i am not a joyce meyer fan...but i am tired of people using misinformed or exaggerated arguments in a misguided attempt to discredit those who hold to doctrinal error...
all she basically did in this quotation was to paraphrase the text using -completely acceptable- alternate translations of the hebrew text...
the hebrew pronoun 'asher' most accurately means 'that which'...so 'ehyeh asher ehyeh' could be translated 'i am that which i am'...which could be paraphrased as 'i am what i am' which is a perfectly acceptable though logically awkward english rendering of the text...
similarly the hebrew 'ehyeh' can also mean 'i will be'...so 'ehyeh asher ehyeh' could just as easily be translated as 'i will be what i will be'...in fact this is an alternate translation is that is included in the footnotes of some bibles...
so she didn't really quote inaccurately...she gave a perfectly acceptable paraphrase of the text...one that is entirely valid if you know the hebrew of the original text...
Sorry for the wall, that's just the way it came. This is only for people who are genuinely interested in Exodus 3:14
THE NAME OF GOD AS REVEALED IN EXODUS 3:14
An explanation of its meaning
K J Cronin
Completing the Interpretation of Exodus 3:14
- The Meaning of Ehyeh asher Ehyeh
According to the
Explanation of the Meaning of the Name, I AM is the name of God. I AM is also one of the only two universally accepted literal translations of the word
ehyeh as it occurs in Exodus 3:14. The word
ehyeh of Exodus 3:14b can be identified in its context as a Divine name, and, because it is a first person singular of the verb, can be identified as the name by which God is known to Himself; His Personal name. Therefore, the
Ehyeh of Exodus 3:14b is the Personal name of God and translates into English as I AM. Having established this, all that remains to be done in order to fully interpret the verse is to explain and translate the puzzling words of Exodus 3:14a;
ehyeh asher ehyeh. This is undoubtedly the greatest challenge in Biblical interpretation. What follows is my answer to it. In Exodus 3:13 Moses asks God what he should say to the Israelites if they ask him for the name of the God who sent him to them. For the purpose of establishing how we would expect God to respond to this enquiry, I would ask you to imagine yourself in an identical exchange, but with you in the place of God. Imagine it is you who is sending Moses on a mission to the Israelites, and that Moses is asking you what he should say to the Israelites if they ask him for the name of the one who sent him to them. The most natural and reasonable way to begin your response to his enquiry would be with a declaration of the name that you wanted Moses to relay to them. This would be naturally and reasonably followed by your instruction to Moses that he was to inform the Israelites that the one who bears that name has sent him to them. Your response would therefore fall into two parts. The first part would be some form of self-identification employing the name that you wanted Moses to relay, and the second would be your instruction to him that he was to respond to their question with that name. A self-identification is normally comprised of some form of self-address and a name, and would normally take the form "My name is x" or "I am x". We will assume that you are of sufficient renown to employ the latter form of words; "I am x". If we now combine the two parts of your response, then you would most naturally and reasonably respond to Moses' question with: "
I am x. Tell the Israelites that x has sent you to them". Now consider the exchange that took place between God and Moses in Exodus 3:13-15. Moses has asked God what he should say to the Israelites if they ask him for the name of the God who sent him to them. According to the above analysis, we would most naturally and most reasonably expect God to begin his response to Moses with a Self-identification that would employ the Divine name that he was to reveal to the Israelites. This would be naturally and reasonably followed by God's instruction to Moses that he was to inform the Israelites that the God who bears that name has sent him to them. We have already identified two forms of self-identification that God might employ – "
My name is x" and "
I am x" - but in the Hebrew Bible God identifies Himself according to the latter form of words with "
I am YHWH". Therefore, if God were to identify Himself to Moses using His Personal name
Ehyeh, we would most naturally and most reasonably expect His response to Moses' enquiry to be: "
I am Ehyeh. Tell the Israelites that Ehyeh has sent you to them". However, the Divine Self-identification "
I am YHWH" is rendered in Hebrew with a non-verbal clause, employing the personal pronoun
ani or
anoki, meaning 'I', and the name YHWH, but without the verb 'to be'. Examples of this are "
ani YHWH" of Exodus 6:2 and "
anoki YHWH" of Isaiah 43:11, both of which translate literally as "
I YHWH" but are usually translated as "
I am YHWH". If, therefore, this form of Self-identification were employed by God in declaring His Personal name
Ehyeh, we could reasonably expect that declaration to take a corresponding form, i.e. '
ani Ehyeh' or '
anoki Ehyeh', but that is not what we find. Therefore, if God did commence His response to Moses with a Self-identification that employed His Personal name
Ehyeh, then the words
Ehyeh asher Ehyeh do not conform to the Hebrew construction that we would expect such a Divine Self-identification to take, and so we apparently still cannot account for the dual occurrence of
ehyeh in
ehyeh asher ehyeh. However, this puzzle can now be readily solved, and its solution leads us to the recognition of what I believe to be the most profound and remarkable words ever written, words so uniquely remarkable that I believe they can only be attributed to the historic architect of Judaism; the man we know as Moses. The solution to the puzzle that is
Ehyeh asher Ehyeh is to be found in two key insights into the words of Exodus 3:14. The first is that in response to Moses' enquiry of Exodus 3:13, God first identifies Himself using His Personal name
Ehyeh, as explained in the
Textual Analysis of Exodus 3:13-15 in Part II of this website. The second is that
