(Ki) Ani Hashem Elokeihem

Question

Twenty-seven times (by my count) in Torah and in Ezekiel, we find the phrase אני ה׳ אלקיכם or אני ה׳ אלקיהם at the end of a pasuk (for example, Lev 25:55). In eight of these cases, the phrase is preceded by the word כי (for example, Lev 26:1).

Whenever the word כי is present, the trope is: כי - tevir, אני - merkha, ה׳ – tippekha, אלקיהם/כם - siluq. Whenever the word כי is not present, the trope is: אני - tippekha, ה׳ - merkha, אלקיהם/כם - siluq. The main difference to notice is that the main disjunctive in the phrase, the tippekha, is in different places. Note that this shouldn't be an effect of the word כי, because the tevir disjunctive is a lower lever disjunctive than tippekha, and so the placement of the tippekha should occur before the placement of the tevir.

Additionally, in five verses in Ezekiel, we have כי אני אדני ה׳ (Ezek 13:9, 23:49, 24:24, 28:24, and 29:16), which follows a very similar word pattern (although with different names of God and without the final suffix), yet the trope here splits כי אני from אדני ה׳ (unlike either of the cases in the preceding paragraph).

Does anyone know what the implications are of the different teamim choices, or the inclusion/lack of כי? Is there a reason why changing the names of God and omitting the possessive suffix should change the parsing of the verse? Are there any commentators (or grammarians/explicators of teamim) who discuss a difference in meaning between these cases?

Answer 1

Nehama Leibowitz, in the first volume of New Studies in Shemot (pp. 306-7), discusses the distinction between two possible syntactic structures of the first three words in Exodus 20:2.

(a) אנכי ה׳        אלהיך,
(b) אנכי        ה׳ אלהיך.

She cites Ibn Ezra and Shadal who discuss the two readings (they focus on Ex 20:2, the details of which aren't relevant to the question at hand). The distinction, as summarised nicely here, is as follows:

(a) "I, Whom you already know as Adoshem, am to be your God",
(b) "Let me introduce myself: I am the Lord your God".

(This answer doesn't address possible implications of כי introducing the phrase.)

Answer 2

R Menachem Di Lonzano writes in his Derekh Chayim 108b that the Tipcha is on "Ani" so as to not sound like "I am God, your god, [and not that other god who is also your god]". He concludes:

ולכן בכל אני ה' אלהיכם יש טרחא במלת אני לבד כשיבא מלת כי בתביר קודם לה לפי שאי אפשר לטרחא לבא אחר תביר אם לא במאריך באמצע.‏
And therefore in all "Ani Hashem Eloheikhem" there is a Tipcha on the word "Ani" except when the word "Ki" with a Tevir precedes it, for it is impossible for a Tipcha to come after a Tevir without a "Ma'arikh" in between.

A Ma'arikh might be what we call a Merkha or it could be what we call a Meteg/Gaya. Either way though the rule is odd because we find Tevir-Tipcha sequences all the time. Possibly what he means is Tipcha can't come straight after a Tevir when the Tevir also has no Meshareit, a rule which (if Ma'arikh is taken as a Meteg/Gaya) would have only a couple exceptions (the only two I see in Torah where you have Mafsik-Tevir-Tipcha with no Metagim/Makkafim on the latter two are Lev 11:9 and Deu 7:20).

So it seems according to this simply that the Tipcha-Tevir combo is impossible for technical reasons (whatever they may be exactly), and so when the word "Ki" is introduced the Tipcha shifts to the also-reasonable position on "Hashem".

(If I had to guess about the examples from Yechezkeil, I'd say that the name-combo אדני-יהוה is thematically too joint to split, and we prefer to lose entirely the syntactical division of the Tevir than to split up those names.)