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    I purchased your Basics of Biblical Hebrew and have been using it to study on my own for a few years now. I don't claim to be any kind of expert, but I have developed a few questions in the process. The main one is: Why does Exodus 3:14 use the 1st common imperfect of the QAL stem for the name of God? It seems clear that the divine tetragrammaton יהוה must come from the imperfect 3ms or 3ms forms of either the qal or niphal stem, and not from the imperfect 1cs  form, which begins with the consonant א rather than the consonant י. I have learned that after the Babylonian exile, scribes were afraid to write (or speak) the divine name. They used the vowel points for Elohim or Adonai to indicate that those words should be used instead. So far so good. But in Exodus 3:14 this destroys the sense of the text. I think the original text was deliberately altered. The scribes substituted the 1cs Qal imperfect for the 3ms Hiphil imperfect. The latter gives Yahweh correctly. Your textbook treats the divine name with the great respect it deserves. It fails, however, to explain how 'Yahweh' might come from the 1cs Qal imperfect where aleph is obviously the wrong consonant. What is your explanation? Sincerely, Robert Procunier