Biblical Hebrew Forum

[a.c.smith AT juno.com (Andrew C Smith)]

I copied the following from a rabbinic web page. I don't know if it's any
good or not.

Exodus is sometimes called the Book of Shmos, the "Book of Names."
Really, however, the entire Torah is a Book of Names. The Torah existed
before the creation of the universe. In its primordial form, the Torah's
"letters" were black fire on a "parchment" of white fire. When G-d
dictated the Torah to Moshe, Moshe wrote it like a scribe copying an
ancient text of fire. Until this dictation, the Torah only existed as a
series of letters in a sequence which could have been broken up into
different words and different sentences, with an entirely different
meaning. Thus, the primordial Torah was the "DNA of existence,"
containing every potential existential scenario. The Torah that Moshe
wrote down was the scenario that was actualized. Something else: The
entire Torah from its beginning - "In the beginning" -  until its final
words - "before the eyes of all Yisrael" - is no more than names of G-d,
one after the other after the other.  How can G-d have a name? A name
defines. Definition limits. This cannot be that. Something with a name is
by definition separate from everything else. Isn't saying that G-d has a
name an impossible contradiction to His Oneness? The Torah is the
blueprint of creation. Really, however, it is more than the blueprint. It
is the means by which things exist. An architect's blueprint is
inanimate. The Torah is dynamic. The source of all existence is rooted
either explicitly or covertly in the Torah. On the infinite level, G-d
has no name. When we talk of G-d having names, we mean that His names are
the way that He relates to His creation. The Torah is the life-source of
everything that exists because it is the names of G-d. The Torah, the
blueprint and the dynamo of creation, necessarily must consist of G-d's
names, for nothing can exist unless He wills it to exist; and His
connection to this world is through His names. Nothing can have existence
unless it is written in the Torah, which is no more than G-d's names, one
after another...

One reason that the Jewish People thought that they deserved to be
redeemed from Egypt was that they didn't change their names. Yet we know
that no one "deserves" God's help; it is always given out of His
generousity, His grace. Why was this idea about names so important? The
name of a thing defines its essence. When Adam gave names to every
creature, he understood that creature's individual essence and was able
to express this in a name. Similarly, later in this week's Parsha, when
G-d commands Moshe to lead the Jewish People out of Egypt, Moshe says to
G-d "They will say to me 'What is His (G-d's) Name?'  What shall I answer
them?"  In other words, if they ask me to define the essence of the
Creator, what His name is, what do I answer? G-d is above definition. Man
can have no concept of the real essence of the Creator. We can only know
that there is a Creator. And that is precisely what G-d answered Moshe:
"I will be that which I will be." My essence is the fact that I exist, I
have always existed and I will always exist. That is My essence. That is
My Name. That's what "not changing their names" means. The Jewish People
didn't change their essence. They didn't lose their identity.  Even in
the depths of exile they never stopped feeling that their essence was
Jewish. Right at the beginning of the Book of Shmos, the Torah tells us
"These are the names of the Children of Israel..." With these names they
came, and with these names they left, their essence and their identity
unaltered in any way.

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