AP

An exposition of Exodus 3:10–15

God appears to Moses in the Burning Bush, which, though aflame, is not consumed. He hears the cries of his enslaved people, he remembers his covenant to bless Abraham and his descendants, and he sends Moses to Pharaoh “to bring my people out of Egypt.”

This provokes from Moses three urgent questions:

“Who am I?”

“What is your name?”

“How will anyone believe me?”

Here we examine God’s crucial replies to the first two questions.

Pick up your pen, turn on your brain, this will not be easy. Take off your sandals, moreover, humble yourself and approach God’s words with awe and reverence.

For we stand on holy ground.

Who am I?

Exodus 3:11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

Moses had tried once to rescue his people where he ended out killing an Egyptian. It was a humiliating fiasco. The subsequent forty years of shepherding Jethro’s flocks have further sculpted his character. He knows he is powerless to free God’s people, but God is not.

Exodus 3:12 And God said: “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”

Moses must succeed because God “will be with him.” Yes Moses is mortal, weak, sinful, and foolish. But God is eternal, omnipotent, holy, and wise. He will redeem his people; he will transform dying slaves into living worshippers.

This prompts a second question:

What is Your Name?

Exodus 3:13 Moses said to God: “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”

In English translations of the Hebrew Old Testament, ‘God’ sometimes translates El (אל), a word which evokes strength, power, and supremacy. Much more often ‘God’ translates the plural Elohim (אלהים). This “plural of majesty” intensifies the glory and grandeur of the singular. In Genesis 1, Elohim is the great and powerful Creator.

But God is not a personal name. It is a title, like ‘king’, ‘master’, ‘professor’, or ‘general’. It tells us what kind of a being God is – that he is powerful and supreme – but doesn’t describe who he is or his character.

Remember that in the Bible names very often point to a person’s nature, personality, or destiny. Abraham will be “Father of a Multitude.” Jacob the “Grasper” becomes Israel the “God-Wrestler.” Moses is “Drawn Up” from the bulrushes, from death to prophethood.

By asking God his name Moses asks not only “Who are you?” but “What is your nature? What are you like? What are you going to do?” The Israelites would need to know.

God’s reply is crucial because it explains the meaning of the word which is translated in our English Old Testament as LORD, with capitals.

The LORD first appears in the second creation narrative in Genesis 2:4: “This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.” The difficulty for English readers is that the word ‘Lord’ is also, misleadingly, a title. For just as queen is the title and Elizabeth is the monarch’s proper name; God is the title and the LORD is God’s proper name with its own rich meaning and significance.

YHWH – the name of God

LORD in fact translates the four Hebrew letters יהוה, which can be exchanged with the English letters YHWH – the Hebrew language reads from right to left and historically did not use vowels. Sometimes YHWH is referred to as the Tetragrammaton, the “Four-lettered” word. Typically, two vowels are added to make Yahweh.

Note that YHWH has often been transliterated JeHoVaH. The Y is sounded as a J, the W as a V, and the vowels are borrowed from the Hebrew adonai, which means ‘lord’ or ‘master’. When we sing “Guide me O Thou Great Jehovah” we call upon the LORD, YHWH, to guide us.

Note that Jewish people never utter YHWH. This is out of fear of breaking the Third Commandment: “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.” So Hebrew Bibles typically superimpose the vowels of adonai over the Tetragrammaton, and the word adonai is read instead of it. But only during formal prayer or Scripture reading. Informally, God is referred to as HaShem (השׁם), The Name. When writing about God, religious Jews use G-d or L-rd to avoid accidental disrespect. Though we do not use these conventions let us show equal reverence for God’s name!

Where does YHWH come from?

In Exodus 3:12 God says to Moses: “I will be with you.” The Hebrew verb HYH (היה), means “to be” or “to become.” Verse 12 uses the first person imperfect form AHYH (אהיה), which means “I am” or “I will be.”

In Exodus 3:14, in answer to Moses’ question about God’s name, God replies:

“I AM [AHYH] who I AM [AHYH]. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM [AHYH] has sent me to you.’”

