But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3:13–14)
Throughout history and in the present day, many people have done many things in the name of God. Emperors have converted nations at the point of the sword. Popes have declared Crusades that led to mass bloodshed because Deus vult, “God wills it.” People have advocated and condemned slavery, abortion, same-sex marriage, and immigration, with religious leaders taking stands on both sides of each issue, and all in the name of God. In Sunday sermons all around the world, clergy claim to speak to the people in the name of God, and we should be trembling in our boots. (And many of us do.)
But the name of God itself reveals an elusive and enigmatic person, nearly impossible to pin down.
This Sunday’s reading from Exodus includes a fascinating exchange between Moses and God on the theme. And as is often the case when I suspect something important might not make it into the sermon, I thought I might write a few words here, instead.
Moses has just heard his name called by the voice of God, speaking out of a burning bush. “Moses, Moses!” the voice says. And Moses replies, “Here I am.” (Exodus 3:4) God tells Moses, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry.” (3:5) And God sends Moses to speak to Pharaoh and to lead God’s people Israel out of slavery in Egypt.
But Moses says, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?” (3:11) He’s just a shepherd, for now; a prince, nearly killed at birth, saved and found floating in a basket on the river but now fled into the wilderness as an adult. “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?” And God replies, “I will be with you.” (3:12) And Moses asks, essentially… Okay, but who are you? He puts it more politely, of course. Knowing that the Israelites live among a people of many gods, he asks what name he should give when they ask which God has sent him.
And God answers, not with a name, but with a tautological claim: “I AM WHO I AM.” (3:14) And Moses is still silent, but God goes on, “Say this to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” (3:15) This is one of my favorite patterns in Biblical narration. When a character speaks, and then the same character speaks again, it’s meant to emphasis the pause. It’s as if there were a script, and one person’s line is just a big “…”
God: I AM WHO I AM.
Moses: […]
God: Tell that, “I AM sent me.”
And then it happens again! Moses is still completely at a loss. And God goes on to clarify: “The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob…This is my name forever, and this is my title for all generations.” (3:15)
We often print these words in “all caps.” The LORD, printed like this, always stands in for the Hebrew name YHWH, the divine “tetragrammaton” that Jewish tradition considers too holy to pronounce, replacing it with Adonai (the Lord) or HaShem (the Name) instead. “I AM” here is Ehyeh (spelled ’HYH), and both rabbinic tradition and some modern scholars make a connection between these sets of names—while there’s no definitive answer, there may be some connection between the proper name YHWH and the notion of being.
Be that as it may, this exchange should give us pause when we find ourselves claiming to speak in the name of God.
The god we worship and in whom we believe is not one we can or do give a name. Modern scholars have reconstructed the pronunciation of YHWH as Yahweh; others as Jehovah. But neither has been in common use as the name of God, in traditional Christianity or Judaism. We capitalize the common noun “god” and make it a proper name, “God.” Or we use some appellation like “the Lord.” But our traditions have been hesitant to speak the name of God itself. But if we hesitate to speak the name of God, then perhaps we should be more cautious than we are about claiming to speak in the name of God—unless and until we see a burning bush.
“I am who I am,” God says. In other translations, and equally accurately, “I will be who I will be.” (Ancient Hebrew has no past, present, and future tenses, only a “perfective” and “imperfective,” so the present and the future are usually the same.) The God we encounter in the Bible is often unpredictable, a real character with a real personality. The God we encounter in the Bible seems to learn and change, to make decisions and then regret them. God is not a series of principles written down, God is a person, who chooses to say and do particular things, and interact with the world in particular ways—ways which even the prophets often fail to understand!
Sometimes all we can rely on is that God is. “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘Ehyeh has sent me to you.’” “I am.” “I will be.” We often claim to speak in the name of God, but what God would do or what God would say can only be a guess, guided by the character of God we see revealed, a God of compassion and love who cares especially for people who are poor and for people who are strangers in the land in which they live. We don’t always know what God would say, but we know that God is, and that God will be—and that the sufferings of the people of God do not go unnoticed, for “I have heard their cry.”