Trinity Journal 1 NS (1980) 5-20
Copyright © 1980 by
EXODUS 3:14 AND THE DIVINE
NAME:
A CASE OF BIBLICAL PARONOMASIA
BARRY J.
BEITZEL
I. The Device of Paronomasia in the
Old Testament
In its broadest definition, paronomasia is
a comprehensive term first
employed
by ancient Greek scholastics when referring to rhetorical devices
designed
to engage and retain the attention of an audience. This extremely
persuasive
literary embellishment was so-called because one word was "brought
alongside"
(lit. "to name beside") of another which appeared or sounded
similar
or identical--thus producing an aura of literary ambiguity--but which
was
actually quite different in origin and meaning.1
Paronomasia is a common ancient Near
Eastern phenomenon, specimens of
which
are preserved in Mesopotamian,2 Egyptian3 and Arabic4
literatures. It is
also
attested in the New Testament5 and post-Biblical6
corpora.
1 adnominatio in Latin; tajnis in Arabic.
2 The reader is referred to M. Fishbane,
"The Qumran Pesher and Traits of Ancient
Hermeneutics,"
Proceedings of the VIth World Congress of
Jewish Studies (
World
3 Examples have been collected by L.
Peeters, "Pour une interpretation du jeu de
mots,"
Semitics 2 (1971-72) 127-42.
4 Consult the discussions of G. M. Redslob,
Die Arabischen Worter mit
entgegengesetzten
Bedeutungen
(Hamburg: Meissner, 1873); W. C. F. Giese,
Untersuchungen uber die
‘addad auf Grund von Stellen in altarabischen Dichtern (
S.
Calvary, 1894); T. Noldeke, "Worter mit Gegensinn," Neue Beitrage zur semitischen
Sprachwissenschaft (Strassburg: Trubner,
1910).
5M. Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (3d ed.;
1967)
160-85; E. Bullinger, Figures of Speech
Used in the Bible (
Spottiswoode,
1898 [repr.,
an
important New Testament example of paronomasia is not cited by Bullinger. The word
Greek
transliteration of the Old Testament Aramaic form, whereas the latter reflects
the
word
hieros, "holy,"
representing an instance of Hellenistic paronomasia, but having
correspondence
neither with the Semitic root nor with the city's historical reality.
6Cf. F. Domseiff, Das Alphabet in Mystik und Magie (2d ed.; Leipzig/Berlin: Teubner,
1925);
R. Marcus, Alphabetic Acrostics in the
Hellenistic and Roman Periods," JNES
6
(1947)
109-115; S. Lieberman, Hellenism in
Jewish
Theological
Society, 1950); M. Steinschneider, Jewish
Literature (2d ed.;
Olms,
1960); Jewish Encyclopedia 1.424-25; EncJud 2. §§ 229-32, 7. §§ 369-74.
5
6 TRINITY
JOURNAL
Though
regarded by contemporary Westerners only as an appropriate form
of
comedy, paronomasia is characteristically utilized in the Old Testament to
arouse
curiosity or to heighten the effect of a particularly solemn or important
pronouncement,
in this way permanently and indelibly impressing the
proclamation
upon the memory of an audience.7 This essay will consider the
two
foci of paronomastic types--visual and oral--and advance a paronomastic
explanation
of Exodus 3:14.
Visual paronomasia, tending to be
intellectual, if not esoteric, includes the
following
varieties: (1) Gematria. In Biblical Hebrew, a numerical equivalent
existed
for each letter of the alphabet (e.g. ' =1, b=2, etc.). Gematria normally
defines
a cryptograph in the form of a word or cluster of words which, through
the
calculation of their combined numerical values, discloses an otherwise-
concealed
meaning. For instance, David, whose
gematria is 14, is listed 14th in
the
genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1) and the employment of his gematria is
reinforced
by the prominent role which the number 14 plays later in this
chapter
(v 17). Gad, with a gematria of 7, is
reckoned 7th in the tribal listing of
Genesis
46, where 7 sons are ascribed to him.
The first collection of Solomonic
Proverbs
(10:1-22:16) is introduced with the expression misle selomoh, the
gematrial
total of which is 375. Hence, it is not
surprising that one discovers
precisely
the same number of Proverbs comprising this section of the book.8
Some
writers see in the "318" servants of Abraham (Gen 14:14) a gematria
for
Eliezer,
the servant of Abraham (15:2), and in the "603,550" people delivered
from
7 Studies devoted to the
paronomastic phenomenon in the Old Testament include the
following:
G.
B. Gray, Studies in Hebrew Proper Names
(London: Black, 1896); E. W. Bullinger,
Figures of Speech; H. Reckendorff, Uber Paronomane in den semitischen Sprachen.
Ein
Beitrag zur allgemeinen
Sprachwisrenschaft
(Giessen: Topelmarm, 1909); A. Murtonen, A
Philological and
Literary Treastise on the Old Testament Divine Names (StudOr 18;
“Wortspiele
in Alten Testament," Opera minora
(1953) 11-25; A. Guillaume,
"Paronomasia
in the Old Testament," JSS 9
(1964) 282-90; A. F. Key, "The Giving of
Proper
Names in the Old Testament," JBL
83 (1964) 55-9; M. Noth, Die
israelitischen
Personnenamen im Rahmen
der gemeinsemitischen Namengebung (
1966);
D. F. Payne, "Characteristic Word Play in 'Second Isaiah': A
Re-appraisal," JSS 12
(1967)
207-29; W. Wilson, Old Testament Word
Studies (2d ed.;
[repr.,
49,"
JBL 88 (1969) 435-44; J. J. Gluck,
"Paronomasia in Biblical Literature," Semitics 1
(1970)
50-78; W. L. Holladay, "Form and Word-Play in David's Lament Over Saul and
Jonathan,"
VT 20 (1970) 153-89; I. H. Eybers,
"The Use of Proper Names as a stylistic
device,"
Semitics 2 (1971-72) 82-92; L.
Peeters, "Pour une interpretation;" J. F. A.
Sawyer,
"The Place of Folk-Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation," Proceedings of the Vth
World Congress of Jewish
Studies
(Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1973)
109-13;
J. M. Sasson, "Wordplay in the OT," IDBSup 968-70.
8According to the count of
codex Vaticanus. For this reference, I am indebted to my
colleague,
Professor Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.
BEITZEL:
EXODUS 3: 14 AND THE DIVINE NAME 7
(2) Atbash.
Atbash is an oratorical device according to which letters of one
or
more words, counted from the beginning of the alphabet, are exchanged for
corresponding
letters counted from the end of the alphabet (e.g.' = t, b = s, etc.).
