Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Exodus · About this commentary
I AM WHO I AM
Exodus 3:13-22
13 Moses said to God, “Behold, when I come to the children of Israel, and tell them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what should I tell them?” · WEB
God answers a question about his name with a statement about his existence, and then attaches that name to a promise he intends to keep.
Behold, when I come to the children of Israel, and tell them, "The God of your fathers has sent me to you," and they ask me, "What is his name?" what should I tell them? Exodus 3:13.
In a world of many gods the question is practical. Which one? Egypt had a name and a jurisdiction for every force in nature, and a people who had lived among them for four centuries would want to know whose authority was being claimed.
God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM," and he said, "You shall tell the children of Israel this: 'I AM has sent me to you'" Exodus 3:14.
The answer is built on the verb to be, and it is the most compressed statement about God in the Old Testament. Three things follow from it, and each is developed later in the book.
First, self-existence. Every other name in the ancient world located a god within something — the sun, the river, the storm, the state. This name locates him in nothing but himself, and he did not begin.
Second, unavailability. The reply is also a refusal, and a courteous one. A name in that culture was a handle: to know it was to be able to invoke, bind, and negotiate. This answer gives Moses something to say and gives him no leverage whatever.
Third, presence in the future tense. The same verb form can be rendered I will be, and it had been used a sentence earlier — certainly I will be with you Exodus 3:12. The name is not an abstraction handed to a philosopher. It is given to a frightened man on the eve of an impossible errand, and what it promises him is company.
Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you, and this is my name forever Exodus 3:15.
The personal name follows immediately, formed from the same verb, and is at once tied to three men who are dead. Whatever it means philosophically, it is introduced as the name of a God who makes promises to individuals and honors them across centuries.
The rest of the paragraph is briefing, and it conceals remarkably little. The elders will listen. The king of EGYPT will not: I know that the king of Egypt won't give you permission to go, no, not by a mighty hand Exodus 3:19. The refusal is anticipated before the first request is made, which means the long contest of the plagues is not an unforeseen setback but the plan.
The request itself is limited — three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to Yahweh, our God Exodus 3:18. It is often read as a ruse. It is better read as a test that is also a mercy: the smallest demand that would settle the real question, whether Egypt would acknowledge any authority above its own. Pharaoh refuses even that.
Finally, wages. You shall not go empty-handed... You shall plunder the Egyptians Exodus 3:21–22. Four centuries of unpaid labor are settled in a night, by gift rather than by force, and the gold that leaves Egypt this way is the gold from which a tabernacle is later built — and, in one disastrous interval, a calf.
settled What this mark means