Ehyeh asher Ehyeh is the Divine Self-identificationwhen God identifies Himself using His Personal name
Ehyeh instead of His proper name YHWH. The explanation for this is as follows. A self-identification would normally be comprised of some form of self-address and a name, such as "
I am x" or "
my name is x". A self-address is a statement born of self-reflection, the purpose and effect of which is to bring to awareness knowledge of the one doing the reflecting. Therefore, the purpose and effect of Divine Self-reflection is to bring to God's awareness the knowledge He has of His Personal existence. On the occasion of God revealing to Moses His Personal name
Ehyeh/I AM, it is reasonable to expect the Divine Self-reflection to have been perfect because the Personal name is perfect, as established in Part 7 of the
Explanation of the Meaning of the Name. This informs us that on the occasion of God revealing to Moses His Personal name
Ehyeh/I AM, the perfect Divine Self-reflection would have been identical to the perfect knowledge that God has of His Personal existence. The following interim conclusion ends Part 6 of the
Explanation of the Meaning of the Name:
"'
I AM' is the articulation in God of the knowledge He has of His Personal existence". Therefore, on the occasion of God revealing to Moses His Personal name
Ehyeh/I AM, the perfect Divine Self-reflection was also articulated as
Ehyeh/I AM. This in turn means that God's perfect Self-address either is or at least incorporates the Divine Self-reflection
Ehyeh/I AM. However, because
Ehyeh/I AM is recognisable as a complete form of Divine Self-address in Hebrew as in English, there is no place for the
asher in this Self-address. Therefore
Ehyeh/I AM is the Divine Self-address when God identifies Himself using His Personal name
Ehyeh/I AM instead of His proper name YHWH. We can thus confirm that the Divine Self-identification employing the Personal name of God
Ehyeh ought to include the twofold declaration of the word
Ehyeh that occurs in
Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, and we can thus confirm that
Ehyeh asher Ehyeh is the Divine Self-identification when God identifies Himselfusing His Personal name
Ehyeh instead of His proper name YHWH, and the second key insight is confirmed. Moreover, we can confirm this even without translating the
asher, because it is inconceivable that there could be a second meaning being intentionally conveyed in the twofold
Ehyeh of
Ehyeh asher Ehyeh. As to which of the two
Ehyeh is the Self-address and which is the name, the answer is that they are identical and so they are both Self-address and name. However, if for any reason they are to be thought of as one or the other, for example in the writing of a paraphrase, then I would suggest thinking of the first
Ehyeh as the Self address and the second as the name, because this is the word order of the most characteristic of Biblical Divine Self-identifications, "
ani/
anoki YHWH". How this might manifest in a paraphrase will be seen below
. As for the
asher, it is described in the Brown-Driver-Briggs
Hebrew and English Lexicon as a "
sign of relation" (BDB, p.81), which is its precise function in
Ehyeh asher Ehyeh. Its presence has the effect of bringing the two
Ehyeh into an unspecified relationship, and it is thus a generic sign of the existence of a relationship between them. Because it is generic, the
asher has no exactly corresponding word in English (BDB, p.83), and so we must search instead for an English relative word or phrase that fits the context. Having undertaken such a search, I cannot identify any lexically acceptable English relative word or phrase that when emplaced in "I AM
asher I AM" makes of it a recognisable Divine Self-identification. For that reason, I believe that the nuance of meaning in the
asher of Exodus 3:14 is untranslatable into lexically acceptable English. Which brings me to the translation of
Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, and first to the literal translation. Because the
asher is untranslatable, it makes most sense to retain it in the literal English translation of Exodus 3:14, where it will mean the same to the Hebrew reader as to the Hebrew non-reader who knows the grammatical purpose that it serves. I would therefore propose that
Ehyeh asher Ehyeh should read as follows in literal English translation: "I AM
asher I AM". Alternatively, if
Ehyeh asher Ehyeh is to be represented in paraphrase, then the most accurate such paraphrase is "I am I AM", which corresponds to the Divine Self-identification "I am YHWH", and which I believe precisely articulates the meaning of
Ehyeh asher Ehyeh.
With these translations, and equipped with a comprehensive understanding of why it is that
Ehyeh asher Ehyeh translates in this way and what it means, I believe the puzzle that was Exodus 3:14 has now been solved. The words that God addresses to Moses in Exodus 3:14-15, in response to Moses' enquiry of Exodus 3:13, can now be confidently understood as equivalent to the following simple statement: "
I am I AM. Tell the Israelites that I AM has sent you to them, and tell them also that they are henceforth to address Me and refer to Me by My proper name YHWH." In summary, therefore, the words
Ehyeh asher Ehyeh of Exodus 3:14a are God's Self-identification to Moses, just as they are understood in the Septuagint, and the absolute
Ehyeh of Exodus 3:14b is the Personal name of God and translates into English as I AM. The two
Ehyeh of
Ehyeh asher Ehyeh are identical in meaning, as proposed by Maimonides and Sarna, but they have complementary functions within the Self-identification, as explained above. And so to the final step on this exegetical journey, which is to write Exodus 3:14 in the two versions that I would propose. First with
Ehyeh asher Ehyeh in a partial but literal translation:
Then God said to Moses, "I AM asher I AM".
And He Said, "Thus shall you say to the Sons of Israel: 'I AM has sent me to you'".
And second with
Ehyeh asher Ehyeh in a paraphrase that corresponds to the Self-identification "I am YHWH":
Then God said to Moses, "I amI AM".
And He said, "Thus shall you say to the Sons of Israel: 'I AM has sent me to you'".