Embedded
in Jeremiah's grim oracle of doom directed against
king
of
that
is, until one recognizes that the letters which comprise the word ssk are
actually
atbash for bbl, "
Jeremiah
describes the inhabitants of
mysterious
lb qmy which, through atbash, becomes
ks'dym, "Chaldeans,"
known
to have been contemporary inhabitants of the great city. It is suggested
that
the hapax legomenon kbwl of 1 Kings
9:13, traditionally transliterated
"Cabul,"
is to be understood as atbash for lspk,
"worthless land."10
(3) Acrostic. Biblical literature displays a paronomastic
device in which
successive
or alternating verses, or cluster of verses, begin with the letters of the
Hebrew
alphabet in sequence. A complete acrostic sequence may be found in
Psalms
111, 112, 119, 145!;11 Proverbs 31:10-31 and Lamentations 1, 2, 3,
4.12
(4) Notrikon. This term defines the concept in which
letters of a word are
considered
as abbreviations for a series of words.
Hence, 'yk, "how"
(Jer 3:19)
is
said to represent a notrikon for '[amen]
y[hwh] k[i], "Amen, O Yahweh
for,"
and hmh, "this" (Jer 7:4)
is a notrikonic representation for h[am]
m[aqom] h[azzeh] , "this place."
(5) Acronymy. The opposite of notrikon, an acronym is
formed when the
initial
letter of each of the successive words in a series is extracted to form a
separate
word. Acronymy is beautifully
illustrated in Esther 5:4. In context,
the
heroine has just risked her life to plead the case of her betrayed people.
The
dramatic suspense reaches a climax when, in response to the king's query,
Esther's
first sentence of intercession includes the words y[abo] h[ammelek]
w[ehaman] h[ayyom], "let the king and Haman
come today." Now the
writer,
realizing full well that the book inevitably would be translated into
9 Cf. EncJud 7. § § 369-70. The
use of letters to signify numbers was known to other
Semitic
peoples. An inscription of Sargon II (722-705) states that this king extended
the
wall
of his capital city to 16,283 cubits, which corresponds to Sargon's personal
gematria.
Rabbinic
scholarship also indulged in this oratorical device; based upon a gematrial
interpretation
of the phrase 'elleh-haddebarim,
"these are the words" (Exod 35:1), they
argue
that there were 39 categories of work forbidden on the sabbath. One recalls that the
painstaking
statistical work undertaken by Massoretes, including the counting of verses,
words
and letters for each book of the Old Testament, was recorded in the Massorah
finalis,
where such detailed data was somewhat unsusceptable to textual corruption,
owing
to
the employment of gematria.
10Variations of atbash advanced
by others include atbah (i.e. t is substituted for ', h for
b,
etc.) and cipher (i.e. reversing the letters of a word and then suggesting that
the
following
letter in the alphabet was actually intended).
Using the latter method, some
writers
suggest that the intended subject of the prophecy of Ezekiel 38-9 is
and
that Magog [mgg] is to be interpreted
in the text only as a cipher for
11 The nun verse, omitted in the MT, is attested at
Sea Psalms Scroll (Ithaca: Cornell
University, 1967) 66, lines 2-3.
12Partial acrostics occur in Psalms 9-10,
25, 34, 37; and Nahum 1.
8 TRINITY
JOURNAL
Persian,
and wishing to preserve the divine name from Persianized profanation,
wrote
the entire book without its inclusion. However, in this critical passage,
the
Lord is present, if oratorically by way of the acronymic reference yhwh, in
a
form which cannot possibly be distorted by a Persian writer.13
(6) Anastrophe. In this type of paronomasia, the usual syntactical
order is
inverted
for oratorical effect or emphasis. Though examples of this device
abound
in the Scriptures, it is poignantly employed in Gen 1:2. Here one
observes
that, after verse 1, the chapter is decidedly geocentric. And it is the
anastrophic
function of weha'ares at the beginning of verse 2 which
rhetorically
signals this orientation for the balance of the chapter.
Alternatively,
the name of the patriarch Noah is purposely placed at the end of
a
verbal sentence in order to underscore a relationship with the admired
ancestor
Enoch. One reads 'et-ha'elohim hithallek-noah, "and Noah walked
with
God," (Gen 6:9), and observes that the last three radicals, read backwards
[hnk], spell the name Enoch, known also
for walking with God (Gen 5:22-4).14
(7) Epanastrophe. Here the final syllable of one word is
reproduced in the
first
syllable of the word which immediately follows. For example, takossu
'a1-hasseh / seh tamim, "you should
compute for the lamb / (your) lamb
should
be whole" (Exod 12:4-5); bene-yisra'e1
beyad ramah le ‘ene kol-
misrayim / umisrayim
meqabberim ‘et . . . kol-bekor, "the children of
went
out triumphantly before all the Egyptians / while the Egyptians were
burying.
. . all (their) firstborn" (Num 33:3-4); welir’ot sehem-behemah
hemmah lahem, "to show them
that they are but beasts" (Eccl 3:18); or the
constantly
recurring phraseology, paras reset
leraglay, "he has spread a net for
my
feet" (Lam 1:13; Prov 25:13; cf. Ezek 18-20); and finally ‘oyaw ‘albis
boset, "I will clothe
his enemies with shame" (Ps 132:18; cf. Job 8:22).15
Oral paronomasia depends upon the
similarity of sounds to provide a
meaning
or to draw an image other than that expected in the context. The
terminology
is adopted from Gluck.16
(1) Equivocal. This type of paronomasia depends on the
literary paradox of
homonymy,
that is, the similarity of sound between varying words, illustrated
in
the mene, mene, teqel, parsin passage
of Daniel 5. Daniel announces,
"mene’, God has numbered [menah] . . . your kingdom," "teqel, you have
been
weighed [teqiltah] . . . and found
wanting," "peres, your
kingdom is
divided"
[perisat]. Other eloquent expressions of equivocal
paronomasia
include
yhwh seba’ot . . . wehayah . . . ulsur
miksol . . . te’udah,
"Yahweh
Seba'ot . . . will become a rock offense. . . / (therefore) bind up the
testimony"
(Isa 8:14, 16); wehahemar hayah lahem
lahomer, "and they had
bitumen
for mortar" (Gen 11:3);17 and beti ‘aser-hu’ hareb . . . wa’eqra’
13 Cf.7:7.
14 The reader will fmd a fuller discussion
in J. M. Sasson, "Word-Play in Gen 6:8-9,"
CBQ 37 (1975) 165-66; cf.
Bullinger, Figures of Speech,
699-700.
15 It is sometimes suggested that lahem hallbenah le’aben, "they had
brick for stone"
(Gen
11 :4), illustrates the epanastrophic principle.
