Saturday, November 11, 2017

God's Name Within the Context of Exodus 3:14 (Comments by George Caird)

"Of all these many excursions into etymology by far the most
important is the derivation of the divine name YHWH from the
verb 'to be'; 'I AM; that is who I am. Tell them that I AM has sent
you to them' (Exod. 3:14). It is possible that the original narrator
meant the verbs to be taken as futures, and that 'I will be as I
will be' was a promise of the presence of God as and when he chose
to be present; for the same verb occurs two verses earlier in the
form 'I will be with you'. This line of thought leads us directly to
the child whose name is Immanuel (Isa. 7:14), to the application of
that name to Jesus (Matt 1:23), and to the promise with which
Matthew's Gospel ends, 'I am with you always, to the end of time'
(28:20). But that is not the way in which the translators of the
Septuagint understood the revelation of the divine name. They
translated it by hO WN, 'he who exists', and so made it possible for
later writers, beginning with the author of the Wisdom of Solomon
(13:1), to make a synthesis between the theology of the Old
Testament and the philosophy of the Greeks" (George Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible, pp. 45-46).

5 comments:

Duncan said...

Isa 8:8 seems to be conspicuously omitted from such discussions.

Duncan said...

Does Isaiah 8:8 LXX understand it to be a name?

Edgar Foster said...

I don't believe Isa 8:8 LXX treats Immanuel as a proper name.

Unknown said...

The Old Testament in Greek by Theodotion translates EHYEH ASHER EHYEH as ESOMAI HOS ESOMAI. The rendering would lend support to the rendering in the NWT, namely I will be who/what I will be or I will prove to be, that would be the future first person singular "to be"

Edgar Foster said...

Dear Brother Keefa,

The more that I research Exod 3:14, I could not agree with you more. The lines of evidence strongly point toward Theodotion's rendering being correct. If time permits, I would like to share Robert Alter's notes on Exod 3:14. But for now, https://fosterheologicalreflections.blogspot.com/2009/08/richard-kearney-on-exodus-314.html