"I Am that I Am" is a common English translation of the Hebrew phrase אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה (’ehye ’ăšer ’ehye; pronounced [ʔehˈjeʔaˈʃerʔehˈje] )– also "I am who (I) am", "I will become what I choose to become", "I am what I am", "I will be what I will be", "I create what(ever) I create", or "I am the Existing One". [1]
אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה (’ehye ’ăšer ’ehye) is the first of three responses given to Moses when he asks for God's name in the Book of Exodus. [2] The word אֶהְיֶה (’Ehyeh) is the first person singular imperfective form of הָיָה (hayah), 'to be', and owing to the peculiarities of Hebrew grammar means 'I am' and 'I will be'. [3] The meaning of the longer phrase ’ehyeh ’ăšer ’ehyeh is debated, and might be seen as a promise ('I will be with you') or as statement of incomparability ('I am without equal'). [4]
Biblical Hebrew did not distinguish between grammatical tenses. It instead had an aspectual system in which the perfect denoted any actions that have been completed, and imperfect denoted any actions that are not yet completed. [5] [6] [7] Additionally, if a verb form was prefixed by וַ־ (wa-), its aspect was inverted; a verb conjugated in the imperfect and prefixed by וַ־ would read as the perfect, while a verb conjugated in the perfect and prefixed by וַ־ would read as the imperfect. The word אֶהְיֶה (ehyeh) is the first-person singular imperfect form of hayah, 'to be', which in Modern Hebrew indicates the future tense 'I will be'; however, it lacks the prefix וַ־ which would necessitate this reading in Biblical Hebrew. It therefore may be translated as 'I am', but also as a modal form such as 'I may be', 'I would be', 'I could be', etc. Accordingly, the whole phrase can be rendered in English not only as 'I am that I am' but also as 'I will be what I will be' or 'I will be who I will be', or 'I shall prove to be whatsoever I shall prove to be' or even 'I will be because I will be'. Other renderings include: Leeser, 'I Will Be that I Will Be'; Rotherham, 'I Will Become whatsoever I please', Greek, ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν ( Ego eimi ho on), 'I am The Being' in the Septuagint, [8] and Philo, [9] [10] and the Book of Revelation [11] or, 'I am The Existing One'; Latin, ego sum qui sum, 'I am Who I am'.
The word אֲשֶׁר (’ăšer) is a relative pronoun whose meaning depends on the immediate context, therefore 'that', 'who', 'which', or 'where' are all possible translations of that word. [12]
An application of this phrase used in the New Testament has "But by the grace of God I am what I am ..." (1 Corinthians 15:10). [ citation needed ]
According to the Hebrew Bible, in the encounter of the burning bush (Exodus 3:14), Moses asks what he is to say to the Israelites when they ask what gods ('Elohiym) have sent him to them, and YHWH replies, "I am who I am", adding, "Say this to the people of Israel, 'I am has sent me to you.'" [4] Despite this exchange, the Israelites are never written to have asked Moses for the name of God. [13] Then there are a number of probably unanswerable questions, including who it is that does not know God's name, Moses or the Israelites (most commentators take it that it is Moses who does not know, meaning that the Israelites will ask him the name in order to prove his credentials), and just what the statement means. [13]
The last can be approached in three ways:
St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctors of the Church, identified the Being of Exodus 3:14 with the Esse ipsum subsistens, who is God Himself, and, in metaphysics, the Being in the strong or intensive sense in whom one has all the determinations of every being in their highest degree of perfection. Therefore, this Being is actuality of every actuality (or pure Act) and perfection of all perfections. In Him, solely essence and existence (in Latin: Actus essendi ) are identified. While St. Augustine had a general intuition of Him, His philosophical formulation came only with St. Aquinas. [17] [18]
In the Hindu Advaita Vedanta, the South Indian sage Ramana Maharshi mentions that of all the definitions of God, "none is indeed so well put as the biblical statement 'I am that I am'". He maintained that although Hindu scripture contains similar statements, the Mahavakyas, these are not as direct as given in Exodus. [19] Further the "I am" is explained by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj as an abstraction in the mind of the Stateless State, of the Absolute, or the Supreme Reality, called Parabrahman: it is pure awareness, prior to thoughts, free from perceptions, associations, memories. Parabrahman is often considered to be a cognate term for the Supreme Being in Hinduism.