16J. J. Gluck, Semitics 1 (1970) 50-78.
17Cf. G. von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary (rev. ed.;
BEITZEL:
EXODUS 3: 14 AND THE DMNE NAME 9
horeb ‘al-ha'ares, "my house is a
desolation. . . I have called a drought on the
earth"
(Hag 1:9, 11); and watta ‘as ha’ares
beseba’ hassaba’ leqmasim,
"during
the seven plenteous years the earth brought forth abundantly" (Gen 41:47).
Sometimes homonymy that allows for such
punning occurs when
consonants
which are phonemically disparate in proto-Semitic fall together in
Hebrew,
e.g. hereb 'al-kasdim . . . horeb
'el-memeha, "a sword (HRB) upon
the
Chaldeans . . . a drought (HRB) upon her water" (Jer 50:35, 38); we’anah
‘iyyim be’almenotaw . .
. weqarob laba' 'ittah, "hyenas will cry (GNH) in its
towers
. . . its time (‘NH) is close at hand" (Isa 13:22; cf Jer 51:14, 18; Pss
88:1,
10; 119:153, 172).18
(2) Metaphony. Metaphonic wordplay is facilitated by the
occurrence of
verbal
forms in which a change in stem conjugation does not affect the
consonantal
root but introduces a vowel mutation which alters, sometimes
radically,
the nature of the act described. maqqel
saqed 'ani ro’eh. . . /
ki-soqed ‘ani, "I see a rod of almond. . . / for I am
watching" (Jer 1:11, 12);
kelub qayis . . . / ba’
haqqes 'el-'ammi;
"a basket of summer fruit . . . / the
end
has come upon my people" (Amos 8:1, 2); 'im lo’ ta’aminu ki lo'
te’amenu, "if you do not
believe, then you will no longer be established" (Isa
7:9);
wahasimmoti ‘ani ‘et-ha 'ares wesamemu
'aleha ‘oyebekem hayyosebim
bah, "I will devastate
the land, so that your enemies who settle in it will be
astonished
at it" (Lev 26:32). A somewhat more
sophisticated instance of
metaphonic
wordplay is to be found in Gen 26:8. Isaac's name, which in Gen
17:17,
19; 21:6 had been associated with its cognate verb "to laugh" (SHQ),
is
read
here as follows: wehinneh yishaq mesaheq 'et ribqah 'isto, "Isaac was
fondling
Rebekah his wife."
(3) Parasonance.
This type of paronomasia involves the use of verbal and
nominal
roots which differ in one of their three radicals. This device is
profusely
illustrated in Judg 5:19-21. Here the
kings of
fought
and the stars fought [nilhamu] (LHM)
against Sisera while the torrent
Kishon,
the mighty onrushing torrent [nahal]
(NHL) swept him away. The
Lord
frequently promises, "I will bring again [sabti] (SWB) the captivity
[sebut] (SBY) of my people.19 Parasonancy is artfully employed elsewhere:
"Yahweh
seba’ot looked for justice [mispat],
but there was only bloodshed
[mispat],20 for righteousness
[sedaqah], but there was only a cry [se’aqah]
(Isa
5:7); qamah 'en-lo semah beli ya
‘aseh-qqemah, "standing grain has no
heads,
it will yield no meal" (Hos 8:7); haggilgal
galah yigleh, "Gilgal will
surely
go into exile" (Amos 5:5); kime
noah. . . me noah, "like the days of
Noah
. . . the water of Noah" (Isa 54:9); wesama
‘ta yisra’el wesamarta
La’asot, "hear therefore,
O Israel, and be careful to do [my commandments]"
(Deut
6:3); weteben lo’-yinnaten lakem wetoken
rebenim tittenu, "no straw
shall
be given you, yet you shall deliver the same number of bricks" (Exod
18 C. Fritsch, "Homophony in the
Septuagint," Proceedings of the VIth
World Congress
of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem: World Union
of Jewish Studies, 1977) 115-20.
19 This formula is recorded some 26 times
in Scripture.
20 This word is a hapax legomenon.
10 TRINITY
JOURNAL
5:18).21
But perhaps the most widespread use of
parasonancy is to be found in
word plays
upon proper names. Very often,
assignment of the names of Biblical
characters,
tribes, places and episodes is made to suggest a characteristic
attributed
to them or an important event associated with them.22
[babel]
(BBL) received its name because it was the place of confusion, [balal]
(BLL) (Gen
11:9); the first female was called woman ['issah] ('NS) because
she was
taken from man ['is] ('YS) (Gen 2:23);23 Cain [qayin]
(QYN) was
so named
because his mother claimed to have gotten [qaniti] (QNY) a man
with the
help of the Lord (Gen 4:1).24
At times, double parasonancy is
employed
with proper names. Gad [gad] was named at birth because of his
mother's
good fortune [bagad] (Gen 30:11), and later in life he is called a raider
[gedud]
(Gen 49:19). Because Jacob took hold of
Esau's heel [ba 'aqeb] (Gen
25:26) he
was named Jacob [ya 'aqob] , but later Esau claimed that Jacob had
been named
aright because he had beguiled [wayya' qebeni] (Gen 27:36) his
older
brother. Though examples of punning
proper names could be multiplied,
it should be
clear from these cited that one is dealing with words which exhibit
a
paronomastic relationship, and not an etymological one.
A more complicated form of parasonance is
the type in which radicals of
one word are
found in another word in a differing order:
"He delivers
(yehalles)
the afflicted by their affliction, and opens their ears by adversity
(ballahas)"
(Job 36:15); "All my enemies shall be ashamed (yebosu) and sorely
troubied, they
shall turn back (yasubu) and be put to shame (yebosu) in a
moment"
(Ps 6:10 [H 11]); "Noah (noah) found grace (hen) in the eyes
of the
Lord"
(Gen 6:8). One is tempted to see an
example of this type of
parasonancy
in Genesis 32:24 [H 25]: "And Jacob
(ya'aqob) was left alone,
and a man
wrestled (ye'abeq) with him until daybreak."
(4) Farrago. This form of paronomasia defines somewhat
confused and
often
ungrammatical wording which gains meaning only because of context. A
characteristic
of farrago is that some of the elements display a tendency to
rhyme (e.g.
"hodge-podge," "helter-skelter"). Farragonic examples from the
Scripture
include maher salal has baz, the son of Isaiah (Isa 8:1, 3); tohu
wabohu "without form and void" (Gen
1:2); 'et-ha'urim we'et-hattummim,
"Urim
and Thummim" (Exod 28:30); uben-meseq beti hu' dammeseq
'eli'ezer, "the heir of my house is Eliezer of
Damascus" (Gen 15 :2); ben sorer
umoreh, "a stubborn and rebellious
son" (Deut 21: 18, 20).