In fact, the Hebrew tense is ambiguous which is why the NIV footnote for verse 14 explains that this might also be translated “I WILL BE what I WILL BE.”

God’s answer to Moses’ request for his name? “I AM who I AM.” This is elaborated in verse 15:

God also said to Moses: “Say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD [YHWH], the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’”

Again, the NIV footnote is helpful: “The Hebrew for LORD [YHWH] sounds like and may be derived from the Hebrew for I AM [AHYH] in verse 14.” In fact, Exodus 3:15 explicitly links God’s name YHWH to verse 14, “I AM who I AM,” and verse 12, “I AM with you.”

This is the meaning which God himself attaches to his name YHWH: “I AM who I AM.”

Some scholars, like R.C. Sproul and John Frame, tie this to God’s aseity, his self-existence and independence. This is certainly implied in YHWH, but it is not what is explicitly stressed by Exodus 3.

Implied also is the unchangeableness – immutability – of God. In his brilliant discussion of God’s name YHWH, Hermann Bavinck writes that “He is unchangeable in his grace, in his love, in his assistance; he will be what he is because he is always himself.”

Bavinck shows how Exodus 3 itself stresses the permanence of God’s covenant relationship with his people. David Baker concurs: “Continued, active presence and relationship, not some existential concept of being, is the message here.” Similarly, Michael Grisanti extrapolates “I will be who I will be” as “I will be God for you.” “I will be present, I will be faithful, I will keep my covenant.”

Recall in Genesis 15 how the LORD cut his covenant of salvation with Abraham by passing between the bloody halves of the slaughtered animals. He communicated, in effect: “May this happen to me; may I be slaughtered, cease to exist, if I do not keep my covenant of salvation.”

In Exodus 3 Israel cries out in distress. Who comes to help them? The self-existent God who made a covenant with their forefathers; the unchanging LORD who is the same yesterday, today, and forever; the LORD whose covenant of salvation is as indestructible as his very existence.

This is my name forever; the name you shall call me from generation to generation (Exodus 3:15b).

Jesus is I AM

The Septuagint (LXX) is the famous Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible made by Jewish scholars from Alexandria in the two centuries before Jesus’ birth. It was deeply familiar to Jesus and the Apostles, and is often directly quoted by them.

The LXX translates YHWH with the word kyrios (κυριος), which means ‘lord’ or ‘master’. This echoes the Rabbi’s practice, you will recall, of reading the word adonai – lord, master – in place of the Tetragrammaton.

The most common title that the Greek New Testament ascribes to Jesus, used 618 times, is this same word kyrios. It connotes profound respect: Jesus is indeed the Lord and Master of his people.

But the New Testament ascription of kyrios to Jesus far transcends the deferential. By calling Jesus kyrios, it deliberately links him to the LORD of the Old Testament, to YHWH himself:

If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is LORD,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (Rom 10:9).

Moreover, in John 8, Jesus’ explicitly identifies himself as the LORD who met Abraham, and then Moses at the Burning Bush, and there called himself “I AM who I AM.”

To the Pharisees’ indignant “Who do you think you are?” – an insulting equivalent to Moses’ “What is your name?” – Jesus replies that “Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.” The Pharisees scoff: “You are not yet fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham!”

Jesus’ reply stunned them, and stuns us still:

“Amen, Amen, before Abraham was born I, I AM!”

In fact, Exodus 3 underpins every “I AM” saying of Jesus: “I AM the Light of the World,” “I AM the Bread of Life,” “I AM the Resurrection and the Life,” “I AM the Way and the Truth and the Life,” and so on.

The LORD who appeared to Moses had “become flesh and tabernacled among us” (John 1:14). Thus, John’s Gospel peaks with Thomas worshipping Jesus with the words, “My LORD and my God!”

In your slavery to sin cry out to God for help. Then look with Moses to the burning bush. See there the LORD Jesus. And hear him when he says, to Moses and to you:

I have indeed seen the misery of my people. So I have come down to rescue you. I AM who I AM. I AM has come to deliver you!

– Campbell Markham