Propp’s translation of Exodus 3:13-15, with the changes described above, reads as follows:

Before we consider what was revealed to Moses in Exodus 3:14-15 we must first consider what it was he was asking for in Exodus 3:13, because he apparently received what he sought.  There has been much debate over the meaning of the question Moses puts to God in this verse, but most commentators at least agree that the most apparent meaning of the question cannot be the actual meaning.  This is because the most apparent meaning doesn’t make sense in this context, and because the response of Exodus 3:14 would be redundant if the question were to be so understood.  The problem with the question was succinctly stated by Maimonides:

Maimonides solved this problem by interpreting the question of Exodus 3:13 as a request by Moses for proof of the existence of God, and interpreted Exodus 3:14 as a summary statement of this proof.  I have already considered Maimonides’ interpretation earlier in this paper and have explained my reasons for rejecting it.  Buber, by contrast, understood the question of 3:13 to mean, “what finds expression in or lies concealed behind the name?”  He also finds the answer to this question in Exodus 3:14, although in entirely different terms to Maimonides, and I have likewise already explained my reasons for rejecting his interpretation.

I approach the question of Exodus 3:13 by asking myself what I would have demanded of Moses in order to confirm his prophetic credentials had I been an enslaved Israelite in Egypt, because that is presumably what Moses would have been anticipating and preparing for as he contemplated the task ahead.  With this in mind I would propose that Moses would have needed to be able to do the following:  (1) Convince the Israelites that he was speaking to them on behalf of the God they already worshipped, because they would otherwise have had no reason to pay attention to anything else he had to say;  (2) Convince the Israelites that their God is the one and only God, because they lived in a world where many gods were worshipped and so the average Israelite would have wanted to be completely confident that theirs was the only one they need be concerned with;  and (3) Present the Israelites with so compelling an understanding of God that it would persuade them to resist Pharaoh and risk everything, including their own lives, in taking flight from Egypt.  This understanding would necessarily be new to them, because it could otherwise not effect so mighty a change in their resignation to their circumstances as would be necessary.

These three credentials would have demonstrated to the Israelites that Moses had a compelling knowledge of their God and would thus have allowed them to believe that Moses understood the will of their God, had the authority to speak to them on His behalf, and could be trusted to lead them in very perilous times.  It is just such a compelling knowledge of God that Moses would have required in order to successfully undertake his task, and so it is reasonable to interpret the question of Exodus 3:13 as a request for precisely this knowledge.  How this request for God’s name can be understood as a request for precisely this knowledge will become clear later in this paper.

Considering now the response he received, we must first recognise that Moses received two answers to his question; one in Exodus 3:14 and one in Exodus 3:15.  He was told that when the Israelites ask him for the name of God, he was first to say to them that ehyeh had sent him to them (3:14) and was then to say to them that YHWH had sent him to them (3:15).  Both names are clearly intended to be understood as answers to the same question, because the sentence structure in the two verses is identical, they have a shared vocabulary, and there is only one question being answered.  Moreover, the link between verses 3:13-15 is emphasised by each of them starting with the verb ‘amar’ (‘to say’) prefixed with the vav consecutive, and both the link and distinction between the answers of 3:14 and 3:15, and their necessary sequence, is stressed by the use of the adverb ‘od’ in 3:15, translated in the above passage as “further”.  Irrespective of the widespread opinion that these verses are attributable to the Elhoistic source,[48] the entire passage is written with great care and deliberation and is clearly intended be read and understood precisely as we find it.

Considered in this way, and as the bold-type text makes clear, there is only one meaningful difference between the two answers Moses receives to his question, which is that in the position where Exodus 3:14b has ehyeh, 3:15 has YHWH.  This indicates that not only are the two answers somehow the same, but more specifically that ehyeh and YHWH must somehow be the same, being as they are answers to the same question.  We know for certain that YHWH is the name of the God of Israel, and so if YHWH and ehyeh are somehow the same then YHWH and ehyeh must be two distinct names of the God of Israel with somehow the same meaning.  Moreover, a clear distinction is made between these names, because in Exodus 3:15 God tells Moses that He is to be known as YHWH forever and to be designated by this name in every generation, thus implicitly telling Him that the name ehyeh is not to be so employed.