(5) Assonance. Words may be strung together primarily for
oral effect
rather than
furthering the meaning of the phraseology.
Isaiah seems to have
21Parasonance becomes the vehicle to convey the poignant outpouring
of Micah's grief (1:10-5).
22J. Pedersen, Israel: Its
Life and Culture (2 vols.;
1954])
1.245-59. He succinctly states: "To
know the name of a man is the same as to
know his
essence. . . the name is the soul" (245).
230ne observes that
"man" and "woman" do not derive from the same root. Moreover,
it should be
pointed out that the character of the shin in these 2 words is phonemically
different in
proto-Semitic: in the former case it is
a proto-Semitic and * and in the latter
case a
proto-Semitic *S.
24The petros/petra passage
in Matthew 16 closely resembles this classification.
BEITZEL: EXODUS 3: 14 AND THE DNINE NAME 11
been
particularily fond of this rhetorical device: wa'omar razt-li razi-li 'oy li
bogedim
bagadu ubeged bogedim bagadu / pahad wapahat wapah 'aleka yoseb
ha'ares.
"But I say, 'I pine away, I pine away. Woe is me, for the
treacherous
deal very
treacherously.' / Terror, and the pit, and the snare are upon you, 0
inhabitants
of the earth" (Isa 24: 16-7); hakkemakkat makkehu hikkahu
'im-kehereg
harugaw horag, "Did
he smite him with the same blows as his
smiters
smote him? Was he slain in the same way as those he had slain?" (Isa
27:7); hitmahmehu
utemahu hista 'as 'u waso'u, "Tarry and be astonished,
blind
yourselves and be blind!" (Isa 29:9).
Other instances of assonantic
paronomasia
include yitten yhwh 'et-metar 'arseka
'abaq we'apar, "Yahweh
will make
the rain of your land powder and dust" (Deut 28:24); sam sepatam
'aser lo'
yisme'u 'is sepat re'ehu, "there [confuse] their language,
that they
may not
understand one another's speech" (Gen 11 :7); gad gedud yegudennu
wehu/yagud
'aqeb,
"raiders shall raid Gad, but he shall raid at their heels"
(Gen 49:19).
(6) Onomatopoeia. This term involves the formation and use of
words in
imitation of
natural sounds, beautifully illustrated by the gibberish of foreign
tongues in
Isaiah 28:10, 13: saw lastaw saw lasaw qaw laqaw qaw laqaw ze'er
sam ze'er
sam,
"precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line,
line upon
line, here a little, there a little."25 Other examples of onomatopoeia
include: 'az halemu 'qqebe-sus middahot daharot
'abbiraw, "then loud beat
the horses'
hoofs with the galloping, galloping of his steeds" (Judg 5:22);
welo' hayah
noded kanap uposeh peh umsapsep, "and there was none that
moved a wing or opened the mouth or
chirped" (Isa 10:14).
(7) Antanclasis. The same word or words, when repeated,
sometimes
requires
different renditions: "I saw the
tears of the oppressed, and there was
no one to
comfort them [we'en lahem menahem], strength was on the side of
their
oppressors, and there was no one to avenge them [we'en lahem
menahem]"
(Eccl 4:1); hitrapptta beyom sarah sar kohekah, "If you faint in
the day of
adversity, your strength is small" (Prov 24: 10); 'en qol 'anot
geburah we'en
qol 'anot halusah qol 'annot 'anoki somea, "it is not the
sound of the
shout of victory, or the sound of the cry of defeat, but it is the
sound of
singing that I hear" (Exod 32:18).
The Biblical narratives also benefit from
paronomastic displays extending
beyond the
confines of an immediate context. A few
such wordplays, called
extended
paronomasia, deserve mention here.
Launching a propaganda assault
calculated
to demonstrate the ineptitude of Hezekiah, the emissaries of
Sennacherib
charge, in effect: Hezekiah had to pay tribute (NS') to us, don't
let him
deceive (NS') you with words! (2 Kgs 18:14, 29; cf. 19:4, 22). The
text of
Genesis 3 supplies further expressions of this paronomastic device. A
clever ['arum, 1] serpent leads the couple to sin
and become naked
['erummim, 7] and to be cursed ['arur, 14]; because the woman had eaten
from the
tree ['es, 6] she must experience
pain ['issabon, 16] in childbirth.
25Casanowicz, 105, incorrectly limits paronomasia to the oral
dimension and rules out
this passage
from consideration.
12 TRINITY
JOURNAL
Cassuto26
points out a skillful contrivance of extended paronomasia in the
flood
narrative, playing on the radicals in the name Noah: "This one shall
bring us
relief [yenahamenu, 5:29]; "Yahweh was sorry" [wayyinnahem,
6:6]; "The
ark came to rest" [wattanab, 8:4]; "A restingplace to set her
foot"
[manoah,
8:9].
This discussion in no way attempts to
exhaust the possibilities of Old
Testament
paronomasia, either in function or in form. The concept was
resorted to
most frequently by the prophet Isaiah, and it may be found
frequently
in the books of Proverbs and Job. In the
historical books,
paronomasia
is largely found embedded in poetic passages and in the assigning
of proper
names.
II. An illustration of Paronomasia in
Exodus 3:14
The Exodus discourse between Moses and his
God bristles with a number of
virtually
insoluble philological and theological problems, and one is not
surprised at
the inability to forge a common scholarly concensus regarding the
linguistic
and theological meaning of the ineffable tetragrammaton. Though a
veritable
kaleidoscope of etymological speculation has been set forth,27 three
prevalent
viewpoints will be distinguished in this essay.
These outlooks
commonly
share and express the belief that the relationship between the verb
hayah and the divine name yhwh is one of
etymology.
(1) An
Ejaculatory Cry. Since the writing
of G. R. Driver,28 a number of
scholars
have embraced the opinion that the divine name, when first it arose,
did not have
a readily intelligible form, instead being an emotional cultic
outburst,
such as dervishes might cry out ecstaticly.
In the main basing his
26U. Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (2 vols.;
1972)
1.288-89.
27 A Sumerian etymology [ia-u5,
"seed of life"] has recently been theorized by J. M.
Allegro, The
Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1970) 20,
130, 215, n.
1. An Egyptian etymology [Y-h-we3,
"moon one"] has been proposed by N.