Victor P. Hamilton suggests "some legitimate translations ..: (1) 'I am who I am'; (2) 'I am who I was'; (3) 'I am who I shall be'; (4) 'I was who I am'; (5) 'I was who I was'; (6) 'I was who I shall be'; (7) 'I shall be who I am'; (8) 'I shall be who I was'; (9) 'I shall be who I shall be'." [20]
The Bahá'í Faith reference to "I Am" can be found in on page 316 of The Dawn-Breakers : [21]
"I am," thrice exclaimed the Báb, "I am, I am, the promised One! I am the One whose name you have for a thousand years invoked, at whose mention you have risen, whose advent you have longed to witness, and the hour of whose Revelation you have prayed God to hasten. Verily I say, it is incumbent upon the peoples of both the East and the West to obey My word and to pledge allegiance to My person."
The Book of Exodus is the second book of the Bible. It is a narrative of the Exodus, the origin myth of the Israelites leaving slavery in Biblical Egypt through the strength of their deity named Yahweh, who according to the story chose them as his people. The Israelites then journey with the legendary prophet Moses to Mount Sinai, where Yahweh gives the Ten Commandments and they enter into a covenant with Yahweh, who promises to make them a "holy nation, and a kingdom of priests" on condition of their faithfulness. He gives them their laws and instructions to build the Tabernacle, the means by which he will come from heaven and dwell with them and lead them in a holy war to conquer Canaan, which has earlier, according to the myth of Genesis, been promised to the "seed" of Abraham, the legendary patriarch of the Israelites.
Joshua, also known as Yehoshua, Jehoshua, or Josue, functioned as Moses' assistant in the books of Exodus and Numbers, and later succeeded Moses as leader of the Israelite tribes in the Book of Joshua of the Hebrew Bible. His name was Hoshea the son of Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim, but Moses called him "Yehoshua", the name by which he is commonly known in English. According to the Bible, he was born in Egypt prior to the Exodus.
In Abrahamic religions, Moses was a prophet who led the Israelites out of slavery in the Exodus. He is considered the most important prophet in Judaism and Samaritanism, and one of the most important prophets in Christianity, Islam, the Baháʼí Faith, and other Abrahamic religions. According to both the Bible and the Quran, God dictated the Mosaic Law to Moses, which he wrote down in the five books of the Torah.
Judaism has different names given to God, which are considered sacred: יהוה, אֲדֹנָי, אֵל, אֱלֹהִים, שַׁדַּי, and צְבָאוֹת ; some also include I Am that I Am. Early authorities considered other Hebrew names mere epithets or descriptions of God, and wrote that they and names in other languages may be written and erased freely. Some moderns advise special care even in these cases, and many Orthodox Jews have adopted the chumras of writing "G-d" instead of "God" in English or saying Ṭēt-Vav instead of Yōd-Hē for the number fifteen or Ṭēt-Zayin instead of Yōd-Vav for the Hebrew number sixteen.
Yahweh was an ancient Levantine deity who was venerated in Israel and Judah. Though no consensus exists regarding his origins, scholars generally contend that he is associated with Seir, Edom, Paran and Teman, and later with Canaan. His worship reaches back to at least the Early Iron Age, and likely to the Late Bronze Age, if not somewhat earlier.
Elohim, the plural of אֱלוֹהַּ, is a Hebrew word meaning "gods" or "godhood". Although the word is grammatically plural, in the Hebrew Bible it most often takes singular verbal or pronominal agreement and refers to a single deity, particularly the God of Israel. In other verses it refers to the singular gods of other nations or to deities in the plural.
Zipporah is mentioned in the Book of Exodus as the wife of Moses, and the daughter of Jethro, the priest and prince of Midian.
Asher, in the Book of Genesis, was the last of the two sons of Jacob and Zilpah and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Asher.
The dagesh is a diacritic that is used in the Hebrew alphabet. It takes the form of a dot placed inside a consonant. A dagesh can either indicate a "hard" plosive version of the consonant or that the consonant is geminated, although the latter is rarely used in Modern Hebrew.