There are only two fundamental ways in which any given person is known by a name.  One is the name by which they are referred to and addressed by others and the other is the name by which they are known to and address themselves, and whilst there may be several variants of the former there is most fundamentally only one form of the latter.  There is no parallel that can properly be drawn between the manner in which God should be addressed or referred to by humanity and the manner in which we customarily refer to and address one another.  This is because the knowledge God has of Himself is perfect, and the way in which He designates Himself will express this perfect knowledge of Himself, and this has no parallel amongst His imperfect creatures. However, in order to clarify the point I am making it is useful to consider the closest analogy we have, which is the way in which royal persons are addressed.

The status enjoyed by the Queen of England amongst her subjects ensures she is not addressed by them in familiar or personal terms.  They do not address her as Elizabeth or Liz but as ‘Your Majesty’ or ‘ma'am’, and when referring to her respectfully they do so as ‘The Queen’ or ‘Queen Elizabeth’.  The Queen, on the other hand, presumably does not address herself in such formal terms.  She no doubt prefers a more familiar and personal form of self-appellation, one that most closely articulates her experience of being the person she is.  So we might speculate that she would address herself as Elizabeth or Liz or Lizzy, or some other variant of her given name that best resonates with her experience of being herself, however approximately.  If this is the case for one who enjoys the status of mere mundane royalty, then how much more so should we assume it to be the case in relation to God, whose knowledge of Himself is perfect and whose name is Self-given?  I would therefore suggest we can safely assume that God is known to Himself and addressed by Himself in a manner that is different to the one we employ to address and refer to Him.  I would also suggest that the verbal expression of how He does know and address Himself should be off-limits to His creatures in the same way as the Queen’s is off-limits to her subjects, only more so by a factor of infinity.

Bringing this simple paradigm to bear upon the analysis of Exodus 3:14-15 enables us to see the general contours of what is being said in these verses.  We already know that YHWH is the name by which God has been addressed by His subjects in times past (e.g. Gen.4:26), and Exodus 3:15 tells us that they are to do so for all eternity, and so we can confidently identify YHWH as the name by which God is to be known by others, which means that ehyeh must be the name by which God is known to Himself.  That is to say Ehyeh must be the Personal name of God.  However simple and common-sense this analysis might appear as support for such a weighty conclusion, it will be recalled that the conclusion it leads us to is supported by those of Recanati, Rashbam, Ibn Ezra, Sarna, and Tigay - all of whom took account of linguistic and grammatical factors in their analyses – and by the interpretation of Buber.

Having established this we must now determine the meaning of ehyeh before we can further interpret the verse.  In a footnote to Exodus 3:14b in the 1985 JPS Tanakh, the uncertainty over the meaning of ehyeh is noted and the two possible literal translations identified.[49]  These translations are, by universal scholarly consent, “I am” and “I will be”.  In the context of Exodus 3:14 the implications of these two translations are entirely different, and, as noted above, these implications have profound, and profoundly different, philosophical and theological significance.  However, the way in which ehyeh should be translated in any given instance is determined by the meaning that is being conveyed, and that meaning can be understood only from the context in which it occurs.  The correct meaning of ehyeh in Exodus 3:14 cannot be determined only from the internal context of the verse because this is one in which ehyeh occurs three times and asher once, which makes a total of four words in this one short verse that in their context we do not know how to translate.  Nor does the broader narrative or linguistic context of the verse present us with any obvious clues as to how these words should be translated, and so we must look elsewhere if we are to understand and correctly translate it.

The linguistic analysis of Exodus 3:14 is moderately complex for the non-linguist and is in my opinion entirely unnecessary for a complete understanding of the verse.  For this reason I will deal here only with the most common and important errors and misunderstandings that anyone is likely to encounter when reading other analyses of the verse.  By way of reassurance to the average reader, there are in the final analysis only three linguistic facts they need to bear in mind.  The first is that the only literal translations of the Hebrew ehyeh of Exodus 3:14 are “I am” and “I will be”, upon which point there is no debate.  The second is that although it has been claimed that the present tense of the verb ‘to be’ is never expressed by the imperfect of the verb root hayah (e.g. ehyeh), this is simply false.  The third is that although some have suggested that the verb root hayah does not connote the meaning of ‘to be’ in the sense of ‘to exist’, one need only consult an exhaustive concordance to confirm that it does, and so this too is false.  The first of these three points is beyond debate and so requires no further attention.  The latter two, however, do require some attention.