Walker, The
Tetragrammaton (West Ewell, England: privately published, 1948) [volume
unavailable
to author] 10-4; "Yahwism and the Divine Name 'Yhwh'," ZAW 70
(1958)
262-65. An Akkadian etymology [ia-u, "noble
one"] has been suggested by F. Delitzsch,
proposed an
Indo-European etymology [*Dyau-s, which became Zeus in Greek, Jupiter in
Latin, and
Yah in Hebrew]. A Hurrian etymology [ya,
"god" (plus a prinominal suffix)]
has been
offered by J. Lewy, "Influences hurrites sur
Semitiques, 1938) 55-61. Finally, it has been suggested by B. Hrozny,
("Inschriften und
Kultur der
Proto-Inder von Mohenjo-Daro und Harappa," ArOr 13 [1942] 52-5) that
Yahweh is to
be related etymologically to a god Yaue, apparently mentioned in a yet
unpublished
3rd millennium inscription found in the
28G. R. Driver, "The
original form of the name 'Yahweh': evidence and conclusions,"
ZAW 46 (1928), 7-25, esp. 23-5. This view was also mentioned by H. Tur-Sinai,
Die
Bundeslade
und die Anfange der Religion
Kuhn,
"Uber die Entstehung des Namens Jahwe," Orientalische Studien Enno
Littmann
zu seinem
sechzigsten Geburtstag uberreicht (Leiden: Brill, 1935) 25-42; M. Buber and F.
Rosenzweig, Die
Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung (Berlin: Schocken, 1936); A. Schleiff,
"Der
Gottesname Jahwe," ZDMG 90 (1936) 679-702; B. D. Eerdmans,
"The Name Jahu,"
OTS 5 (1948)
16; R. Otto, The Idea of the Holy (2d. ed.;
1973]
190-91; E. Auerbach, Moses (Amsterdam: Ruys, 1953) 44-7.
BEITZEL: EXODUS 3:14 AND THE DNINE NAME 13
conclusions
upon extra-Biblical evidence, Driver affirmed that the antique form
of the deity
worshipped by some pre-Mosaic Hebrew ancestors was the
digrammaton
Ya, a form whose origin was a kind of numinal exclamation.
Conclusive
for Driver was the fact that whereas Hebrew compound proper
names were
never formed with Yahweh, many were formed with Ya. Now over
a period of
time, such primitive ecstatic ejaculations tend to become
prolonged. Thus, taken together with Driver's belief
that the genius of the
Exodus event
lay in the creation of a new national Hebrew deity, the evolution
from Ya to
Yahweh was easily effected. At once,
this new form was recognized
on the basis
of popular etymology as closely resembling the verb hayah, therein
facilitating
its general acceptance and interpretation by the Mosaic community.
Elmslie29 accepted the
reasoning of Driver, but he extended the argument
by
suggesting, on the analogy of Tunisian cult shouts, that the ejaculation Ya
was
originally associated with the cult of the moon deity Sin, whom the
Hebrew
ancestors obviously adored and from one of whose centers the great
patriarch
emigrated.
In 1961, Mowinckel30 sought to
advance this hypothesis by asserting that
the divine
name was to be understood as ya-huwa, being composed of the
Arabic
interjection and the third person independent personal pronoun, and
translated
"Oh He!" Though such a form
was originally a cultic cry of
exclamation
and invocation, it gradually developed into a symbolic designation
("He
whose inmost essence and being we cannot see or understand") and
finally came
to be understood as a proper name.31
As to these suppositions, it must be
asserted that it would be unprecedented
for a
Semitic divine name to originate as a religious exclamation. Driver cited
Greek
analogies and Mowinckel relied heavily on Norwegian analogues.
Furthermore,
leaving aside the problem of how Ya developed into Yahweh and
not some
other form, Semitic proper names normally begin with transparent
appellations
or sentences and shorten or disintegrate. They do not become
prolonged,
as supposed by adherents of this view.32
(2) A
Triliteral Verbal Form. By a large
margin, the opinio communis has been
one which
treats the tetragrarnmaton as a triliteral verbal form, deriVing from
29W. A. L. Elmslie, How Came
Our Faith (London: Cambridge, 1948 [repr., 1958)
119-21,214.
30S. Mowinckel, "The Name
of the God of Moses," HUCA 32 (1961) 121-33, esp.
that
131-33. A similar view had been espoused
by J. P. Brown and H. S. Rose, The Dervishes
yet (London:
Milford, 1927) 275; A. Vincent, La religion des Judeo-Arameens d'Elephantine
(Paris:
Geuthner, 1937) 46. More recently M.
Reisel, (The Mysterious Name of Y. H. W.
H. [Assen:
Van Gorcum, 1957] 48) arrives at this conclusion.
31Psalm 102:27 [H28] we'attah-hu' was luminous with meaning
for Mowinckel
32For convincing discussions in
support of this contention, the reader may consult D.
D.
Luckenbill, "The Pronunciation of the Name of the God of
277; W. F.
Albright, "The Name Yahweh," JBL
42 (1924) 370-78; L. Waterman, "Method
In the Study
of the Tetragrammaton," AJSL 43 (1926) 1-7; M. Noth, Personennamen
143-44; A.
Murtonen, Treatise 58-61; P. M. Cross, "Yahweh and the God of the
rep;.,
Patriarchs," HTR 55 (1962) 252-55; R. de Vaux, "The Revelation
of the Divine Name,"
Proclamation
and Presence (London:
SCM, 1970) 50-1; EncJud 7. § 680.
14 TRINITY
JOURNAL
the
root HWY.33 (a) Causative
Participle. J. Obermann34
attempted to show that
Yahweh
need not represent a finite verb. As a
finite verb, it would be, of necessity,
one
of the third person. Yet the solemn
formula ‘ani yahweh, occurring with
high
frequency
throughout the pages of the Old Testament, would present one with the
enigma
of a third person imperfect having as its subject or agent a first person
pronoun.35 For Obermann, such a construction was
manifestly impossible unless
one
assumes either that the meaning of the appellation had been lost by the time
this
formulation developed, or that the form yahweh
does not represent a finite
verb. On the other hand, arguing on the analogy of
the Karatepe inscription of
Azittawadd,
where numerous expressions of the same type occur, Obermann
submitted
that yahweh represented a peculiar
type of causative participial
formation
with a y instead of a m preformative. Therefore, as a lexeme, yahweh
should
be translated "Sustainer, Maintainer."
Against Obermann's view it must be argued
that demonstrably participial
forms
with y preformatives are non-existent
in Semitic. Even in the unlikely
event
that the Phoenician examples cited by Obermann should eventually
prove
to be participial in form and function,36 their appearance only in
relatively
late inscriptions cannot be used to support the antiquity of the
phenomenon.
Moreover, the causative of the root HWY is attested in Semitic.
