Exodus 3:1-15 - God Has a Name

Moses has come a long way since we left him in the arms of his mother, under the protection of Pharaoh’s daughter, having been saved from death by ethical midwives, his diligent mother, watchful and resourceful sister and the compassion of Pharaoh’s daughter.

After spending his first few years with his mother, Moses grew up in Pharaoh’s household as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He became aware of the hardships of his people and when he came to the defense of a fellow Israelite he killed an Egyptian in his zeal. He fled the land of Egypt and ran all the way to Moab (which is just on the other side of the Jordan from the land of the promise). There he marries, Zipporah, the daughter of a priest. And he settles down, starts a family and watches after the flocks of his father-in-law.

We now find him, some years later, Moses is tending the sheep, in the wilderness near Mt. Horeb. He is alone keeping watch and as he is surveying the landscape.  His eye pass over a bush on fire. “Now that’s odd,” he thinks and almost just ignores it, “Wait, is that bush on fire?  Is it actually burning? It’s on fire but it’s not, not burning.” 

So he walks over to the bush to get a better look at this bush, which is in fact on fire but is not actually burning. And sure enough as he watches it, he can see it is not being consumed by the fire, as one would expect to happen to a thing that is on fire. And then the bush does something even more unexpected, (as if burning, but not actually burning was not unexpected enough) the bush speaks to him. Well, more precisely, God speaks to him from out of the center of the bush.

God speaks to Moses out of this bush. In fact God and Moses have a little conversation about the people of Israel. God tells him, I have seen the misery of my people. I have heard their cries. God will not allow them to continue to be oppressed. God is going to do something about it. And the “something about it” God is going to do, is send Moses to them.

Moses is not immediately keen on this idea and does not believe the people will trust them. And they have reason not to, because he was after all raised as an Egyptian, as the son of the Pharaoh. In light of his upbringing, it would be kind of hard for them to easily see where his loyalties lie. And to top it all off, he is a known murderer. In fact the whole reason he is even out here on the far edge of the wilderness is because he has been banished from Egypt after killing a man. I mean he did it in an attempt to protect a Hebrew man from one of his Egyptian oppressors. But killing a man, even out compassion, rarely qualifies a person for any position of leadership. They have no reason to trust him. His name alone will not instill trust in them. So Moses asks God for a name, maybe God’s name will carry more clout than his own.

Now names are interesting. As parents we get to actually take on the task of “naming” our children. It is one of the many things parents do as they prepare for a new baby. Well, let’s face it many of us thought about what we would name our children long before our children were even a possibility. Mike and I, who were not planning on having any children when we were dating, discussed what names we liked, if we did indeed have children. In fact we picked out Cidra’s name during one such conversation. And most parents have stories about how they came up with their children’s names and why they chose them.

So names, we kind of take them for granted, because, well we all have one. To be a person in our culture is to have name. But up until this particular point in scripture, God did not actually have one. If Abraham or Isaac, Jacob or Joseph knew it, none of them ever passed it on. Moses did not know God’s name, the scriptures do not record one, prior to this point. So Moses asks God what God’s name is.

What is really interesting about Moses asking God for a name, is that’s not the way is usually worked. Usually the people named their own gods. The gods’ of Egypt were named and formed by the people who worshiped them. Just as you or I might name our children. Rah’s name was not given to his people, but the people gave it to Rah. The great god Rah was the Sun and the god of the Sun was named Rah, by the Egyptian people. The people understood the power of the Sun, the power the Sun had for good, to bring light and life and the power it had to do evil, to scorch and burn, to turn a fertile land into a desert. They knew the power of Rah in that they knew the power of the Sun. So the God with the power of the Sun bears the name of the sun.

Who is this God who has gone unnamed? How do they understand this God? What power does this God have?  How can God make promises to save the Hebrew people, if they do not know or understand who this God is?  What does God do?  What is God’s name?  It is in God’s name that they could begin to know and understand what kind of power God might have? 

If they do not know this god’s name or the power which this god wields, how do they know what it is this god, who has come to them through Moses, is even capable of doing?  Is rescuing them from their Egyptian oppressors even within God’s power? Up until now God has been the God of a yet to be fully fulfilled promise. In all honesty what was at the very heart of these questions is the question, “Can I trust you?” “Can you actually do what you say you will do?”

