Exodus 6:2-9:35
“Alas for Those Who Have Passed Away”
The first two verses of this week’s reading have long posed a problem for interpreters. God says to Moses, “I am the Lord. But when I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it was as El Shaddai (‘God Almighty’)—I did not make Myself known to them by My name, ‘the Lord’” (Exod 6:2).
But this can’t be right. God’s name “the Lord” (YHWH) appears numerous times in connection with Israel’s ancestors. In fact, just a few paragraphs earlier, God had instructed Moses to tell the Israelites, “The Lord, the God of your fathers…has sent me to you; this is My name forever, and so I will be known for all generations” (Exod 3:15). And long before this, Noah, Abraham, Lot, and others all refer to God by the name YHWH. So what could God mean by saying in this week’s reading, “I did not make Myself known by My name, ‘the Lord.’”
The answer rests in a surprising phenomenon found elsewhere in the Torah. Often, God finishes a pronouncement with the words, “I am the Lord,” or “I am the Lord your God.” For example, in the book of Leviticus God tells Moses to say to the Israelites, “You will observe My statutes and keep My laws and follow them; I am the Lord your God. So you will keep My laws and My statutes which, if a person observes them, he will live by them; I am the Lord. None of you shall come near anyone of his own flesh to uncover nakedness; I am the Lord” (Lev 18:4-6). Why should God keep reminding Moses that it is God who is speaking—is Moses really in danger of forgetting this from one verse to the next?
Actually, “I am the Lord” functions in all these instances as the ancient equivalent of a signature in our own society. When you rent an apartment or buy a car or anything similar, there is usually some sort of written agreement specifying the price and other matters. At the bottom of the last page, the parties to the agreement append their signatures— and presto! The agreement becomes official. Something similar happens when God says, “I am the Lord.” It means something like, “I stand by what I just said,” or “This is My ruling.” Even when it occurs in verse after the verse, God is not being redundant; He is saying repeatedly, “This is official,” just as in a signature.
But this doesn’t quite explain why God needed to use His “signature” in this particular case. To understand that, we have to go back to the last words God spoke at the end of the previous week’s reading.
Last week’s Torah reading ended with God telling Moses, “You will see soon enough what I’ll do to Pharaoh; he will set the Israelites free with all the force that he’s got!” Moses reacts to God’s words by saying… nothing. Between the end of last week’s reading and this week’s, Moses maintains a stony silence. Why?
Such silences have a special meaning in biblical dialogues. In a normal conversation, first A speaks to B, then B answers. But sometimes, A speaks to B and B says nothing, causing A to speak again. Ancient listeners/readers understood that B was somehow surprised at, or dissatisfied with, what A had said at first. B’s polite silence was a way of indicating that he was still waiting for something more from A. (One classic example is God’s reaction to Moses’ repeated silences in Exod 33:18-23.)
In the case at hand, our Rabbis understood that Moses was indeed keeping silent for a reason. He certainly must have been pleased with God’s promise that Pharaoh would let the Israelites leave Egypt, but this promise had not been followed up by God’s signature, “I am the Lord.”
So Moses waits until God finally says, “I am the Lord” in the first verse of this week’s reading. But at the same time God scolds him, saying in effect, “When I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, I did not have to give them any guarantee by identifying Myself to them with that special phrase, ‘I am the Lord.’ They simply trusted Me, and I took care of the rest. Alas for those who have passed away and are no longer with us!”