1. It is strange that for some reason this name of God is obscured to the English reader. For the most part it is rendered by the word “Lord.” And though the printers have tried to remedy the mistake by printing Lord in capitals whenever it stands for the sacred name, yet the English Version misses its majestic repetition. In this the American Revised Version is to be preferred to our own; for there the Name is printed as “Jehovah,” whenever these four consonants occur in the original. Whilst admitting that Jehovah is probably not the original pronunciation of the word, it has so many hallowed associations, that, in face of the difficulty of knowing what the original pronunciation of the word was, use and wont may justify one in retaining it.
“Jehovah” is a modern and hybrid form, dating only from a.d. 1518. The name “Jahweh” was so sacred that it was not, in later Jewish times, pronounced at all, perhaps owing to an over-literal interpretation of the Third Commandment. In reading, “Adonai” was substituted for it; hence the vowels of that name were in MSS. attached to the consonants of “Jahweh” for a guide to the reader, and the result when the MSS. are read as written (as they were never meant by Jewish scribes to be read), is “Jehovah.” Thus this modern form has the consonants of one word and the vowels of another. The Hellenistic Jews, in Greek, substituted “Kyrios” (Lord) for the sacred name, and it is thus rendered in LXX and N.T. This explains why in E.V. “the Lord” is the usual rendering of “Jahweh.”1 [Note: A. J. Maclean, in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible (Single-volume), 300.]
2. The words “I am that I am” are evidently intended as an interpretation of the name Jahweh, the name-which in form is the third person imperfect of a verb (just like Isaac, Jacob, Jephthah), meaning He is wont to be or He will be,-being interpreted, as Jehovah is Himself the speaker, in the first person. This rendering appears to S. R. Driver, as it appeared to W. R. Smith and A. B. Davidson, to give the true meaning of the Heb. 'Ehyeh asher 'ehyeh: Jehovah promises that He will be (to Moses and His people) what He will be-something which is undefined, but which, as His full nature is more and more completely unfolded by the lessons of history and the teaching of the prophets, will prove to be more than words can express. The explanation is thus of a character to reassure Moses.
(1) As regards its form, the word “Yahweh” might mean either “He who creates,” “causes to be,” or possibly “brings things to pass”; or (much more probably) “He who will be,” i.e., the “eternal” or “constant” Being who will progressively manifest Himself in future history as Israel's Creator and Redeemer. This is evidently the traditional explanation implied in Exo_3:14. The name was intended to express not what God is in Himself, but rather what He was in relation to Israel: a personal Being willing to enter into covenant with man and to reveal Himself progressively as occasion might demand; a Being self-consistent and faithful in fulfilling His threatenings and promises; able, moreover, to control the course of history in fulfilment of His purpose of grace. The name by its very vagueness implies that “no words can sum up all that Jehovah will be to His people.”
There are three moments in this revealing name-like a crystal or diamond, it flashes its glory from three sides. First, we have continuity with the past. Stretching back across four centuries of silence, He who is speaking identifies Himself with the God who had appeared to their fathers: “The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob hath sent me unto you.” Nothing more profoundly impresses the soul than the vivid realization of vast periods of time, and the thought that He who had kept silent for four centuries, that the very God who had environed the life of Abraham, was encompassing him, must have been unutterably sublime. What a concourse of ideas would rush to his mind, what hallowed memories would take shape in that august presence! The lessons of his childhood, the visions of his spirit in hours of secret meditation, his hopes and fears, his questionings and aspirations, through all his great trial and since, would crowd in one conflux of memories into his soul. But the stir and movement of individual reflection are hushed as the great saying goes on. That past is not past. All present, all possible revelations, are expansions of that first unveiling of God. Even all worships of God yet to come, in the gathering light of the growing Divine purpose, will go back to what has been unveiled there. “This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.”1 [Note: John Smith, The Permanent Message of the Exodus, 67.]
(2) The source from which either this or any other Divine name was ultimately derived by the Hebrews matters little or nothing: the question which is of importance is, What did the name come to mean to them? What, to them, was its theological content? What are the character and attributes of the Being whom it is actually used in the Old Testament to denote? The name, it may be,-we cannot at present say more-came to Israel from the outside. “But into that vessel a long line of prophets, from Moses onward, poured such a flood of attributes as never a priest in all Western Asia, from Babylonia to the sea, even dreamed of in his highest moments of spiritual insight. In this name, and through Israel's history, God chose to reveal Himself to the world. Therein lies the supreme and lonesome superiority of Israel over Babylonia.
Whatever the name may have been in its origin, it came to be the name of the One and only God; and hence we can await in perfect calmness whatever the future may have to disclose to us with regard to its ultimate origin, or its pre-Israelite use.
In the power of this revelation Moses was able to carry out God's purposes for His people. Distrustful of his own powers, he is strengthened and emboldened to stand before Pharaoh, “and by faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king”; for he “endured, as seeing him who is invisible.”
Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name?
Builder and Maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands!
What, have fear of change from Thee who art ever the same?
Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power expands?
This is the key to all that Moses accomplished, leadership, legislation, worship, through faith and close communion with God.1 [Note: W. R. Shepherd.]
The main factor in the development of the religion of Israel was the impression upon the people, through the events of their history and the consciousness of their greatest men, of the character of God. This it was which separated the people from the heathen around them, quickened within them a new moral sense, sifted and qualified the mass of custom and unwritten law which they had inherited as children of the great Semitic family, and finally produced both prophecy and the legal codes, in which the principles of prophecy and the hereditary practice of the nation were together precipitated. But we must not suppose that this revelation of the character of God was confined to His righteousness, or was even predominantly that of His righteousness. That is one of the most widespread fallacies about the Old Testament. Nothing is more certain about the object of Israel's faith than, first, that it was a Person; and second, that the character of this Person was by no means only or predominantly righteousness. Jahweh is as effectively a God of grace as He is a God of justice; and although our meagre information requires us to speak with caution of the earliest period of Israel's religion, it is sufficiently well-established that during that period His grace was (to say the least) as manifest to His people's hearts, and as operative in their lives, as His justice: for the full expression of which we have to wait till the prophets.2 [Note: G. A. Smith, Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the Old Testament, 148.]
What power shall mantle God's ambassador
And trouble Pharaoh in his idol feasts,
Lead Israel forth to Canaan's promised shore,
And make of slaves a royalty of priests?
One only name, the God of Abraham,
I am hath sent thee: I am that I am.
Long ages passed, a darker cloud o'erhangs
From pole to pole the universal earth;
And Zion wrestling in her weary pangs
Bewails with tears and groans the hour of birth;
And yet a bitterer cry ascends to God,
“Woe for the chosen people: Ichabod!”
Say who is this in man's extremest hour,
Who comes to ransom man from sin and grave?
This veiled glory, travelling in power
And mighty in humility to save?
The Light of lights, foreseen by Abraham.
Or ever Abraham was born, I am.
Ages once more have passed away like dreams,
And now creation waits the end of things;
But far and near o'er all the world what seems
Darkens what is with vain imaginings;
And men are chasing shadows from their youth
And grasping unsubstantial mists for truth.
What is that only name of power to drive
The phantoms of deceitful night away,
That dying man may save his soul alive
And stand God's freeman in the light of day?
Hark, on the throne of God, and of the Lamb
The name from everlasting is I Amo_1:1-15 [Note: E. H. Bickersteth.]
