Dear Rolph Your question is a good one: " One problem for such a claim is that the verb in v. 14 is HYH, and if YHWH is a verb form, the root is HWH. If the writer wanted to explain YHWH, would he not have used the same root in his explanation ( in v. 14 ) as in the name (v. 15)? "
A possible answer is: when the author wrote these verses the original meaning of deity's name YHWH was forgotten, and the standard verb for 'to be' was pronounced and written with a Yud. However, the ancient author derived this divine name from HWH, because of the similarity. Most modern scholars are doing the exact same thing today. The ancient author then used the language of his time, including verbs derived from the root HYH, to explain it. Nevertheless the author was not sure of the meaning of YHWH and thus wrote the enigmatic v. 14. I too am not sure that our understanding of the name YHWH is better now, in the twenty first century, than it was in this pre-exilic text. But that of course is a different subject. By the time this biblical passage was written , there was a clear split between Judean Hebrew and Aramaic. Cf. the language of Gezer and of the recently discovered Kh .Qeiyafa inscriptions - more than a century older that Tel Deir-'Ala. The great influence of Aramaic on biblical writing was to come later. Best, Uri Hurwitz Wilmington, . VT , _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
