What’s in a Word?

speech

first person

אנכי · אני · אנך

Bottom line

Both mean I. Ani is the plain first person; anochi is the emphatic, I myself, and it is the weightier and rarer word (ani outnumbers it more than two to one in Tanach). Where the two are contrasted, the workable rule for rendering is Malbim's and Rabbi Pappenheim's: with anochi the news is in the subject (I, and no one else, did it), with ani the news is in the predicate (what I did, as against something else I might have done). But that is not the only reading in the field: Rav Hirsch takes anochi's force to be nearness rather than exclusion, and Rabbi Edel takes the pair to name body and soul. A translator who renders both "I" loses every derashah built on the difference, beginning with Anochi Hashem Elokecha.

Distinctions

ani (אני)

The ordinary first-person pronoun, and the one that survived into everyday speech; anochi by contrast sounds archaic today. Maharal: ani is simply first person, without stress. Malbim and Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim: ani is used where the fresh information sits in the predicate, so ani omed means "I am standing," that is, standing and not sitting. Rav Hirsch: ani marks the speaker off as distinct from the one he is addressing. Rabbi Yehuda Leib Edel: when a person says ani he speaks for his soul. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg shows from a range of sources that although ani is normally a common pronoun, when Hashem uses it, it can function as a Name of His.

anochi (אנכי)

The emphatic form. Maharal: reflexive first person, one who is stressing himself, "I myself." Malbim and Rabbi Pappenheim: the novelty is in the subject, so anochi omed means "I, and not another, am standing." Applied to the opening of the Aseres HaDibros, this is why the Dibrah begins Anochi (Shemos 20:2): He and no other is the God who took us out of Mitzrayim.

Rav Hirsch reads the emphasis differently, and warmly: anochi carries the speaker's closeness to the one he addresses, in his standing as benefactor. On that reading Anochi opens the Dibros to establish Hashem's nearness to Klal Yisrael as the One who is their God and who brought them out. This somewhat echoes the Midrashic tradition that ties anochi in the Dibros to the Egyptian word anoch, meaning love and endearment.

Rabbeinu Bachya says anochi carries deeper, kabbalistic weight than ani, without explaining further. One might read that as anochi for the soul and ani for the body, but the evidence points the other way: Ibn Ezra relates anochi to anach, a plumb line (Amos 7:7-8), and Rabbi Yehuda Leib Edel builds on this that anochi is the bob at the line's end, which anchors the straightedge, as the body anchors the soul in this world and holds it inside physical bounds. So for Rabbi Edel the two words name two elements of a person's existence, ani speaking for the soul and anochi for the body.

Rendering guidance

  • Default: ani is "I," anochi is "I myself" or "It is I who." Reserve the heavier English for places where a source is actually reading the emphasis.
  • Trap: English has one word for both. Where a ma'amar Chazal or a mussar passage turns on Anochi versus Ani, transliterate and gloss rather than translating twice as "I" and hoping the reader hears it.
  • Anochi Hashem Elokecha (Shemos 20:2): keep the Hebrew, and where an English rendering is needed pick the one your source demands. On Malbim and Rabbi Pappenheim: "I, and none other, am Hashem your God." On Rav Hirsch: the emphasis is not exclusion but nearness, so "I am Hashem your God" with the intimacy carried in a note.
  • Do not render anochi as "myself" standing alone; it is a subject pronoun, not a reflexive object.
  • Anach in Amos is "plumb line," never "I"; the link belongs to a note.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Myself and I," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 22 Shevat 5777 (2017-02-18): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7144-myself-and-i.md. The article's stated loci are Shemos 20:2 and, for Ibn Ezra's plumb line, the word itself, which the article prints anoch; the pesukim are Amos 7:7-8, where the word is אֲנָךְ, and the article does not print them. Authorities as above: Maharal; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim; Malbim; Rav Hirsch; Rabbeinu Bachya; Ibn Ezra; Rabbi Yehuda Leib Edel; Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg (HaKtav VeHaKabbalah). The article gives no chapter-and-verse for several of these, so a project quoting them should locate the passage before citing it.