(b) G stem triliteral verb. Actually, the only common denominator among
those
who endorse this view is that the tetragrammaton springs from the root
HWY. Goitein37 argues that the root
signifies "the Passionate One," whereas
Schorr38
and Bowman39 aver that the root reflects the meaning "to
speak"
(cognate
to Akkadian awatu), hence Yahweh was
the "Speaker, Revealer," an
epithet
particularly eloquent in the Mosaic period.
Murtonen,40 who accepts
this
reasoning, regards the divine name as a kind of nomen agentis with a y
prefix,
meaning "Commander."
Klostermann41 recognized in the same root a
negative
connotation, declaring that Yahweh means "the Faller," in the sense
33
C. H. Ratschow, (Werden una Wirken.
Eine Untersuchung des Wortes hajah als Beitrag
zur
Wirklichkeitserfassung des alten Testaments [BZAW 70;
finds
3 meanings for the verb hayah:
"to be," "to become" and "to effect."
34 J. Obermann, "The
Divine Name YHWH in the Light of
Recent Discoveries," JBL 68
(1949)
301-23, esp. 303-09; "Survival of an Old Canaanite Participle and Its
Import on
Biblical
Exegesis," JBL 70 (1951)
199-209.
35 According to the linguistic
model of F. Anderson, (The Hebrew Verbless
Clause in the
Pentateuch [
would
indicate a clause of identification.
36 G. R. Driver,
("Reflections on Recent Articles," JBL 72 [1954] 125-31) disputes the
admissibility
of the Karatepe evidence. The forms at Karatepe are generally considered to
be
infinitives followed by a personal pronoun. An infinitive without such a
governing
pronoun
could never have developed into a divine name in Hebrew.
37S. D. Goitein, "YHWH the
Passionate: The Monotheistic Meaning and Origin of the
Name
YHWH," VT 6 (1956) 1-9.
38M. Schorr, Urkunden des altbabylonischen Zivil- und
Prozessrechts (
1913
[repr.,
39R. A. Bowman, "Yahweh
the Speaker," JNES 3 (1944) 1-8.
40A Murtonen, Treatise 90.
41A. Klostermann, Geschichte des Volkes
BEITZEL:
EXODUS 3:14 AND THE DIVINE NAME 15
of
one who crashes down or falls from heaven, as a meteor.
But the prominent position42
has been to associate the tetragrammaton
with
hayah (necessarily related to a
hypothetical antique verb *HWY), and to
suggest
the meaning "He Who is the Existing One," "the Absolute,
Eternally-
Existing
One, the One Who is with His people."
According to this view, Moses
poses
a question of nomenclature and Yahweh offers an etymological response.43
In appraising this point of view, this
writer would offer three lines of counter-
argumentation:
lexicographic, phonetic and onomastic. Buber44states the following:
If you wish to ask a person's name in
Biblical Hebrew, you never
say, as is done here, "What (mah) is his name?" or "What is
your
name?" but "Who (mi are you?" "Who is he?"
"Who is your
name?" "Tell me your
name." Where the word "what" is
associated with the word
"name" the question asked is what finds
expression in or lies concealed behind
that name.
Having inspected the various categories
and significant citations of the
interrogative
particles mah and mi; Motyer45 concluded that
when mah is
employed,
it consistently and uniformly possesses this qualitative force which
Buber
had attributed to it. Consequently, mah should be labelled as an
impersonal
interrogative particle asking the question "What?"
The question. . . mah semo, cannot mean; "by what name is the
deity called?", because the answer
to such a question should have
been:
He is called by the name YHWH.
The actual answer to the
question:
"I am that I am" (v 14) does not give the name of the
Deity.
It gives the significance and the interpretation of the name
YHWH, but not the name itself.
Therefore the question mah semo can
only mean: "What meaneth His name?
what is its import and significance?"46
42C. F. Hitzing, Ueber die Gottesnamen im alten Testament
(Leipzig: Hirzel, 1875)
7-9;
A. B. Davidson, The Theology of the Old
Testament (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1904)
54-6;
E. F. Kautzsch, Biblische Theologie des
alten Testaments (Tiibingen: Mohr, 1911)
44-7;
J. Hehn, Die biblische und die
babylonische Gottesidee; die israelitische
Gottesauffasgung im
lichte der altorientalischen religionsgeschichte (
1913)
214; E. Konig, Geschichte der
Alttestamentliches Religion (2d ed.;
Bertelsmann,
1915) 213; O. Grether, Name und Wort
Gottes im alten Testament (BZAW
64;
on Isaiah 4-55 (London: SPCK, 1961)
89; Th. C. Vriezen, An Outline of Old
Testament
Theology (Oxford: Blackwell,
1962) 147, 235-36. For an incisive syntactical study of
Exodus
3:14, refer to B. Albrektson, "On the Syntax 'ehyeh 'asher 'ehyeh in
Exodus
3:
14," Words and Meanings. Essays
presented to D. Winton Thomas (
43 Against the claim of B. D.
Eerdmans, (OTS 5 [1948] 12) that God
was being
intentionally
evasive in answering Moses, cf. K. Barth, Church
Dogmatics (4 vols.;
44M. Buber, Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant
(New York: Harper, 1958) 48.
45J. A. Motyer, The Revelation of the Divine Name
(London: Tyndale, 1959) 20-1.
46M. H. Segal, The Pentateuch: Its Composition and Its
Authorship (
1967)
5. Furthermore, this assertion is altogether consistent with what is known
about the
word
sem the semantic range of which,
according to BDB 1027-28, is
understood to
encompass
nomenclature, reputation, character and fame.
16 TRINITY
JOURNAL
Accordingly, it appears that Moses is
posing a question of character
reference
and not one of nomenclature. And in
context, such a question would
have
conveyed profound theological potentialities.41 "What kind of a God are
you?" Moses queries, to which the Lord responds in
kind, "I will be what I will
be." That is to say, God is affirming that in His
essential character He will not
be
the product of human thought or manipulation, unlike the Egyptian deities
with
which the children of
Secondly, the contention that the divine
name and the verb hayah are
related
etymologically violates a Hebrew law of phonetics regarding the hollow
verb. Here the same phonetic rules govern CwC/CyC
verbs in all persons, and
one
looks in vain to find a verb in this classification exhibiting a middle waw in
the
3rd person but a yod in the 1st
person. In fact, so uniform is this
phonetic
axiom
that Kautzsch48 declares that secondary formations, found only in
the
latest
Old Testament literature, are owing to Aramaic influence. And to suggest
that
in Exodus 3:14 there was an intentional alteration specifically to avoid
confusion
with the tetragrammaton is to introduce into the MT a hypothetical
reconstruction
for which there is an utter lack of textual support.
Finally, the suggestion that the
tetragrammaton and verb hayah are
etymologically
interwoven leads inescapably to the conclusion that the divine
name
consists exclusively of a finite verb.
