Exodus 3:14

World English Bible

Contextual Overview

¹¹ Moses said to God, "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?" ¹² He said, "Certainly I will be with you. This will be the token to you, that I have sent you: when you have brought forth the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain." 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?" ¹⁴ 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." ¹⁵ God said moreover to Moses, "You shall tell the children of Israel this, 'Yahweh, the God of your fathers, 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 is my memorial to all generations.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

I AM hath: Exodus 6:3, Job 11:7, Psalms 68:4, Psalms 90:2, Isaiah 44:6, Matthew 18:20, Matthew 28:20, John 8:58, 2 Corinthians 1:20, Hebrews 13:8, Revelation 1:4, Revelation 1:8, Revelation 1:17, Revelation 4:8

Reciprocal: Exodus 3:6 - I am Exodus 3:13 - What is his name Exodus 23:21 - my name Deuteronomy 28:58 - fear this glorious Psalms 50:21 - that I was altogether such an one as thyself Psalms 102:26 - endure Proverbs 17:6 - and the Jeremiah 33:2 - the Lord Amos 9:6 - The Lord Micah 4:5 - the name Malachi 3:6 - I am John 5:26 - hath life Acts 7:34 - And now 2 Corinthians 1:19 - was not 1 Timothy 6:16 - only Hebrews 1:12 - but

Cross-References

Genesis 3:1
Now the serpent was more subtle than any animal of the field which Yahweh God had made. He said to the woman, "Yes, has God said, 'You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?'"

Genesis 3:15
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel."

Genesis 3:20
The man called his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all living.

Genesis 9:6
Whoever sheds man's blood, by man will his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man.

Leviticus 20:25
You shall therefore make a distinction between the clean animal and the unclean, and between the unclean fowl and the clean: and you shall not make your souls abominable by animal, or by bird, or by anything with which the ground teems, which I have separated from you as unclean.

Psalms 72:9
Those who dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him. His enemies shall lick the dust.

Isaiah 29:4
You shall be brought down, and shall speak out of the ground, and your speech shall be low out of the dust; and your voice shall be as of one who has a familiar spirit, out of the ground, and your speech shall whisper out of the dust.

Isaiah 65:25
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox; and dust shall be the serpent's food. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, says Yahweh.

Micah 7:17
They will lick the dust like a serpent. Like crawling things of the earth they shall come trembling out of their dens. They will come with fear to Yahweh our God, And will be afraid because of you.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

And God said unto Moses, I am that I am,.... This signifies the real being of God, his self-existence, and that he is the Being of beings; as also it denotes his eternity and immutability, and his constancy and faithfulness in fulfilling his promises, for it includes all time, past, present, and to come; and the sense is, not only I am what I am at present, but I am what I have been, and I am what I shall be, and shall be what I am. The Platonists and Pythagoreans seem to have borrowed their το ον from hence, which expresses with them the eternal and invariable Being; and so the Septuagint version here is

ο ων: it is said z, that the temple of Minerva at Sais, a city of Egypt, had this inscription on it,

"I am all that exists, is, and shall be.''

And on the temple of Apollo at Delphos was written ει, the contraction of ειμι, "I am" a. Our Lord seems to refer to this name, John 8:58, and indeed is the person that now appeared; and the words may be rendered, "I shall be what I shall be" b the incarnate God, God manifest in the flesh:

thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you; or as the Targum of Jonathan has it,

"I am he that is, and that shall be.''

This is the name Ehjeh, or Jehovah, Moses is empowered to make use of, and to declare, as the name of the Great God by whom he was sent; and which might serve both to encourage him, and strengthen the faith of the Israelites, that they should be delivered by him.

z Phutarch. de Iside & Osir. a Plato in Timaeo. b אהיה אשר אהיה "ero qui ero", Pagninus, Montanus, Fagius, Vatablus.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

I am that I am - That is, “I am what I am.” The words express absolute, and therefore unchanging and eternal Being. The name, which Moses was thus commissioned to use, was at once new and old; old in its connection with previous revelations; new in its full interpretation, and in its bearing upon the covenant of which Moses was the destined mediator.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Exodus 3:14. I AM THAT I AM — אהיה אשר אהיה EHEYEH asher EHEYEH. These words have been variously understood. The Vulgate translates EGO SUM QUI SUM, I am who am. The Septuagint, Εγω ειμι ὁ Ων, I am he who exists. The Syriac, the Persic, and the Chaldee preserve the original words without any gloss. The Arabic paraphrases them, The Eternal, who passes not away; which is the same interpretation given by Abul Farajius, who also preserves the original words, and gives the above as their interpretation. The Targum of Jonathan, and the Jerusalem Targum paraphrase the words thus: "He who spake, and the world was; who spake, and all things existed." As the original words literally signify, I will be what I will be, some have supposed that God simply designed to inform Moses, that what he had been to his fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he would be to him and the Israelites; and that he would perform the promises he had made to his fathers, by giving their descendants the promised land. It is difficult to put a meaning on the words; they seem intended to point out the eternity and self-existence of God. Plato, in his Parmenides, where he treats sublimely of the nature of God, says, Ουδ' αρα ονομα εστιν αυτῳ, nothing can express his nature; therefore no name can be attributed to him. See the conclusion of this chapter, Exodus 3:22. and on the word Jehovah, Exodus 34:6; Exodus 34:7.