself and to the Saviour God, is made the head of all creatures, on which depend the Angels and all things that were made in heaven and on earth. What of that Iod is also the characteristic mark of the future — so that this Joshua, about to bring salvation, might be signified, and the type of the future true Joshua or Saviour be understood? He [Christ] indeed would be so truly the Saviour that, nevertheless, true salvation is rather to be expected from Him in the age to come; for of Him the Angel says, [speaking] of the future (Matthew 1, v. 21): “He shall save His people from their sins.” But of these [matters], let the judgment be to each his own.