Mowinckel observes that "in the
ancient
Semitic nomenclature a name containing a verbal form, whether impf.
or
perf., would otherwise always be an abbreviated form of the name
concerned;
the full form contains also a subject of the verb."49 While the
present
writer has frequently encountered divine names consisting of
augmented
one-word nouns (e.g. El), genitive compounds (e.g. Marduk
[amar-utu-ak]
, "son of Utu"), predicate compounds (e.g. Dagan-Neri, "Dagan
is
light"), noun plus pronoun (e.g. Yaum-An, "An is mine"), and
verb plus
noun
(e.g. Itur'-Mer, "Mer returns"), it would be virtually unparalleled
for a
bare
verbal form to exist as a divine name.50
What is more, it must be pointed out that
a root HWY is inextant in all West
Semitic
languages which antedate the Mosaic era. That is to say, Phoenician
contains
no root HWY; Ugaritic, despite its attestation of a divine name yw,
47W. Eichrodt, (Theology of the Old Testament [2 vols.;
1961]
1.118) makes this astute observation.
48GKC 191. § 12m.
49HUCA 32 (1961) 128.
50For a listing of ancient
Semitic deities, refer to A. Deimel, ed., Pantheon
Babylonicum
(Rome:
Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1914); K. L. Tallqvist, Akkadische Gotterepitheta
(Helsinki:
Societas orientalis fennica, 1938); G. Dossin, "Le Pantheon de Mari,"
Studia
Mariana (Leiden: Brill, 1950)
41-50;
Semitici
1;
divine
name: dlksudum
(CTXXIV.16.21; 28.15 [Deimel #1545]); ARM XIII. 111.6.
BEITZEL:
EXODUS 3:14 AND THE DIVINE NAME 17
bears
no witness to this verbal root;51 and Amorite Akkadian evidences no root
HWY.52 The root HWY is attested only in Aramaic,
Syriac, Nabataean and
Palmyrian.
(c)
H stem triliteral verb. Many
writers advocate that the divine name is to be
connected
etymologically with the causative stem of the root HWY, again
agreeing
only in the basic root. Smith53
proposes that the word derives from
an
Arabic cognate meaning "to blow." claiming that Yahweh was originally
a
storm
god. This sentiment is echoed by
Wellhausen,54 Duhm,55 Eisler,56
Ward,57
Oesterly and Robinson,58 and Meek,59 some of whom link
Yahweh
with
the ancient southern sanctuaries of the Kenites and/or the Midianites.
Citing
an alternate Arabic root, Barton60 views the name as meaning
"He Who
causes
to love passionately." On the other
hand, Holzinger61 takes the root to
mean
"to destroy," and the God of Israel is seen to be "One Who
brings about
destruction." At the same time, a host of scholars62
advance the theory that
the
tetragrammaton derives from the causative stem of a Hebrew verb hayah.
In
this case, "Yahweh" and the verb "to be" are understood to
be fused
etymologically,
and the divine name is taken to convey the meaning "the One
51Ch.
Virolleaud, (Ugaritica V [Paris:
Geuthner, 1968] 244-45) refers to a
lexicographic text from
reading the line in question u-wu/a. Though this reading is accepted by H.
Huffmon,
("Yahweh and Mari," Near Eastern
Studies in Honor of William Foxwell Albright
[Baltimore/London: Johns
Ugaritic Abecedary and Origins of the
Proto-Canaanite Alphabet," BASOR.160 [1960]
21-6), convincingly argue that the spelling u
represents hu, so that the more likely readmg
of the line would be hu-wa,
"he." The use of the
independent personal pronoun as a
copula in Canaanite is well known, cf. HTR
55 (1962) 254, n. 124. C. F. Jean and J.
Hoftijzer, Dictionnaire des Inscriptions
Semitiques de l'Ouest (Leiden: Brill, 1965) 63.
52Akkadian
attests the verb awu "to argue in court" "to discuss talk
over" "to
speak" [CAD A2 86a-96, possibly a
denominative verb derived from awatu], as well as the
verb ewtl, "to change, turn
into" [CAD E 413b-15b]. The only
root meaning "to be" of
which there is evidence in Ugaritic 38d
Phoenician is KWN; cf. Arabic kawana.
The normal
Akkadian root meaning "to be" is BSY.
53W.
R. Smith, The Old Testament in the Jewish Church (New York: Appleton,
1881) 423.
54J.
Wellhausen, Israelitische und judische Geschichte (3d ed.;
55B.
Duhm,
56R.
Eisler, "Orientalische Studien," MVAG 22 (1917) 36.
57W.
H. Ward, "The Origin of the Worship of Yahwe," AJSL 25 (1925)
175-87.
58W.
O. E. Oesterly and T. H. Robinson, Hebrew Religion: Its Origin and
Development
(2d ed.;
59T.
J. Meek, Hebrew Origins (2d ed.;
60G.
A. Barton, Semitic and Hamitic Origins, Social and Religious (
61H.
Holzinger, Einleitung in den Hexateuch (Leipzig: Mohr, 1893) 204.
62P.
Haupt, "Der Name Jahwe," OLZ 12 (1909) §§211-14; W. F.
Albright, JBL 43
(1924) 374-75; From the Stone Age to
Christianity (2d ed.;
1946) 15-6, 260; J. P. Hyatt, "Yahweh as
'the God of my Father'," VT 5 (1955) 130-36;
D. N. Freedman, "The Name of the God of
Moses," JBL 79 (1960) 151-56; F. M. Cross,
HTR
55 (1962) 251-55; Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (
University, 1973) 65-9. Albright mentions that
this point of view dates back to the time of
Le Clerc (c. 1700).
18
TRINITY
JOURNAL
Who
causes to be (what is)," "He Who brings things to pass," or
"the
Performer
of the Promise."
But again, one is left with a divine name
composed wholly of a finite verb
and,
in this case, one of a demonstrably non-existent causative stem.63
Nor can
one
affirm, with Lagarde,64 that the divine name is itself responsible
for this
lack
of attestation; to do so would be to commit an obvious circularism and to
fail
to explain such non-attestation in Semitic dialects where the divine name
was
never sacred.
Further, if, as the result of such an
interpretation of the tetragrammaton,
one
formulates a notion of causality which implies ontological speculation, one
proceeds
still further from early Hebrew thought and faith. Though causatives
of
verbs meaning "to be" are predicated of deities in the sense of creating,
it
would
be absolutely without precedent to define in such an abstract and
philosophical
manner the character, vis-a-vis the actions, of a deity.65 That is
to
say, it seems to the present writer that the distinction is one of philosophy
and
not merely of semantics, and early Hebrew thought perceived being
phenomenally,
not ontologically or metaphysically. The
latter impression is
received
from the reading of the LXX.66
In any case, the causative of this root
is
unattested in Semitic.
