I Am the LORD Your God and the Many Faces of Sinai

"I am the LORD your God" (Exodus 20:2). What is "Anokhi [I]"? Rav said: Do not roll away from the Torah that I have given you. "Anokhi" is a notarikon [acronym]: "Ana nafshi ketavit yehavit" - I Myself wrote and gave it. Another interpretation, read backward: "yehivah ketivah ne'imim amareha" - it is given, written, its words are pleasant. Rabbi Berekhiah the priest said: The Holy One, blessed be He, said: "Ana nehorakh kelilakh ya'avatakh" - I am your light, your crown, your beauty. When? When you accept the Ten Commandments: "I am the LORD your God" (Exodus 20:2). Rabbi Acha said: For twenty-six generations the letter aleph kept crying out a complaint before the Holy One, blessed be He, saying: I am the first of the letters, yet You did not create the world with me but with bet, as it is said, "In the beginning [Bereshit] God created" (Genesis 1:1). The Holy One, blessed be He, said to it: By your life, I will repay you. The Torah was created before the world was created by two thousand years, and when I come to give the Torah to Israel I will open with none but the aleph, as it is said, "Anokhi [I am] the LORD your God" (Exodus ibid.). Rabbi Nechemiah said: What is "Anokhi"? It is the Egyptian language. To what may the matter be compared? To a king of flesh and blood whose son was taken captive and spent many days among the captors. His father clothed himself in vengeance and went to him and brought him back, and came to converse with him in the language of the captors. So too the Holy One, blessed be He: Israel spent all those years in Egypt and learned the speech of the Egyptians. When the Holy One, blessed be He, redeemed them and came to give them the Torah, they did not know how to listen. The Holy One, blessed be He, said: Behold, I will converse with them in the Egyptian tongue. The Holy One, blessed be He, said "Anokhi" - "anokh" [is Egyptian for "I"]; thus the Holy One, blessed be He, opened to them in their language: "I am the LORD your God" (ibid.). Because the Holy One, blessed be He, appeared to them at the sea as a mighty man making war, and appeared to them at Sinai as a scribe teaching a lesson, and appeared to them in the days of Daniel as an elder teaching Torah, and appeared to them in the days of Solomon as a young man, the Holy One, blessed be He, said to them: Not because you see Me in many forms, but it is I who was at the sea, it is I who was at Sinai, "I am the LORD your God" (ibid.). Rabbi Chiyya the Elder said: According to each matter and each thing He appeared to them. He appeared to them at the sea as a mighty man making Israel's wars. He appeared at Sinai as a scribe who teaches Torah and stands in awe. He appeared to them in the days of Daniel as an elder teaching Torah, for it is fitting for Torah to come forth from the mouth of elders. He appeared to them as a young man in the days of Solomon, according to the deeds of that generation, "His countenance is like Lebanon, chosen as the cedars" (Song of Songs 5:15). At Sinai too He appeared to them as a scribe teaching Torah, "I am the LORD your God" (Exodus ibid.).