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Introduction Introduction At the Bush The primary text in the canonical Hebrew Scriptures for the revelation of the divine name is Exodus 3:14. In the narrative at the beginning of this chapter, Moses had come into the desert shepherding the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro of Midian, and arrived at the mountain of God (in Hebrew ʾelohim), Mount Horeb.1 There the angel of Yhwh appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush, which was remarkably not consumed by the fire.2 When Yhwh saw that Moses turned aside to look more closely, God called to him out of the bush.3 Moses was told to remove his shoes,4 as he stood on holy ground, and he heard God proclaim, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”5 Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. Yhwh said he had heard the cry of his enslaved people and had come down to rescue them. Moses was to go to Pharaoh and bring his people out of captivity. Moses doubted that Pharaoh would listen to him, but God said 1 G. Fischer, Yahwe Unser Gott. Sprach, Aufbau und Erzähltecknik in der Berufung Moses (Ex 3–4) (Fribourg, 1989). George W. Savran, Encountering the Divine: Theophany in Biblical Narrative (London, 2005), discusses typical features of accounts of theophanies in the Hebrew Bible. Also, Françoise Mirguet, La représentation du divin dans les récits du Pentateuque: Méditations syntaxiques et narratives (Leiden, 2009). Also relevant is N. Habel, “The Form and Significance of the Call Narrative,” Zeitschrift für alttestamentlische Wissenschaft 77 (1965), 297–329, describing six episodes as a Gattungstruktur which may be applied with interest to the narra- tive of the Burning Bush, and Cecil P. Staton, ‘And Yahweh Appeared’: A Study of the Motifs of Seeing God and God’s Appearing in Old Testament Narrative (unpublished PhD dissertation, Oxford, 1988). “The Mountain of God” does not appear in the Septuagint. 2 J.G. Janzen, “…And the Bush Was Not Consumed,” Encounter 63.1/2 (2002), 119–128. Note that although the Septuagint at 3:2 has “an angel of the Lord,” the Vulgate has the Lord himself: Apparuitque ei Dominus in flamma. 3 Here the Samaritan Pentateuch has ʾelohim (God) for yhwh, whereas the Septuagint has kurios (Lord) for ʾelohim. Thus, the Samaritan has ʾelohim twice and the Septuagint has kurios twice, both of which may be attempts at harmonization. 4 The Samaritan, Septuagint, Vulgate, and many Hebrew manuscripts have the singular “sandal.” 5 The Samaritan and some Greek manuscripts have “your fathers,” which is clearly an attempt at harmonization. None of these variants would lead one to question the priority of the Massoretic text here for establishing the Hebrew of, say, the 4th century b.c. W.R. Arnold, “The Divine Name in Exodus iii.14,” Journal of Biblical Literature 24 (1905), 107–165 at pp. 110–118. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004288171_002 2 Introduction he would be with Moses and that when the people were liberated they would worship God on that very mountain. Moses then told God that his own people would ask the name of the God of their fathers. Yhwh proclaimed: “‘I shall be what I shall be’:6 and he said, thus shall you say to the Israelites: ʾEhyeh (I shall 6 E. Schild, “On Exodus 3:14—‘I am that I am’,” Vetus Testamentum 4 (1954), 296–302, argued that the syntax of the relative clause here was traditionally misunderstood and that the phrase should be rendered (rather as the Septuagint) “I am He who is.” This view was sug- gested by J. Lindblom, “Noch einmals die Deutung des Jahwe-Namen in Ex 3.14,” Annual of the Swedish Theological Institute 3 (1964), 4–15. Such a view had earlier been suggested in the middle of the 19th century by Knobel and Ruess (So, R. de Vaux, “The Revelation of the Divine Name YHWH,” in Proclamation and Presence: Old Testament Essays in Honour of Gwynne Henton Davies, eds. J.I. Durham and J.R. Porter (London, 1970), pp. 48–75.). B. Albrektson, “On the Syntax of ʾhyh ʾshr ʾhyh in Exodus 3:14,” in Words and Meanings: Essays Presented to David Winton Thomas, eds. P.R. Ackroyd and Barnabas Lindars (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 15–28, offers a decisive defence of the traditional idem per idem type of translation. (To explain the emer- gence of ontological interpretations, it is important to note from the beginning the distinc- tion between the Hebrew meaning and the Greek sense.) For the idem per idem idiom itself, see, conveniently, S.R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text and Topography of the Books of Samuel (Oxford, 1913), pp. 185–186. Also, on the verb, G.S. Ogden, “Time, and the Verb hyh in O.T. Prose,” Vetus Testamentum 21.4 (1971), 451– 469—the Exodus formula is discussed on p. 313. Ogden discovers a use as a copula (“I shall be with you”: Exod. 3:12), an existential use (“A great panic shall arise”: Zech. 14:13), and a transitional or frequentative use (1 Kings 5:28 (LXX 14) yihyu, “they are accustomed to be”). R. Bartelmus, HYH Bedeutung und Funktion eines hebräischen ‘Allerweltswortes’ (St Ottilien, 1982), finds the verb has no significance and is just a Funktionswort serving only to introduce temporal qualification in what would otherwise normally be a nominal sentence. He trans- lates Exodus 3:14 as “Ich werde sein wer immer ich sein werde.” Y. Avishur, “ ʾEhyeh ʾasher ʾEhyeh in Arabic, Syriac and Judeo-Arabic,” Leshonenu 55.1–55.2 (1990), 13–16. S.R. Driver also has a helpful note in defence of (the tense of) the translation “I will be” in his The Book of Exodus: Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge, 1953), pp. 40–41. He sees the tense not as indicating essence, but as the active manifestation of God’s existence to his people. The tense of Exodus 3:12, “Certainly I will be with thee…” surely must provide a contextual prompt for the future tense. Moreover, Driver here follows traditional Jewish exegetes, as we shall see subsequently. Rashi (1040–1105 a.d.) similarly paraphrases “I will be with them in this affliction what I will be with them in the subjection of their future captivities,” a translation which points rather to the revelation of God by his presence with his people in suffering, than it does to ontological questions. For a very similar interpretation, see H.H. Spoer, The Origin and Interpretation of the Tetragrammaton (Chicago, 1899), and more modern Jewish exegetes and those troubled by more modern ontological uncertainties mentioned below. Henry Ainsworth put it succinctly: “The Hebrew, Ehjeh asher ehjeh, prop- erly signifieth, ‘I will be that I will be’,” in Annotations upon the Second Book of Moses, called Exodus (1617; repr. London, 1639), p. 10. More recently L.M. Pákozdy, “I Shall Be That Which I Shall Be,” The Bible Translator 7 (1956), 146–148. Also, W. Robertson Smith, “On the Name.
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