Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

What does everyone think of this translation:

"God said to Moses, 'Be it as it will.' He said, 'Thus you will say to 
children of Israel, "I will be [As I live], he sent me to you."

Instead of telling the name, God offered Moses to take an oath before the 
people.

 

Several reasons for not reading ehye asher ehye in Ex3:14 as the name:

-         Moses asked for the name in order to tell it to Israelites. The 
text nowhere implies that he told them the name. Possibly, this is because he 
was not told the name.

-         Ex3:14 employs hih root, rather than hwh word base used for the 
name elsewhere.

-         If Ex3:14 contains the name, it could only be "I will be that I 
will be," a theologically odd notion that God is not currently present. The 
translation "I am that I am" hinges on the wrong theory that Hebrew lacks 
tenses. Even in that theory, reading grammatical future tense as present 
tense is extremely unusual.

-         Reading of the last phrase of Ex3:14 as "I am sent me to you" 
ignores the comma after the phrase's first word.

-         If the name is a verb, and exists both in "I am" and "He is" forms, 
then the last phrase of Ex3:14 should have been "He is sent me to you," since 
Moses speaks of God in the 3rd person.



Vadim Cherny