In what follows I will demonstrate that the words spoken by God in Exodus 3:14 are fully comprehensible, and that they are arguably the most important words in all monotheistic faith.  I will accomplish this with a detailed analysis of the text in order to first identify the divine names in Exodus 3:14 and 3:15, and follow this with a systematic and comprehensive explanation of the meaning of just one word.  That word is the Hebrew ehyeh, the word identified by Recanati as the holiest of God’s names, and which I will shortly demonstrate to be the name by which God is known to Himself.  It is therefore my purpose in writing this paper to identify and explain the meaning of what can be most accurately designated the Personal name of God, and to interpret Exodus 3:14 in the context of that meaning.  As far as I am aware there is no other systematic and comprehensive philosophical and theological explanation of the meaning of this name and interpretation of this verse than the one that follows.

The translation of the biblical text is taken from Propp, but with three changes.[46]  The first is that while Propp has translated the ehyeh asher ehyeh of 3:14a and ehyeh of 3:14b, I have left them untranslated.  I have done so not only because I do not agree with Propp’s translation, but also because the words I employ are universally accepted as the transliterated form of the original Hebrew and so are the most universally acceptable starting point in any analysis of this verse.  The second change I have made is that I have replaced the Yahweh of Propp’s translation with the Tetragrammaton YHWH.  I have made this change only because there is still a debate over how the Tetragrammaton should be vowelised, and I do not want this issue to needlessly distract from the point of this paper.  The third change is that the bold-type emphasis in the quoted text is my own.