Does God Speak Egyptian?
The Theology of Word Conversion
When the Holy One came to give the Torah to Israel, God spoke to them in a language they knew and understood. “I [anokhi] am the Lord your God).” (Exodus 20:2) Rabbi Nehemiah said, “What kind of word is 'anokhi? It is an Egyptian word. In Egypt, when a man wished to say to a friend I [ani], he said anokhi.
—Midrash Tanchuma
What is the significance of saying that the first word of the Ten Commandments is an Egyptian word? The Midrash’s pretext, i.e., its rhetorical question, is why Scripture uses the word anokhi instead of ani, both of which mean “I.” Yet the deeper question may be why and how a transcendent God can reveal Godself at all.
Is it any more shocking that God should speak Egyptian than Hebrew? Isn’t the marvel that God speaks at all?
Below is a sketch of possible interpretations of the Midrash:
God reveals Godself as a liberator: “I am the Lord your God, who took you out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” The God who liberates must guarantee that a person’s language (and thought) can be transformed from the language (and thought) of captivity into the language of freedom. Hebrew is thus presented not as an alternative to Egyptian but as a transformation of it.
Revelation is about the relative plane, not the absolute one. Because God communicates with humans, divine speech is subject to all the problems of communication (bias, misunderstanding, cultural contingency).
The Midrash nods to “process theology,” the notion that God appears differently to different people at different times.
The Midrash flirts with the notion that the law is given to help the slaves transition out of slave-consciousness.
The Midrash softens the grandiosity of Exodus by calling God a “friend.”
The Midrash plays on the tension between universalism and particularism; all cultures are material for revelation, yet it is their repackaging at Sinai that makes them holy.
Why do you think Rabbi Nechemia (whose name means “God comforts”) emphasizes that God’s first word of self-expression is Egyptian?
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