Everything You’ve Been Told About God’s Name is Wrong

We’ve been obsessing over “I AM” for centuries. It turns out, we’re misreading a messy, edited text.

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The burning bush is one of the most famous scenes in religious history. Millions of believers treat God’s declaration, “I AM,” as a profound, mystical revelation of the Divine Essence — the absolute, philosophical truth of who God is.

But what if we’ve been misreading the text?

What if the most famous line in that story isn’t a theological manifesto at all, but a later editorial addition meant to solve a contradiction? To understand what’s actually happening in Exodus 3, we have to look at the one thing most Christians are told to ignore: how the Bible was stitched together.

And to get there, we need to look at an unlikely source: The Odyssey.

“What an idiot.”

That was a classmate’s reaction when we were reading Book IX of The Odyssey. Odysseus and his men had just escaped the cave of the Cyclops, Polyphemus. They had loaded the animals onto the ships and were finally making their getaway. They were safe.

But then, the headstrong Odysseus decided to mock the Cyclops by shouting from the ship.

Polyphemus responded by throwing gigantic rocks at the vessel, which narrowly missed and caused a massive wave that destabilized the ship. At this point, Odysseus’s companions were begging him to shut up. But just when you thought things could not get any worse, Odysseus decided to reveal his name to the Cyclops while bragging about what he had done.

That was the wrong move.

Across a wide swath of ancient literature, it is well-known that you are not supposed to reveal your name to someone who is asking. To know the name of someone is to be able to control them.

This is rooted in the ancient belief in cursing. Odysseus had just told Polyphemus exactly who to direct his prayers and curses against. He handed his enemy the one thing that allowed him to reach him with affliction, even while he was far away.

Sure enough, Polyphemus immediately raised his hands to his father, Poseidon, and prayed that Odysseus would either die at sea or reach home extremely late and after years of hardship.

Poseidon — the god of the sea — was the wrong god to be messing with. About 13 more books of The Odyssey are dedicated to the misadventures that occur before Odysseus finally returns home.

At this point, you may be wondering what in the world the Odyssey has to do with the burning bush.

It is an example of the significance of a name in ancient stories, and it is something to keep in mind while we look at the story of “God’s name” in the burning bush tale of Exodus 3. When we look at this text through that lens, we realize God isn’t giving a philosophical lecture on His essence. He’s dodging the question.

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The Story

In the Exodus story, God reveals himself to be the God of Moses’s ancestors:

“He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.” Exodus 3:6

God then asks Moses to go before Pharaoh, as God is going to deliver his people out of Egypt. Moses is understandably worried about this plan and decides that he is going to ask a clarifying question:

“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?” Exodus 3:13 NRSVue

God responds by saying:

“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.’ ” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:

This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.” Exodus 3:14–15 NRSVue

The Repetition

Ok, so now I am going to put Exodus 3:13–15 together and I am going to emphasize a repetition and fill in the names of God as with the english transliterations Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, Ehyeh and YHWH:

“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 (Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh)”

He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘Ehyeh has sent me to you.’ God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘YHWH, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’

When laid out like this, it is evident that there is a problem here. Moses cannot hardly go back to the Israelites and give both of these answers without causing mass confusion. So what is the next step in our interpretation here?

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The Editors

The scribes who edited this particular story appear to have done two things that caused this repetition. The first thing that was done by a scribe was adding “and God further said to Moses” to introduce the original message that God’s name was YHWH.

The second thing that was done by a scribe was that the phrase “Thus you shall say to the Israelites” was repeated from the original message about YHWH to be applied to Ehyeh, which appears earlier in the account.

How do I know that this is the case? Well, modern scholars have figured out that the Pentateuch is a combination of at least three separate sources (traditionally four) that have been brought together to make the text as we have it.

Given this idea, the revelation of God’s name as YHWH only makes sense if that is the first time within that particular source that this revelation has occurred. After all, God has been called YHWH by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

When this text (labeled E according to the Documentary Hypothesis) in which the Patriarchs don’t call God YHWH was combined with another source (labeled J according to the documentary hypothesis) where the Patriarchs do know the name YHWH.

