Douglas Somerset
Puritan Board Freshman
I would be inclined to look for a spiritual explanation in place of Hong's linguistic one. He considers this possibility rather perfunctorily on p. 483 but then dismisses it, asserting that his theory is the "only" possible one. He is really considering the seven instances in David's prayer. Scripture was given to be profitable, and Divine names were not used without reason. Perhaps meditation on the prayer in its two forms would furnish a better answer.Jeremiah 10:10 is an interesting example. Hong probably doesn't reference it because on the standard reading it isn't an exemplar of the pairing "the LORD God". Grammatically, it certainly could be, as you suggest, though it could equally well not be. There is a similar phrase in 1 Kings 17:24, where the woman says to Elijah either "The word of the Lord in your mouth is truth" - in this case, most English translation opt for that choice, supporting your argument in Jer 10:10 - or "The word of the Lord is truly in your mouth". Both translations are possible, as they are in Jer 10:10. I'm not sure that John 14:6 helps as much as you think. If it is alluding to this verse (which it may well be), John 14:6 takes "living" from the second part and translates the adjective into a noun, "life". So it could equally easily be taking the adverb "truly" and turning it into the noun "truth". But I'm sympathetic to your reading, which is certainly how the Massoretes read it, as the earliest interpreters of the text.
I thought the central part of Hong's paper was the observation that the Chronicler never reproduces the form Adonai Yahweh from Samuel-Kings in any of its nine occurrences. The simplest explanation for changing that title on every occasion is that the Lord was already being read as Adonai, which makes it an odd combination. Instead, the Chronicler shows the same kind of variety that we find in the LXX, which suggests that it had not yet reached the settled convention of reading "Adonai Elohim" which we find from Aleppo onwards. Not a conclusive argument, to be sure, but an intriguing observation.