(3) A Genuine tetragrammaton. Arrayed against the inherently improbable
conclusions
of the first two standpoints, this writer should like to theorize
that,
with the tetragrammaton, one is most likely dealing with a quadriliteral
divine
name in which the initial yod is lexically intrinsic.67 In support of this
suggestion,
one summons the following evidence. As a
second millennium
extra-Biblical
phenomenon, this name is ubiquitous. One
is able to locate the
name
in an onomastically identical or equivalent form in three corpora of
second
millennium literature. It appears (1) as
a Ugaritic divine name [yw],68
(2)
as an Egyptian place name [ya-h-wa/yi-ha] (Amenophis III text from
63H.
Bauer, "Die Gottheiten von Ras Schamra," ZAW 51 (1933) 93, n. 7; M. Reisel, Y.
H. W. H. 17; G. Quell, '"The Old Testament
Name for God," (TDNT 3;
Eerdmans, 1965) 1068, n. 151; cf. BDB
224-28; KB 1.229-30.
64P.
de Lagarde, Erklarung hebraischer worter (
Wissenschaften, 1880) 27-30.
65S.
Mowinckel, HUCA 32 (1961) 128; R. de Vaux, Proclamation
70. W. von Soden,
("Jahwe: 'Er ist, Er erweist sich," WO
3 [1964-66] 182) argues that such a formulation of
causality is not in accordance with the Biblical
idea of God.
66LXX
reads 'Ego 'eimi ho on;
Vulgate reads Ego sum qui sum.
67Occurring
in a number of languages, the name is attested some 250 times in
extra-Biblical documentation where the
linguistic equivalent of the Hebrew yod is always
present, even in a language (e.g. Greek) in
which the corresponding radical cannot possibly
be construed as a preformative element.
68UT
410 (#1084); J. Aistleitner, Worterbuch der Ugaritischen Sprache (
Akadernie-Verlag, 1963) 126 (#1151). Though this word was read by U. Cassuto, (The
Goddess Anath [
Tablettes en Cuneiformes Alphabetiques:
Decouvertes a Ras Shamra-Ugarit de 1929 a
1939," [Mission de Ras Shamra 10; Paris:
Geuthner, 1963] 4, n. 3) has collated the text
and finds that the reading yw is absolutely
certain.
BEITZEL:
EXODUS 3:14 AND THE DIVINE NAME 19
Soleb,
Ramses II text from 'Amarah, Ramses III text from Medinet Habu),69
and
(3) as a Byblian divine name ['Ieuw].70 Moreover, some authorities argue
that
it may be found as an element in Babylonian proper names from the
Cassite
period [e.g. Ya-u-ha-zi]71 and as an element in personal names [e.g.
Is-ra-il
/ lu du-bi-zi-pis, Is-ra-ya lu du-bi-zi-pis; dinger Ya-ra-mu] at Ebla.72
This list cuts a wide swath linguistically
and geographically, and it evidences
a
great antiquity for the word as a personal name, and as a divine name in
particular. Now semitic philologists are familiar with
onomastic proposition
which
states that geographical names and personal names derive from divine
names,
but that the converse is not generally true.
Further, the complexity of
phonetics
,and orthography between the Akkadian, West Semitic and Egyptian
writing
systems is profound, but it is a fundamental principle in onomastic
studies
that "divine names and even other substantives lend themselves to
borrowing
more easily than do adjectives and that borrowing of verbal forms is
highly
improbable."73
This latter dictum of linguistic borrowing
is obviously recognizable in the
first
millennium extra-Biblical evidence, where Yahweh is found in Aramaic,
Greek,
Moabite and Canaanite literature.74
But the antiquity and ubiquity of
the
second millennium evidence coupled with these two onomastic axia
strongly
suggest that the word was already known as a divine name centuries
before
the Mosaic epoch.75
Accordingly, it seems preferable to conclude that
tetragrammaton
is a quadriradical divine name of unknown lexicographic and
ethnic
origin, and that its relationship with hayah in Exodus 3:14 is one of
paronomasia,
not etymology.
Since the use of paronomasia promoted a
certain excitement and curiosity
69B.
Grdseloff, "
d'Egypt
1 (1947) 69-99; R. Giveon, "Toponymes ouest-asiatiques a Soleb," VT 14 (1964)
239-55; most recently M. C. Astour, "Yahweh
in Egyptian Topographic Lists," Elmar Edel
Festschrift (forthcoming)
17-34.
70Murtonen, Treatise 53; J. Gray, "The God YW
in the Religion of
71So
G. R. Driver, ZAW 46 (1928) 7; J. J.
Stamm, Die Akkadische Namengebung
(Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1939) 113; A. Mutronen,
"The Appearance of the Name Yhwh outside
72E.g.
most recently, M. Dahood, "
Spade 8 (1979) 9-10; C. H.
Gordon, "Echoes of
Seventieth Anniversary of The
However, caution is urged by A. Archi, "The
Epigraphic Evidence from
Testament," Bib 60 (1979) 556-60; R.
D. Biggs, "The
Perspective," BA 4 (1980) 82-3.
73I.
J. Gelb, P. M. Purves and A. A. MacRae, Nuzi Personal Names (OIP 57;
Texts (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins, 1965) 15.
74Found
most recently in an 8th century inscription from Kuntillet Ajrud, cf. Z. Meshel
and C. Meyers. "The Name of God in the
Wilderness of Zin," BA 39 (1976)
6-10; Z.
Meshel, "Did Yahweh have a Consort?" BARev
5 (1979) 24-35.
75Ultimately,
this discussion reduces itself to the philosophical question of similarity
versus identity.
Though it is unclear whether a West Semitic deity named Yahweh is to be
identified with the Israelite God bearing the
same name, balance of probability presently
favors the equation, in the mind of the present
writer.
20
TRINITY
JOURNAL
to
invite a search for meanings not readily apparent, it is not at all surprising
to
find
that a divine revelation like Exodus 3:14 would be couched in
paronomastic
forms. Nor is such a view inconsistent
with those Johannine
passages
in which Jesus consciously seeks to identify Himself with the "I am"
of
Exodus.76 But neither the
gospel nor the proclamation of Exodus is
attempting
to supply us with the etymology of the tetragrammaton. Exodus
3:14
becomes, therefore, yet another instance of paronomasia in the Bible.
76See the insightful studies of R. Brown, The
Gospel According to John (i-xii) (AB 29;
Study in Johannine Usage and Thought
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970) 6-15.
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