- The Meaning of  Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh
According to the above explanation, I AM is the name by which God is known to Himself.  I AM is also one of the only two universally accepted literal translations of the word ehyeh as it occurs in Exodus 3:14.  The ehyeh of Exodus 3:14b is identifiable in its context as the name by which God is known to Himself, i.e. His Personal name.  Therefore Ehyeh is the Personal name of God and translates into English as I AM.  Having established this, all that remains to be done in order to be able to fully translate and interpret this verse is to explain and translate the first words spoken by God in Exodus 3:14a; ehyeh asher ehyeh.  This is now readily done.

I believe the best way to discover the meaning of these words is by trying to imagine the encounter that took place between God and Moses at the Burning Bush.  In this encounter Moses was commanded to undertake a very challenging and very dangerous task by a God he had not previously known and for a people who didn't know him.  It is easy to understand him having very strong misgivings about his fitness for such a task, and easy to understand why he would want to feel very well equipped for it.

Exodus 4:1-9 tells us that Moses was enabled to perform signs, which were to assist him in convincing the Israelites of his mission to them in the event that they would doubt it.  But we are also told that Pharaoh's magicians could perform signs, and so his ability to do likewise can’t entirely account for the Israelites’ positive response to him.  Moreover, in Exodus 3:18 God had already assured Moses that the elders of Israel would pay heed to what he had to say.  This assurance precedes his being enabled to perform signs, and thus implies that signs would not be necessary for his success with at least the elders of Israel, and can even be taken as confirmation that they were not necessary.  Furthermore, it is entirely reasonable to suppose that an approach that was suitable for the religious leadership of the Israel would not have been suitable for all of the Israelites, as is suggested in Exodus 4:29-31.

According to the text, therefore, it was only what Moses was to say to the elders of Israel that would be necessary to convince them that God had sent him to them.  The first and foremost word Moses was commanded to say was Ehyeh, which we have now established to be the Personal name of God and to translate into English as I AM.  It is therefore reasonable to conclude that the knowledge of the name I AM and its association with the name YHWH was all that Moses needed in order to be able to convince the religious leaders of Israel of his mission to them.

In the textual analysis of Exodus 3:13-15 I summarised the knowledge that I believe Moses would have needed to demonstrate to the Israelites if he was to convince them of his mission to them.  In the Explanation of the Meaning of the Name I have demonstrated that such knowledge is contained in the name Ehyeh.  It is therefore reasonable to conclude that Moses would have sought precisely the understanding that is contained in the name Ehyeh before he undertook his mission to the Israelites, and because this understanding can only be fully acquired at the point where the name itself is known he would necessarily and specifically have sought the knowledge of this name.  Therefore, by asking for the Personal name of God Moses was implicitly asking for the understanding of its meaning, and because we know that he received the knowledge of the name he must also have received the knowledge of its meaning.  Anticipating the need to deliver this understanding to the elders of Israel would also make sense of his protestations that he lacked the necessary eloquence for his mission, because it does not require eloquence to speak the few words we are told he was commanded to say in Exodus Ch.3.

In Exodus 3:13 Moses asks God what he should say to the Israelites if they ask him for His name.  For the purpose of establishing how we would expect God to respond to this question, I would ask you to imagine yourself in an identical exchange.  Imagine it is you who is sending Moses on a mission to the Israelites, and that Moses is asking you what he should say to the Israelites if they ask him for the name of the one who sent him.  Assuming you have no reason to conceal your name from them, then the most natural and obvious way to respond to such a question would be to begin with a declaration of the name you want Moses to say to them, and follow this with your instruction that he is to tell them the one bearing that name sent him to them.  You response would therefore fall into two parts.  The first part would be some manner of self-identification that would employ the name you wanted Moses to convey, and the second part would be your instruction to him that he is to respond to their question employing that name.  A self-identification is comprised of some form of self-address and a name, and would typically take the form “My name is x” but in certain circumstances can also take the form “I am x”, and for reasons that will soon become clear we will assume that you are of sufficient importance and fame to employ the latter form of self-identification; “I am x”.  If we now combine the two parts of your response to Moses enquiry of Exodus 3:13, you would probably say to him:  “I am x.  Tell the Israelites that x has sent you to them.”

Now consider the exchange that took place between God and Moses in Exodus 3:13-3:15.  Moses has asked God what he should say to the Israelites if they ask him for the name of the God who has sent him to them.  According to the above analysis we would naturally and reasonably expect God to begin his response to Moses with a Self-identification that would include the name He wants Moses to convey, and then we would expect God to issue an instruction to Moses to the effect that in response to the Israelites’ question he is to tell them that the One who bears that name has sent him to them.  We have already identified two possible forms of self-identification that God might conceivable employ, “My name is x” and “I am x”, but in the Hebrew Bible God identifies Himself throughout according to the latter; i.e. “I am YHWH”.  Therefore, if God were to identify Himself to Moses using His Personal name Ehyeh, we could reasonably expect His response to roughly correspond to the following: “I am Ehyeh. Tell the Israelites that Ehyeh has sent you to them”.