Starting with the second of the three points – i.e. the tense conveyed by the imperfect of the verb hayah – I will begin with Propp’s notes on the subject in Exodus 1-18 (p.204).  As it happens Propp has remarkably little to say on this very important subject, merely stating in a single short sentence “The imperfect of hyh always refers to the future”.[50]  The only support he presents for this contention are two citations, one a paper written by Raymond Abba in 1961 entitled “The Divine Name Yahweh”, and the other an essay written by Roland de Vaux entitled “The Revelation of the Divine name YHWH”.  Because these two are Propp’s chosen authorities in support of his contention and so are presumably considered sufficient by him for this purpose, I will analyse only what these two have to say on the subject in order to demonstrate the error of his contention.

Dealing first with Abba, his statement on the subject reads as follows, with the most relevant words in bold type: “Others, taking the impf. Qal in the sense of a present tense, translate ehyeh as “I am” and Yahweh as “He is” – i.e. “the Self-existent one”.  Against this view two objections may be raised.  First, in biblical Hebrew the present tense of this verb is never expressed by the imperfect but always by the perfect tense;  the imperfect expresses the future.  And second the verb hayah never means pure existence;  rather it has the sense of “happening”, “becoming”, “being in a certain place or state”, “being present””.[51]  Here is a complete list of biblical verses in which the first person singular Qal perfect of hayah expresses the present tense meaning “I am”:  Job 19:15;  Psalms 31:13;  Jeremiah 31:9;  Lamentations 1:11;  Micah 7:1; and arguably Job 11:4 (although see the translation of Job 11:4 in the JPS Tanakh).  Now consider the following complete list of biblical verses where the first person singular Qal imperfect of hayah (i.e. ehyeh) expresses the present tense meaning “I am”:  Ruth 2:13;  Job 7:20;  Job 12:4;  Job 17:6;  and of course Exodus 3:14.[52]  You will notice that the present tense meaning of “I am” is expressed almost equally in the Hebrew Bible by the perfect and imperfect of hayah, and so Abba’s statement that “in biblical Hebrew the present tense of this verb is never expressed by the imperfect but always by the perfect tense” is patently false.  The present tense of hayah may be expressed either by the perfect or the imperfect of hayah.  Hence Propp’s statement “The imperfect of hyh always refers to the future” is likewise false.

De Vaux’s contribution to this debate reads as follows:  “The imperfect of hayah as a stative verb, ‘to be’, always has a future sense”,[53] and he supports this contention with reference to Exodus 3:12, 4:12 and 4:15.  However, his comments on Exodus 3:14b just a few lines later are strikingly at odds with this contention, stating: “it seems difficult to allow that, in Ex. 3.14, ehyeh should be translated by a future.  In all the parallel texts which have been cited (i.e. Exodus 3:13, 4:12, 4:15), ‘I shall be’ is determined by an addition. One can say:  ‘I shall be this or that, I shall be with…like…for…’, but one cannot say absolutely ‘I shall be’ in the first person, as this would suggest that the speaker does not yet exist…. It would seem that this future is only an apparent one”.[54]  So on the one hand de Vaux insists that the imperfect of hayah always has a future sense, which we have already confirmed to be false, while on the other hand he acknowledges that the absolute ehyeh of 3:14b cannot be a future tense because to translate it as such does not make sense.  It seems he is determined to have the ehyeh of Exodus 3:14 translated as a future tense, regardless of what absurdity he must propose in order to achieve it.  What, after all, does he mean by “this future is only an apparent one”?  What on earth is an “apparent” future tense?  It is nonsense, plain and simple.