So what is God’s name? We translate it here, “I am who I am.”  Translation is such a funny thing. It gives the impression of a thing, the closest proximity of what is actually said. Translation in itself is almost like rewriting a metaphor so that people in a different place and culture can understand it. But things are so very often lost in translation, especially when something is hard to translate or has no clear equivalent. And the four Hebrew letters that make up God’s name: “Yhod-heh, vav, heh,” are not very easy to bring over to English.

So let me be very clear the word here is not just a word. It is not like God’s name is something easy like “Sun,” or “the Creator.”  The word here for God’s name is not really a “thing,”it is not a noun, nor is it a descriptive phrase. The word here is sort of a verb, but it has no tense, it is a non-declined verb. It is verb-like but it does not have all the pieces parts that give a clear and distinct meaning. When cleaned up and polished it can be brought into English, “I am who I am.”  Or less clean, “I be, who I be,” but at the same time it has a future cast, since it is not in a tense per-se, it is in the present tense and the future tense at the same time and also is in the past. “I will be, who I will be” “I have been who I have been, I am who I am.”  But it is more about God “being”; “I am being, who I am being.”   “I will become who I am.”  “I am who I become.”   “I am being who I am.”  It gives the idea that God is the “becoming God.” That God is “being.”  All being, what it means ‘to be”, what it means to “become,” is found in God. God is the God through whom all things find being, in whom all being is found. God is the ONE in whom all, everything IS. God is the IS in all things. We “are” because all that make us able “to be”, “to become,” “to do” is found in God.

God does not simply have a name like Bob, because Bob-ness would be limited to name who God actually is, because God IS. The name God gives to Moses is not a name it is not a Proper noun as names should be, it is kind of verb (because God is the action that God does), but not a verb that can be nailed down to yesterday, today or tomorrow. It has no tense because who God is, is not found within the confines of time.

This is fantastic! Moses wants to know God’s name because he needs assurance that God can be trusted. He needs to be able to tell the people that God is capable of doing what God says God will do. Is God powerful enough to fight Pharaoh, all the god’s of Egypt, and the great god Rah for God’s people?  Is God mighty?  Is God powerful?  Can God truly rescue them?  So he asks, Who are you?  What is your name?

And God says, “I am who I am.”  I am the God who is, who was and will be. I am the God who IS BEING itself. Anything that IS finds its BEING in me. I AM!  Um yeah, I think the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, can take on Egypt and her host of puny limited gods who find their power in the things to which this God gives being.

At this point it should be fair enough to say to Moses, “Yes, Moses this God to whom you speak, the God of your fore-fathers, of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, the God whose name is Being itself, can handle rescuing a population of people from their oppressors. They can trust God and you can trust God.

So there we have it, we have God’s name, “I am.”  God is not merely the God of all things, God is the God in whom all things find being, God is being, the ONE whose very essence it being itself.”  “The Being God, the ISing God, the Becoming God” 

“Yhod, heh, vav, heh;” We often bring it into English as “Yahweh” and sometimes “Jehovah”. But we don’t hear it very often. In fact other than right here, our Bibles seem to not ever mention it again. But in Hebrew it is all over the place. It is used throughout most of the Old Testament books. But it is not there in English. That is because from very early on the Hebrew people decided the name of God was sacred and they avoided saying it. They would write it, it is there in the scriptures, but whenever they read the name of God they would instead say the word “Adonai”, which means “Lord”. And out of this long standing tradition of not actually “saying” the name of God, we translate it, into English “Lord”. And to distinguish it from when the original word is actually “Lord,” often times it is there in all capital lets, “L-O-R-D”

But when the early Hebrews read their scripture the name of God was there, they knew it was there, a constant reminder of exactly who God is, of exactly who they were worshiping. They could see it there, they knew it was there, always before them. They had no excuse to ever forget. We on the other hand, because of the way our bibles bring the word into English, do not have this constant reminder. Sometime it is harder for us to remember. Sometimes we forget.

We like Moses during the course of our lives find ourselves in situations, going through periods, where we might begin to wonder. “Can I trust God in this?  Can I trust God with this?”  We may even be brave enough when we are honest with ourselves, to ask, “Can God really handle this?”  And we need to remember, we need to remember exactly who we worship. We do not worship a God who can create all things. We do not worship a God who can command all things. We worship the God who IS the “is “in all things, the being-ness behind the actual being of all things. We worship the God in whom we all find our being. No matter how frightening, no matter how disconcerting, no matter how all consuming, the situations in our lives, or in the world around us are, God it bigger. Our God can be trusted to be able to handle all these situations and the concerns in our lives. Our God IS bigger!