The burning bush refers to an event recorded in the Jewish Torah. It is described in the third chapter of the Book of Exodus as having occurred on Mount Horeb. According to the biblical account, the bush was on fire but was not consumed by the flames, hence the name. In the biblical and Quranic narrative, the burning bush is the location at which Moses was appointed by God to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and into Canaan.
There are various names of God, many of which enumerate the various qualities of a Supreme Being. The English word god is used by multiple religions as a noun to refer to different deities, or specifically to the Supreme Being, as denoted in English by the capitalized and uncapitalized terms God and god. Ancient cognate equivalents for the biblical Hebrew Elohim, one of the most common names of God in the Bible, include proto-Semitic El, biblical Aramaic Elah, and Arabic ilah. The personal or proper name for God in many of these languages may either be distinguished from such attributes, or homonymic. For example, in Judaism the tetragrammaton is sometimes related to the ancient Hebrew ehyeh. It is connected to the passage in Exodus 3:14 in which God gives his name as אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה, where the verb may be translated most basically as "I am that I am", "I shall be what I shall be", or "I shall be what I am". In the passage, YHWH, the personal name of God, is revealed directly to Moses.
In the Book of Exodus, the Plagues of Egypt are ten disasters that Yahweh inflicts on the Egyptians to convince the Pharaoh to emancipate the enslaved Israelites, each of them confronting the Pharaoh and one of his Egyptian gods; they serve as "signs and marvels" given by Yahweh in response to the Pharaoh's taunt that he does not know Yahweh: "The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD". These Plagues are recited by Jews during the Passover Seder.
Ehjeh Ascher Ehjeh is the first EP by Sopor Aeternus & the Ensemble of Shadows, and was released in 1995 as a companion to the album Todeswunsch - Sous le soleil de Saturne. Only 3,000 copies were pressed. The title of the EP is the response God gave to Moses when He was asked for His name, as seen in the Bible The cover painting is a detail of Saint Jerome Writing by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.
Shemot, Shemoth, or Shemos is the thirteenth weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the first in the Book of Exodus. It constitutes Exodus 1:1–6:1. The parashah tells of the Israelites' affliction in Egypt, the hiding and rescuing of the infant Moses, Moses in Midian, the calling of Moses, circumcision on the way, meeting the elders, and Moses before Pharaoh.
Va'eira, Va'era, or Vaera is the fourteenth weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the second in the Book of Exodus. It constitutes Exodus 6:2–9:35. The parashah tells of the first seven Plagues of Egypt.
Yitro, Yithro, Yisroi, Yisrau, or Yisro is the seventeenth weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the fifth in the Book of Exodus. The parashah tells of Jethro's organizational counsel to Moses and God's revelation of the Ten Commandments to the Israelites at Mount Sinai.
The Tetragrammaton is the four-letter Hebrew theonym יהוה, the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four letters, written and read from right to left, are yodh, he, waw, and he. The name may be derived from a verb that means "to be", "to exist", "to cause to become", or "to come to pass". While there is no consensus about the structure and etymology of the name, the form Yahweh is now accepted almost universally among Biblical and Semitic linguistics scholars, though the vocalization Jehovah continues to have wide usage.
The Koine Greek term Ego eimi, literally 'I am' or 'It is I', is an emphatic form of the copulative verb εἰμι that is recorded in the Gospels to have been spoken by Jesus on several occasions to refer to himself not with the role of a verb but playing the role of a name, in the Gospel of John occurring seven times with specific titles. It is connected to the passage in Exodus 3:14 in which God gives his name as אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, translated most basically as "I am that I am" or "I shall be what I am". In the Hebrew Bible, it is the personal name of God, revealed directly to Moses. These usages have been the subject of significant Christological analysis.
The Kenite, or Midianite–Kenite hypothesis, is a hypothesis about the origins of the cult of Yahweh. As a form of Biblical source criticism, it posits that Yahweh was originally a Midianite god whose cult made its way northward to the proto-Israelites.
Textual variants in the Book of Exodus concerns textual variants in the Hebrew Bible found in the Book of Exodus.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) 
Quotations related to Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh at Wikiquote