Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Stoney Breyer" <stoney AT touchwood.net>]

As a literary scholar only just beginning the study of Hebrew, I have
been fascinated by the linguistic and theological issues the participants
have explored, and entertained by the fluent incivility they have
indulged in.  

But would it be out of line for an outsider and amateur to suggest that
everybody's missing the point? -- For instance,  Greg Stafford
wrote:
> Moses' question was essentially,
> "Who should I say sent me?" YHWH's reply 
> was, literally, "I will be who I will be. . . . Tell them 'I will
> be' sent 
> you." Now, it seems to me that this response means that the
> Israelites will 
> know who He is by what He *will do*. 

Everything I know about storytelling tells me that this response is not a
theological or theontological proposition but an irritated reaction to
repeated interruption.  What the response "means" is that
the Deity is annoyed.  The outburst, however, discharges the
irritation which prompted it, and the Deity immediately moderates His
tone and proceeds to give Moses the *real* answer: "Tell the sons of
Israel 'YHWH, the god of your fathers ... has sent me to you.' 
*This* is my name ... "

As for the linguistic and grammatical issues everybody's so exercised
about -- this may not resolve them, but I think it marks them as
irrelevant.  As I said, I'm no Hebraist; but 'ehyeh asher 'ehyeh
looks an awful lot like such phrases as "che sera, sera" or
"it ain't over til it's over" (consider how readily it's
adopted as Popeye's colloquial motto "I yam what I yam.") I'll
bet this turns out to be a catchphrase or a catchpattern which the Deity
quotes and then extends, wrenching 'ehyeh syntactically and grammatically
out of its context for comic and sarcastic effect.  An English
example (with which I think most parents will identify) might
be:

'... as I was trying to say before you interrupted me -- when we get to
the campsite I want you to pitch the tent--'

'But what if it's dark!  We've been driving all day! When are we
going to get there?'

'We'll get there when we get there!  It'll be here-we-are o'clock!
... Look, we're going to get in about six, it'll be plenty light, just
pitch the tent, OK?'

With regard to translation, as distinct from meaning:
... "I will be who I will be" is I think impossible -- in
contemporary English dialogue the full "will" is almost never
used except emphatically, either to affirm what has previously been
explicitly or implicitly denied or to assert a future different from the
present.  I cannot believe that either of these meanings obtains
here:

*I will be who I will be (though you don't think so).
*I will be who I will be (though I'm somebody else now).

It may be also used unemphatically to mark discourse as more
"formal" than "colloquial" -- but I think this usage
contradicts the dramatic situation I have described.  

... Either "I'll be who I'll be" or "I am who I am"
is colloquially acceptable.  I incline towards "I am"
because Moses' isn't asking who the Deity *will* be at the time the sons
of Israel raise the question but who He *was* at the time He commissioned
Moses -- which *is* now, when the Deity is speaking.  But it
actually makes very little difference, since there is strictly speaking
no distinction between present and future tense in English
verbs.

Stoney Breyer
Writer, Touchwood, Inc.