Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Shoshanna Walker <rosewalk AT concentric.net>]

Except that G-d, who originated the Torah, Transmitted this 
particular Name to us in the future tense.  And as He is the Creator 
of the Universe, and of you and me, and of the Torah, He is the final 
authority.  And if He meant this Name to be "translated" in the 
present tense, He would have Said it that way.  And what man has the 
credentials/audacity to second guess G-d and say that He was wrong 
the way He transmitted His Name?

You attribute to this phrase the meaning  "I am the Eternal".

I can just as easily attribute the same meaning as yours to this 
phrase, by using the future tense as G-d transmitted it thus:  "I 
will [continue to] be that which I will be [and have always been - 
implied]" - ie; eternal - without changing the future tense as G-d 
transmitted this Name, to present tense, which people, other than all 
of our Rabbinical Commentaries, seem to have the need to do, to show 
that they "know better" than G-d, the Owner and Originator of this 
Name, in the first place.

Shoshanna Walker




In order to answer this question I would like to pose the following
question. Imagine you are English and for some strange reason your name is
"I'm" and then out of the blue somebody comes up to you and says "Could you
introduce yourself please?". How would you do it in the confines of the
English language. One of the most likely, and yet obscure, natural language
productions is:

I'm I'm

where the effect of the first "I'm" is that of introducing oneself and the
effect of the second "I'm" is that of saying your name. Could it be that we
see a similar pattern in the Hebrew ehyeh asher ehyeh? Could it be that
ehyeh asher is simply introducing oneself and that the second ehyeh was his
name. The context certainly seems to support this view as further on in the
context the name is repeated but this time as simply 'ehyeh' and not 'ehyeh
asher ehyeh'. So that's the pragmatics. Now onto the semantics:

If we are to accept the theory that the construction 'ehyeh asher ...' is
communicating a name to follow and the name is 'ehyeh' then we get onto
considering the semantic significance of the name. As has often been argued
this is tenseless verb form with imperfective aspect. Something that is
ongoing and not limited to any time frame of past, present or future. For
this reason all of 'I was', 'I am', and 'I will be' seem to fail in some
way. Of all of them perhaps 'I am' is best because even though it is
strictly a present tense form it is often used with imperfective semantics:

a) I am a man (this isn't likely to change anytime soon)
b) I am a carpenter (has been, is and most likely will be)

It is perhaps for these reasons that the LXX translates the second ehyeh as
'O WN' in an attempt to indicate some kind of tenseless permanence.
Personally, I find it interesting to compare how revelations calls God the
one who was, who is and who is coming indicating some kind of
everlastingness existing in the past, the present and in the future. For me,
this is what the name of God means. It is perhaps with this motivation that
one translation has it as "I am the Eternal". I quite like this translation.
It seems to be the only one that abandons grammatical translation giving
priority to semantics.

James Christian
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