Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Bearpecs AT aol.com]

I would like to share the following three references related to Ex. 3:14. 
(I have not attempted to recreate the diacritical marks of the scholarly
tranliterations.  I have however shown “s” with the diacritical mark for
shin as “sh”.  Nor have I shown italics.  It is my practice to use a dash
to avoid writing G-d in full, and to use periods in between the letters of
the tetragrammaton.)

_Exodus 1-18: A New Translation with Introduction and Commenatary_ by
William H.C. Propp (The Anchor Bible: Doubleday, 1999), p. 204:
Hebrew expresses “I am X,” however, with a nonverbal sentence (e.g. ‘anoki
y-hwe[h] ‘I am Y-hweh’). The imperfect of hyy always refers to the future
(Abba 1961: 324; deVaux 1970: 66)….


_Commentary on the Torah: with a New English Translation and the Hebrew
Text_ by Richard Elliott Friedman (HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), p.178:
I am who I am.  (Or:“I shall be who I shall be.”  The imperfect verb here
is not limited to present or future time.)


_The Five Books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deutoronomy:  A New Translation with Introductions, Commentary, and Notes_
 by Everett Fox (The Schocken Bible: Volume I, Schocken Books, 1995), p.
273:
G-d said to Moshe:
EHYEH ASHER EHYEH/ I will be-there howsoever I willbe-there.
And he said: 
Thus shall you say to the Children of Israel:
EHYEH/ I-WILL-BE_THERE sends me to you.
pp. 268-270:
When Moshe asks G-d for his name in 3:13, he asks for more than a title
(Buber and Rosenzweig, 1994). In the context of Egyptian magic, knowing
the true name of a person or a god meant that one could coerce him, or at
the very least understand his true essence.  Moshe foresees that the
slaves will want to be able to call on this power that has promised to
deliver them.
G-d’s answer is one of the most enigmatic and widely debated statements in
the Hebrew Bible (the reader will want to consult Childs for a full
bibliography).  What does ehyeh asher ehyeh mean?  One’s suspicions are
aroused from the outset, for the answer is alliterative and hence already
not easy to pin down; the poetics of the phrase indicate both importance
and vagueness or mystery.  There is some scholarly consensus that the name
may mean “He who causes (things) to be” or perhaps “He who is.”  Buber and
Rosenzweig, taking an entirely different tack (of which one occasionally
finds echoes in the scholarly literature), interpret the verb hayoh as
signifying presence, “being there,” and hence see G-d’s words as a real
answer to the Israelites’ imagined question – an assurance of his
presence. The B-R interpretation has been retained here, out of a desire
to follow them on at least this significant point of theology, and out of
my feeling that it also fits the smaller context.  For of the several
times that Moshe tries to wriggle out of his mission, G-d answers him all
but once with the same verb, in the same meaning: “I will be-there with
you” (note the parallel between Moshe and the people again).
It is, however, also possible that ehyeh asher ehyeh is a deliberately
vague phrase, whose purpose is antimagical and an attempt to evade the
question (Rosenzweig speaks of this as well), as if to suggest that
possession of the true name cannot be used to coerce this G-d.  In this
interpretation, it would follow that, just as G-d is magicless (see v.20),
he is nameless, at least in the conventional sense of religion.