Meaning of God’s Name, “I Am Who I Am”
Why “I Am Who I Am” is confusing
During the burning bush episode of Exodus, Moses asks God for his name, and God responds by saying “I Am Who I Am.”
God could have said “I’m the Creator” or “I’m Eternal Life,” but instead he introduced himself using an entire sentence-of-a-name that comes across as vague and ambiguous rather than descriptive.
(Couldn’t anyone say “I am who I am” no matter who they are?)
What does it mean when God says that his name is “I Am Who I Am”?
Meaning behind the name “I Am Who I Am”
Honestly, I think that “I Am Who I Am” is a poor translation of what God said his name was.
In the Hebrew, that word “am” (haya) can also mean:
“to be; to occur; to remain; to abide; to exist.”
And that word “who” (aser) can also mean:
“since; as; that”
So when God introduced himself with that Hebrew sentence, it actually could have sounded more like any one of these phrases:
I occur since I occur
I abide as I abide
I remain since I remain
I exist since I exist
All these phrases start painting a picture of a God who lives and exists, solely sustained by his own life and existence. He sustains his own life, and he sustains his own existence. So when God said his name is “I Am Who I Am,” that name actually comes across like something along the lines of “Self-Existing One,” or “Self-Sustaining-Lifeforce.”
Wow.
Unfortunately that depth of meaning gets lost when we translate God’s name into the English phrase “I Am Who I Am.”
“The Existing One” (Lord vs LORD)
You might have never noticed this, but sometimes the Bible refers to God as “the Lord” (with normal capitalization), while other times it refers to him as “the LORD” (all capitalized).
The reason why English translations make that distinction is because those are actually two entirely different words in the original Hebrew language of the OT.
Lord (Adonay): When the Bible uses the word “Lord” with normal capitalization, it represents the Hebrew word “Adonay.” This word means something like “master” or “superior” or “commander,” and it can even be used to describe another person who has authority over someone else. While this title definitely describes God, the next use is even more descriptive.
LORD (Yehowa): When the Bible uses the word “LORD” in all capital letters, it represents the Hebrew word “yehowa” which is “Jehovah” in English. Jehovah means “the Existing One” which carries a meaning that’s very much aligned with the name “I Am Who I Am” which God used to introduce himself to Moses.
So God’s actual name is more like “Jehovah” which means “the Existing One.” That’s why the Simple Bible translates God’s name as the Existing One.
“Yahweh”
Since we’re on the topic, the name “Yahweh” comes from an abbreviation of the word “Yehowa.” Because the Israelites wanted to honor God’s commandment and avoid taking his name in vain, whenever they wrote the word “Yehowa” they abbreviated it by taking out the vowels, so that it looked something like “Yhw.” When they would read that abbreviation out loud, they pronounced it as “Yahweh.” So the name “Yahweh” came into existence by shortening God’s true name, “Yehowa” (Jehovah) which means “Existing One.”
Technically, whenever English Bibles use the word “LORD” (all caps), that is an instance where the Israelites wrote the word “Yhw” which was God’s name written in abbreviated form.
Before Exodus, God was just Elohim
Before God revealed himself to Moses as the Existing One in Exodus, Israel’s patriarchs only knew God as “Elohim” which is the word for “gods.” The OT uses that word to refer to both the uppercase “God” of Israel and the lowercase “gods” of other countries. In the minds of the early Israelite patriarchs (Adam, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, etc.) I wonder if they viewed God as just another deity on par with the gods of their neighboring countries since they only knew him as “god.” Every region seemed to have their own god or gods, so they might have just viewed God as the deity they happened to find themselves being born under. If that was the case, then God threw all of that out the window in Exodus when he introduced himself to Moses and turned Egypt’s gods into a mockery. In Exodus God proved that he was the one true God who sustains his own life and existence unlike any other being in existence.