“That throughout the first five books of the Greek Bible kyrios is employed as a proper noun was shown long ago by Huber,37 Debrunner,38 and Baudissin39 and has been reiterated since. As a proper noun, a divine name, and in complete conformity with other personal names in these books, it is more often unarticulated than articulated. This basic fact holds true for all five books. Articulation, however, is well attested in all but Deuteronomy, especially in some of the oblique cases, a fact which demonstrates that, if perchance the original text read the tetragram, this was construed in every respect as a Greek personal name and was not treated as a foreign element.
Furthermore, a basic rule in the Pentateuch is that kyrios is unarticulated in the nominative case, the genitive, as object of a preposition and as subject of an infinitive. Kyrios is articulated most often in the dative when rendering Hebrew le- prefixed to the tetragram. It is in this construction that differences among the five books are most noticeable. Thus, to kyrio appears twice in Genesis as against five unarticulated instances, in Exodus twelve times against twenty-three without articulation, in Leviticus seventy-two versus twenty-one, in Numbers four as against fifty-four, and not at all in Deuteronomy.
Since most often kyrios is unarticulated, the articulated instances naturally attract special attention. Why, for instance, the translator of Leviticus chose to render YHWH approximately three times out of four by to kyrio, while the Numbers translator did so in a mere four occurrences out of fifty-four, is an interesting question."
“That throughout the first five books of the Greek Bible kyrios is employed as a proper noun was shown long ago by Huber,37 Debrunner,38 and Baudissin39 and has been reiterated since. As a proper noun, a divine name, and in complete conformity with other personal names in these books, it is more often unarticulated than articulated. This basic fact holds true for all five books. Articulation, however, is well attested in all but Deuteronomy, especially in some of the oblique cases, a fact which demonstrates that, if perchance the original text read the tetragram, this was construed in every respect as a Greek personal name and was not treated as a foreign element. Furthermore, a basic rule in the Pentateuch is that kyrios is unarticulated in the nominative case, the genitive, as object of a preposition and as subject of an infinitive. Kyrios is articulated most often in the dative when rendering Hebrew le- prefixed to the tetragram. It is in this construction that differences among the five books are most noticeable. Thus, to kyrio appears twice in Genesis as against five unarticulated instances, in Exodus twelve times against twenty-three without articulation, in Leviticus seventy-two versus twenty-one, in Numbers four as against fifty-four, and not at all in Deuteronomy. Since most often kyrios is unarticulated, the articulated instances naturally attract special attention. Why, for instance, the translator of Leviticus chose to render YHWH approximately three times out of four by to kyrio, while the Numbers translator did so in a mere four occurrences out of fifty-four, is an interesting question. (DE SEPTUAGINTA. Studies in Honour of John William Wevers on his sixty-fifth birthday (ed. Albert Pietersma and Claude Cox.) Benben Publications: Mississauga, 1984. pp. 94-95)