In order to come up with a text that makes more sense, we have to remove verse 14 from Exodus 3. This gets rid of the repetition and presents a text that makes much more sense from beginning to end:

“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?”

And God said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord (YHWH), the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.”

As a result, we should view verse 14 as unoriginal to the text.

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Why Was the Verse Added?

Although it is hard to get inside the mind of the person who added the verse, there are a few things that we can say.

The first thing takes us back to the Odyssey example that I brought up. It is not prudent to reveal what your name is in ancient narratives. With this is mind, let’s return to the what God says in the narrative as it appears (the name in the unoriginal verse 14): “I am who I am (Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh)”

That answer is not only an apt way of dodging the question, it is also a clever way for the author to note that there is a commonality in the root for the Hebrew verb “to be” and the name “YHWH”.

However, by itself, the phrase Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh does not have a certain etymology. As such, it makes little sense of the passage as it appears, lending evidence to the idea that God gave a non-answer.

Furthermore, if you notice, the first name that is given is not Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, but just Ehyeh. The narrative has God shortening the name the second time that he talks, which means we are dealing with three names.

The verse is an attempt to “solve” the contradiction of Moses not knowing the name of God by making the discussion about what God’s name means (or the etymology of God’s name) and not what God’s name is.

Of course, as I noted above, this is still not a great resolution, as there are still (strangely) two names given for God. Poor Moses is left with no idea of what to tell the Israelites that he encounters later.

This shift from what God’s name is (Moses’s original question) to what God’s name means (answered in verse 14) has caused a great deal of confusion for modern readers and interpreters.

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The Confusion

The confusion that modern readers seem to have fallen victim to is the idea that there is a deeper meaning to Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh that mimics the “I AM” meaning that follows for the name “YHWH”.

This is not the fault of modern readers because verse 14 is confusing and the repetition in the story is also confusing (although it is not very common for readers to spot the repetition unless it is highlighted).

While it is not impossible that the scribe that added Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh was trying to link this to occurrences of the word that are present in Exodus 3 or the rest of the Hebrew Bible, we do have to be attentive to what the evidence tells us directly.

Another thing to keep in mind is that inaccurate arguments that hinge on the “hidden” meaning of the Hebrew, or its presumed etymology, are rampant in Christian apologetic or inspirational circles.

Sometimes they are even presented by scholars with relevant training in the field, which makes things very confusing. But it is really the framing of these arguments that I find to be objectionable.

You see, there has been well over two millennia of commentary on a book like Exodus within Jewish tradition, presented by people who know the language inside and out and much better than most lay readers.

If you find something that presumes to make sense of the language in a way that never has before, especially if it is for Christian devotional or apologetic purposes, ask yourself how likely it is that something has been found that commentators missed.

The problems and contradictions that I mentioned above with the Exodus 3 narrative, for example, have been noted by a lot of Jewish commentators with many solutions or purposes proposed over the years.

What I am afraid of is that a Christian apologetic reading of things like the “true meaning” of God’s name does not appropriately honor the role of Jewish interpreters in trying to clarify the meaning of this text by appealing to something that God reveals specifically to Christians.

When in doubt regarding the language arguments, it is always best to refer to commentaries on a particular book that are published by academic presses. That way, you will know that you are not just getting an argument that is tailor made in advance for Christian application.

In any case, tying “I AM” or other arguments to God’s presence, including philosophical ideas of essence or divine originality seem to me to be a bit of a step too far for Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, which I tend to think is just a non-answer.

Conclusion

The story of “God’s name” in the burning bush narrative is awfully confusing. Only after the sources are separated and contemplated can a modern reader begin to figure out what is being said here.

The repetitions are a key thing to look for when identifying stories that have multiple sources woven together in the Hebrew Bible. To spot them, do a close reading and ask yourself whether something happens more than once, or characters change location without prompting.

Doing this is (in my experience) an interesting new way of looking at these stories and seeing if you can identify source changes. In English, it is a little harder as words have sometimes been added in translation (especially in the ESV or the NIV) that help to make the narrative read smoother.

Overall, I feel as though a closer look, as well as separating out sources and filling in names, gives us a clearer picture of what may be going on in this Exodus account.