Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

> The major problem with the translation of ehyeh asher ehyeh is the common
supposition that
one word should be translated with one word. And thus the debate has become
'I am who I am'
vs' 'I will be what I will be'. However, the translators of the LXX
evidently did not feel
so bound to such one to one translation techniques. They tried to capture
the essence of
the phrase by translating as EYO EIMI HO WN = I'm eternal/immortal.

LXX translators were notoriously lax with the received text.

> Interestingly exo 3:16 continues 'You go, and you must gather the older
men of Israel, and you must say to them, 'Jehovah the God of YOUR
forefathers has appeared to me'(NWT) and so it is quite
possible that Yah described himself and then ordered Moshe to go and say
that his name
was YHWHand not EHYEH ASHER EHYEH.

The commandment is explicit, clear, "Tell them that your ancestral God..."
No implication of a name.

Vadim Cherny