However, the Divine Self-identification “I am YHWH” is expressed in Hebrew with a non-verbal clause employing the personal pronouns ani or anoki (meaning ‘I’) and the name YHWH, but without the verb ‘to be’.  Examples of this are “ani YHWH” in Ex.6:2 and “anoki YHWH” in Isaiah 43:11, which translate literally as “I YHWH” but are usually translated as “I am YHWH”, and so if this form of Self-identification were employed by God in making a declaration of His Personal name Ehyeh to Moses, then we could reasonably expect that declaration to take a corresponding form, i.e. ‘ani Ehyeh’ or ‘anoki Ehyeh’.  Therefore if God did commence His response to Moses with a revelation of His Personal name Ehyeh, then the words of Divine Self-identification in Exodus 3:14a do not conform to the Hebrew construction that such a Self-identification would normally take, and so we apparently still cannot account for the dual occurrence of ehyeh in the ehyeh asher ehyeh of Exodus 3:14a.

However, this puzzle can be readily solved, and its solution leads us to the recognition of what I believe to be the most profound and remarkable words ever written, words so uniquely remarkable that I believe they can only be attributed to the historic founder of Judaism.  The man we know as Moses.

The key to solving the enigma of ehyeh asher ehyeh lies in the fact that in Exodus 3:14a God is identifying Himself to Moses using His Personal name Ehyeh, the name that perfectly articulates the knowledge He has of Himself.  As stated above, a self-identification is comprised of some form of self-address and a name, such as “I am x” or “My name is x”.  The form of Divine Self-identification found throughout the Bible is “I am YHWH”, and so if ehyeh asher ehyeh is a Divine Self-identification it is reasonable to assume that it takes the same form, i.e. “I am Ehyeh”.  This in turn informs us that the second Ehyeh in this phrase is the Personal name of God and that the clause Ehyeh asher is His Self-address.

A self-address is a statement born of self-reflection.  When a person identifies or introduces themselves according to the formula “I am x”, the “I am” of this phrase articulates or at least incorporates their self-reflection, following which they speak their name.  In God, such a Self-reflection would be all embracing and perfect, and would therefore be identical to the knowledge He has of His Personal being.  This in turn implies that the articulation of His Self-reflection must be identical to the articulation of the knowledge He has of His Personal being.  The following interim conclusion precedes the final passage of the Explanation (p.51):

Therefore ‘I AM’ is the articulation in God of the knowledge He has of His Personal being.

The articulation of God’s Self-reflection is therefore identical to His Personal name Ehyeh / I AM and it therefore is His Personal name Ehyeh / I AM.  We have already established that His Self-address is the clause Ehyeh asher, and so we can now confirm that the Divine Self-address corresponding to the formula “I am x” includes the Personal name of God, Ehyeh.  That in turn confirms that a Divine Self-identification using the Personal name of God and corresponding to the formula “I am x” ought to include the twofold declaration of the name Ehyeh that is found in ehyeh asher ehyeh.  We have now only to account for the asher in this phrase to be able to confirm that Ehyeh asher Ehyeh is indeed the Self-identification of God.

To address the question of the asher it is useful to paraphrase Ehyeh asher Ehyeh in translation to the extent that we can so far, and to do that it is useful to consider the following hypothetical question and answer.  It has been established and noted in the extract above that Ehyeh / I AM articulates the knowledge that God has of His Personal being.  So if God were to be asked, “What is the meaning of your name Ehyeh?”, the simplest and most concise answer I can imagine Him giving is “The meaning of Ehyeh is ‘I know Myself’”.  Therefore ‘I know Myself’ is semantically equivalent to the name Ehyeh and can be used in place of Ehyeh as an accurate paraphrase.  We know that the second Ehyeh in Ehyeh asher Ehyeh is the Personal name of God and so it must be written and thought of as such.  However, the first Ehyeh, although also His name, is part of His Self-address, and so to illuminate the entire phrase, and to determine the optimal translation of asher, it is helpful to replace the first Ehyeh with the paraphrase identified above.  Doing so yields the following partial translation: “I know Myself asher I AM”.  In this paraphrase we begin to see the outline a Divine Self-identification, but it still contains an unexplained and untranslated asher and so does not yet make the linguistic sense in translation we are striving for.

