Sunday, October 25, 2009, 7:31 PM
Marc Chagall - Moses And The Burning Bush
I will provide here an explanation of the exchange between God and Moses at Exodus 3:13-15.
First of all, let me provide here below the English Translation from the original Hebrew, interpolating the [critical Hebrew words], transliterated in the Latin alphabet (actually, approximately transliterated into the English pronunciation).
3:13 Moses said to God ['elohiym], “If I go to the Israelites and tell them, ‘The God ['elohiym] of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ – what should I say to them?”
3:14 God ['elohiym] said to Moses, “I AM THAT I AM.” [hayah asher hayah] And he said, “You must say this to the Israelites, ‘I AM [hayah] has sent me to you.’”
3:15 God ['elohiym] also said to Moses, “You must say this to the Israelites, ‘The LORD [YHWH] – the God ['elohiym] of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob – has sent me to you. This is my name forever [that is, obviously, God's Proper and Mysterious name, YHWH], and this is my memorial from generation to generation.’
Let me now provide here-below the English Translation from the Greek LXX “Septuagint”, again, interpolating the [critical Greek words], transliterated in the Latin alphabet (actually, approximately transliterated into the English pronunciation).
3:13 Moses said to God [ton theon], “If I go to the Israelites and tell them, ‘The God [o theos] of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ – what should I say to them?”
3:14 God [o theos] said to Moses, “I AM THE BEING.” [egò eimì o on] And he said, “You must say this to the Israelites, ‘THE BEING [o on] has sent me to you.’”
3:15 God [o theos] also said to Moses, “You must say this to the Israelites, ‘The LORD [KYRIOS] – the God [o theos] of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob – has sent me to you. This is my name forever [#], and this is my memorial from generation to generation.’
[#] Please notice how, as in the Greek LXX "Septuagint" translation there is NO Proper Name of God, the expression "This is my name forever" can easily be intended to refer to any of the following:
“I AM THE BEING” [egò eimì o on]
“I AM ” [egò eimì]
‘THE BEING’ [o on]
‘The LORD’ [KYRIOS]
Having examined the critical points of the text (both the Original Hebrew text and the Greek LXX “Septuagint” Translation), we can now proceed to an explanation of the exchange between God and Moses.
First of all my interpretation is based on the assumption that God, who encounters Moses at the base of mount Sinai, presenting Himself mysteriously and miraculously in the Burning Bush, while Moses is leading his father-in-law Jethro’s flock, may not be so impeccably satisfactory from the metaphysical point of view to the fine palates of a Plato or an Aristotle, or an Anselm or an Aquinas, but, to compensate for this deficiency, is a truly personal God (I did NOT say tri-personal!), who can truly communicate with humans as He so chooses.
Second, I believe that, faced with the genuine reluctance of Moses to be "commissioned" with the role of “liberator of Israel” (§), and with Moses’ request to know God’s name so he can tell the people of Israel, God is very reluctant to reveal His Name.
So, first God, evasively says “I AM THAT I AM” [hayah asher hayah], then he almost seems to pretend to Moses that “I AM” [hayah] is His name.
Only eventually God makes His Proper, Unique Name known to Moses: YHWH. And the Sacred Name of God became so sacred for the Jews that they were only supposed to use it in ritual occasions, and, by the time of Jesus, they had forgotten how to pronounce it exactly, due to the consonantal character of the written Hebrew.
Nobody knows exactly what YHWH means in Hebrew (but certainly NOT: “I AM” – that is a fable for children, and also grown up children).
Nobody even knows for sure if YHWH has any meaning at all. Many hypotheses have been formulated. One of them is that YHWH (from the Semitic root “hwy”) may mean something like: “He who makes things happen”.
As for the “I AM” found in the Gospel of John (John 8:58), it is a mere “optical” illusion to associate it with the “I AM” of Exodus 3:14: we project onto it the wrong assumption (to a large extent, derived from the infidel “translation” of the “Septuagint” as THE BEING [o on]) that is the same thing as “I AM” of Exodus 3:14 and consequently, by totally illogical and totally unwarranted association, the same as the mysterious name of God, YHWH.
A mistake with disastrous consequences ...
(§) Only in Sigmund Freud’s imagination – see his The man Moses and Monotheism - far from being even a man who stammers, he is a powerful Egyptian leader, the moulder of the Hebrew people.
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