Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Rolf" <rolf.furuli AT sf-nett.no>]

Dear Uri,

Your comments are well taken and may be true. My point was not that there is 
no connection between HYH in Exodus 3:14 and YHWH in v 15, but rather that if 
YHWH represents a verb HWH, there are no clues in the context to connect the 
verb HYH with the supposed verb HWH. So if there is a connection, we cannot 
know what it is.



Best regards


Rolf Furuli
Stavern
Norway


Mandag 10. Juni 2013 00:43 CEST skrev Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>:

>   Dear Rolph
>   Your question is a good one: " One problem for
>  such a claim is that the verb in v. 14 is HYH, and
>  if YHWH is a verb form, the root is HWH.  If the
>  writer wanted to explain YHWH, would he not have
>  used the same root in his explanation ( in v. 14
> ) as in the name (v. 15)? "
>
>   A possible answer is: when the author wrote these
>  verses the original meaning of deity's name YHWH was
>  forgotten, and the standard verb for 'to be' was
>  pronounced and written with a Yud. However, the
>  ancient author  derived this divine name from HWH,
>  because of the similarity. Most modern scholars are
>  doing the exact same thing today. The ancient author
>  then used the language of his time, including  verbs derived from the root 
> HYH, to explain it.
>
>   Nevertheless the author was not sure of the meaning of YHWH
>  and thus wrote the enigmatic v. 14.
>
>    I too am not sure that our understanding of the
>  name  YHWH is better now, in the twenty first century,
>  than it was in this pre-exilic text. But that of course
>  is a different subject.
>   By the time this biblical passage was written , there
>  was a clear split between Judean Hebrew and Aramaic.
>  Cf. the language of Gezer and of the recently
>  discovered Kh .Qeiyafa inscriptions - more than a
>  century older that Tel Deir-'Ala. The great influence
>  of Aramaic on biblical writing was to come later.  
>
>   Best,
>
>   Uri Hurwitz                                   Wilmington, . VT
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