Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter_Kirk AT sil.org]

Does 'ani 'asher 'ani really mean "I am that I am"? When we discussed 
Joel 3:5 recently the same question arose: can a relative clause with 
'asher (and no other marking) be the complement to an implied copula? 
No-one came up with any unambiguous example from the actual text. 
Normally a relative clause following a noun (or pronoun ??) is an 
attribute rather than a predicate. On this basis 'ani 'asher 'ani 
would mean "I, who am". Perhaps if we really want a continuous present 
we need a participle (cf. Randy Buth's recent examples and Exo. 9:3): 
'ani hoye 'asher 'ani. But then our attempts to translate back into 
ancient Hebrew quickly become even more speculative than those 
examples.

Peter Kirk