What is the correct translation of Exodus 6:3?

Question

According to BHS, Exodus 6:3 reads:

וָאֵרָ֗א אֶל־אַבְרָהָ֛ם אֶל־יִצְחָ֥ק וְאֶֽל־יַעֲקֹ֖ב בְּאֵ֣ל שַׁדָּ֑י וּשְׁמִ֣י יְהוָ֔ה לֹ֥א נוֹדַ֖עְתִּי לָהֶֽם׃

This all almost universally translated as something like the following:

And I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai, but by my name YHWH I was not known to them.

However, Francis Andersen, in his book The Sentence in Biblical Hebrew argues for a translation that could convey the opposite meaning:

And I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai, and my name is YHWH; did I not make myself known to them?

I do not have access to Andersen's work, so I do not know how he argues for this translation syntactically.

If anyone has access to his work or arguments supporting such a translation, I would be interested in reading them.

Also, is such a translation proposed or mentioned anywhere in ancient Jewish literature?

Answer 1

No, it is not correct. Andersen tries to apply the structure within the noncontiguous parallelism (AB-AB) but for this he has made the hebrew LO (not) a positive marker, indicating a rhetorical question.

A' "I am Yhwh" (v.2).

B' "And I made myself known to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai".

A' "And my name is Yhwh";

B' "Did I not make myself known to them?"

However, as pointed out by some scholars, he fails to consider that this verse could constitute an antithetical parallelism which is, according to professor Jared Hood, "most likely". Hood also mention the failure to prove Andersen's assertion by saying that his translation violate some known gramatical and syntactical rules, as it lacks the usual Hebrew interrogative particle, and more patently the construction makes the meaning of the verses even more difficult to determine.

He quotes R. W. L. Moberly¹ who has little patience with such a view:

‘How on earth would any reader of biblical Hebrew be expected to recognize that lo’ here does not have its familiar negative meaning”?

In his book Moberly goes further:

It would appear that for Andersen (...) arguments about the Hebrew of Exod. 6:3b are only introduced to buttress a conviction about what the text must mean when read against the context of Genesis. The suggestion that lo’ in 6:3b does not mean “not” needs a far better argument to become remotely plausible.

He then passes to consider the interpretation of Rashi as one of the "most serious option for reinterpreting 6:3". Unfortunately his analysis of Rashi is too long to quote here. But you can check Rashi's commentary by yourself here.

¹R. W. L. Moberly, The Old Testament of the Old Testament: Patriarchal Narratives and Mosaic Yahwism (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992) 57.