Exodus 3:15

Hebrew Bible

13 Moses said to God, “If I go to the Israelites and tell them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’—what should I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I AM that I AM.” And he said, “You must say this to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” 15 God also said to Moses, “You must say this to the Israelites, ‘The Lord—the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and this is my memorial from generation to generation. 16 “Go and bring together the elders of Israel and tell them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, appeared to me—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—saying, “I have attended carefully to you and to what has been done to you in Egypt, 17 and I have promised that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, to a land flowing with milk and honey.”’

Psalm 135:13

Hebrew Bible

11 Sihon, king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan, and all the kingdoms of Canaan. 12 He gave their land as an inheritance, as an inheritance to Israel his people. 13 O Lord, your name endures, your reputation, O Lord, lasts. 14 For the Lord vindicates his people and has compassion on his servants. 15 The nations’ idols are made of silver and gold; they are man-made.

 Notes and References

"... Native idioms about name perpetuity may have also influenced Exodus 3:15. This is not unusual in view of what we have seen throughout the analysis of the Covenant Code [which] takes a motif from the Laws of Hammurabi and actualizes it with its own native phrasing, a necessity when moving from one language to another. Nevertheless, other cases of the combined use of the root, the noun “name,” and the adverbial “from generation to generation” in the Bible are not necessarily prior to Exodus 3:15. Therefore, it is difficult to specify the degree of native influence. The wording of Psalm 135:13 is close to that of Exodus 3:15: “Yahweh, your name is eternal, Yahweh, your designation is from generation to generation”. This is a late hymn that includes a recounting of events around the time of the Exodus and may actually draw on motifs known from the narrative of which Exodus 3:15 is part ..."

Wright, David P. Inventing God's Law: How the Covenant Code of the Bible Used and Revised the Laws of Hammurabi (p. 494) Oxford University Press, 2009

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