H1961

• {"n":"Exodus 3:14","s":"I AM, or I WILL BE. The Hebrew is one form and it carries both.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=exodus-3-14","r":"Exodus 3:14","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Nearly every English Bible reads I AM. The NET, NRSV and JPS all footnote I WILL BE. The RSV put I AM WHO I AM in the text and I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE in the margin."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"**I am here.** **I will be here.** English makes you pick a time before you can finish the sentence. Now imagine a verb form that is both, that means something like **I am-and-go-on-being here**, and that a speaker could use without ever choosing. Hebrew has that form. English does not, so a translator has to choose for you."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Ehyeh is the first person singular imperfective of hayah, to be. Hebrew verbs do not mark time the way English verbs do. They mark whether an action is viewed as complete or incomplete. The imperfective covers what is going on now and what is not yet finished, which in English has to become either a present tense or a future tense. The form itself refuses to choose."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"There's no English verb form that is present and future at once. A translator has to pick a tense, and picking one deletes the other. The Hebrew reader was never asked to pick."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"When a Hebrew verb sits in a promise or a self-description and your translations split present against future, you are looking at the imperfective. The split is not a disagreement about the words. It is two attempts to carry one form that English cannot hold."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"I AM makes the name a statement about God's being, which is how the Greek of the Septuagint took it and how most of Christian theology has read it. I WILL BE makes it a promise attached to the next sentence, where God says he will be with Moses. Both are in the grammar. The chapter itself pushes toward the promise, since the same verb form appears in verse 12 as I will be with you."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05d4\u05b8\u05d9\u05b8\u05d4 hayah \u00b7 H1961"}],"src":["G. H. Parke-Taylor, Yahweh: The Divine Name in the Bible, 51, on ehyeh as both I am and I will be","The Septuagint renders ego eimi ho on, I am the one who is","NET Bible translators' notes at Exodus 3:14"]}