Asher is the Hebrew participle of relation, which the BDB defines as follows: “A sign of relation, bringing the clause introduced by it into relation with an antecedent clause”.  The function and translation of asher in any particular instance depends upon the context in which it stands, but even when the context is understood in the same way by two different translators it may nonetheless be translated in two different ways.  It is most often translated into English as who, which, what or that, but there are many other possible translations.T  In the final analysis all translations of asher reflect what the translator regards as the most fitting within any given context, however approximate that fit might be.  However, there is no other context in the Bible with an exact grammatical correspondence to the declaration in Exodus 3:14a, and so it might easily be the case that none of the ways in which asher has been translated elsewhere are appropriate in this unique context.  For this reason we should not feel constrained by them when deciding upon the optimal translation of asher in Ehyeh asher Ehyeh.  Furthermore, the BDB notes that asher is “without any perfectly corresponding equivalent in English” (p.88d), which is amply testified to by the plethora of translations this single word has attracted in a wide variety of biblical contexts.

In our search for the correct translation of asher we need only keep in mind that whatever word is selected as the optimal translation must serve a very particular purpose within the phrase, which is to bring the first Ehyeh of Ehyeh asher Ehyeh into meaningful relation with the second Ehyeh.  Indeed the challenge is specifically to do this in such a way as to render the resulting translation of Ehyeh asher Ehyeh semantically recognisable as a Divine Self-identification corresponding to the formula “I am x”, given that in the context of the biblical chapter and verse this would appear to be the most desirable outcome, and that reasoning alone has already brought us two thirds of the way towards this conclusion in the confirmation that such a Self-identification would contain the twofold declaration of Ehyeh found in Ehyeh asher Ehyeh.

It is with this in mind that I have sought the optimal translation of asher, and  having done so I believe the optimal translation to be “as”.  To better demonstrate why I believe this to be the case I will again write Ehyeh asher Ehyeh in paraphrase, but this time will render the first Ehyeh in paraphrase as ‘I know Myself’ and leave the second Ehyeh untranslated, which yields the following periphrastic translation of Ehyeh asher Ehyeh:  “I know Myself as Ehyeh”.  The asher is now translated in a linguistically accurate and semantically intelligible way within the phrase, and it renders the translation of Ehyeh asher Ehyeh semantically recognisable as a Divine Self-identification corresponding to the formula “I am x”.  And so to the final step, which is to write the entire phrase in translation exactly as it ought to be written.  Doing so yields the following translation of Ehyeh asher Ehyeh: “I AM as I AM”.  With this translation, and equipped with the comprehensive understanding of why Ehyeh asher Ehyeh does translate in this way and what the translation means, I believe the enigma of Ehyeh asher Ehyeh has now been definitively solved.

Some might object that this translation gives the impression that God is being dismissive or evasive in response to Moses’ question, just as others translations have done, and so how is this translation in any way superior to others that have gone before it?  My response is that whatever superficial semantic impression is made by the correct translation of Ehyeh asher Ehyeh can only be a problem only when the meaning of the declaration is not understood.  The declaration has not been understood until now and so all of the various translations that have been made have essentially been scholarly shots in the dark.  Now that the meaning of the declaration is known, the immediate and superficial impression made by the words “I AM as I AM” is experienced only in translation, and so is a problem only if the meaning of the phrase is not also communicated in translation.  The problem of misapprehension is thus readily solved by including the periphrastic version “I know Myself as Ehyeh” in a margin or footnote.

It is therefore linguistically and semantically correct to translate Ehyeh asher Ehyeh as “I AM as I AM”, and both reasonable and highly meaningful for us to understand these words as God’s Self-identification to Moses, just as they are understood in the Septuagint.  The words God speaks to Moses in Exodus 3:14-15 in response to his enquiry of Exodus 3:13 can now be confidently understood as being equivalent to the following simple statement: “I know Myself as I AM.  Tell the Israelites that I AM has sent you to them, and tell them also that they are henceforth to address Me and refer to Me by My proper name YHWH”.

In summary, therefore, the words Ehyeh asher Ehyeh are God’s Self-identification to Moses, and the absolute Ehyeh of 3:14b is His Personal name and translates as ‘I AM’.  We can now confidently translate Exodus 3:13-15 as follows:

13. Then Moses said to God, “Behold, when I come to the Sons of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you’, and they say to me, ‘What is His name?’; what should I say to them?”

       14. Then God said to Moses, “I AM as I AM”.  And He said, “Thus you shall say to the Sons of Israel: 'I AM has sent me to you’.

       15. And God said further to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Sons of Israel: ‘YHWH, 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 My remembrance for all generations”.

And we can interpret this passage in the light of the understanding that:

I AM is the knowledge that God has of His Personal being, distinct from all other which is the creation that came forth from Himself, by His will, in all power, and under the perfect imperative of His soul, and which is infused with His essence through His spirit and given form by His word, and which is sustained by the power that is from the uncreated life of God.  The beginning of His creating was under the imperative of His will (Gen 1:1).  In the beginning Creation was in the condition of perfect potential - formless, void, dark, and infused with His active spirit (Gen 1:2) - anticipating the formative imprint of His word (Gen 1:3). God is perfect, and so too must be His creation for the purpose that He has ordained for it (Gen 1:31).  All Power is His, and so His purpose shall be brought to pass.