Moreover, in relation to the verses de Vaux cites in support of his contention, I would make the following observation.  Although the ehyeh of Exodus 3:12 is commonly translated as ‘I will be’, this is a translational choice and is therefore based upon how the text is read and understood.  I would suggest that the ehyeh of this verse would be far more meaningfully translated ‘I am', bearing in mind the context of Exodus 3:12 is that of God assuring Moses of His presence with him, and so in this verse the preferred and correct translation of ehyeh is at least debatable, and is in my opinion ‘I am’.

Moving on to the third of the three points mentioned above as being all that the average reader needs to know about the linguistic analysis of Exodus 3:14 – i.e. that the verb hayah connotes the meaning of ‘to exist’ - I will begin by noting Abba’s contention to the contrary in the extract of his paper quoted above, which reads as follows: “the verb hayah never means pure existence;  rather it has the sense of “happening”, “becoming”, “being in a certain place or state”, “being present””.  Abba does not suggest an alternative word or phrase that might be used to convey the meaning of ‘to exist’, but Rosenzweig did and Propp appears to have followed his lead.[55][56]  Before I consider their alternative suggestion I will settle the immediate question under consideration.  Consider first the following five verses:  Ecclesiastes 1:9; 1:10; 4:3; 6:10; Obadiah 1:16.  In all five of these verses the meaning conveyed by hayah is that of what existed or what exists, and so hayah certainly does convey the meaning of ‘to exist’.  The paucity of verses cited is a reflection of the paucity of philosophical speculation in the Bible, and it should come as no surprise to find four of the five are from Ecclesiates.  Moreover, there is no other word or phrase in biblical Hebrew that does convey this meaning, and so if it were to be literally and unequivocally conveyed in biblical Hebrew there would be no alternative but to employ the verb hayah.

As for Rosenzweig and Propp's alternative suggestion referred to above, they are by their own admission guessing when they suggest that if the meaning of personal being in the sense of ‘to exist’ were to be conveyed in biblical Hebrew, then it would be rendered somehow by employing the personal pronoun hu (meaning ‘he’).  Such conjecture has no doubt been prompted by the manner in which the ‘ani hu’ declarations of Second Isaiah are translated into Greek in the Septuagint.  However, ‘ani hu’ is a non-verbal clause translating literally as “I he” and may or may not be rendered in translation as “I (am) he”.  It does not translate literally as “I am” because the verb ‘to be’ does not occur in the clause and the third person masculine pronoun ‘hu’ (meaning ‘he’) does.  Furthermore, there is in the Bible no phrase that exclusively employs a combination of the first person pronoun ani (or anoki) and the third person pronoun hu to unequivocally convey the meaning of ‘I am’ or ‘I will be’.

In the final analysis it should be sufficient to point out that after more than two thousand years of linguistic scrutiny the debate over the translation of ehyeh is still unresolved.  This sobering fact strongly suggests that the linguistic analysis of the verse cannot alone provide us with the correct translation of ehyeh.  Exodus 3:14 is a short verse, and the few puzzling words therein have a very small number of acceptable translations, and those translations were identified a long time ago.  The first version to translate ehyeh as “I am” was the Septuagint (in the first ehyeh of ehyeh asher ehyeh) and the first to translate ehyeh as “I will be” were Aquila and Theodotion, and so both of the universally accepted literal translations of ehyeh have very long and very respectable pedigrees.

The challenge this verse presents is therefore clearly not in its vocabulary or in its grammar.  The challenge it presents lies entirely in its meaning.  We cannot know how to translate these four enigmatic words until we know what they mean.  The remainder of this paper is an explanation of the meaning of Exodus 3:14.

I will proceed from the conclusion reached earlier in this section, which is the identification of the Ehyeh of Exodus 3:14b as the Personal name of God.  There is no way for us to determine the meaning of this name from the internal context of the verse alone or from the text that surrounds it, and so the only remaining approach is to identify the name from theological and philosophical first principles.  I would propose that if a Divine name can be convincingly identified in this way, and if that name corresponds to either one of the two universally accepted possible literal translations of ehyeh, then it will be safe to confirm it as the correct translation of the name Ehyeh of Exodus 3:14b.

In order to identify the Personal name of God it is necessary to explain its meaning.  That explanation and identification now follow.