What 'I AM WHO I AM' Means: The Name With No Settled Tense

It is 11:40 p.m. and the dishwasher is on its last cycle, the one that hums.

A friend texted you the verse this afternoon, no comment, just the reference, and you finally looked it up. Exodus 3:14. You have read it three times now with your finger on the page. I AM WHO I AM. The words refuse to turn into an answer. It sounds like a door closing. It sounds like God declining to say.

You did not come for a riddle. A week ago, in the car, you asked Him out loud whether He was still here. This is the verse your friend sent back.

Here is what I want to show you. The answer at the bush is not a door closing. It is the widest door God ever opened, and the Hebrew under it is wider than the English can hold.

The short answer: In Exodus 3:14, “And God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And He said, ‘Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, “I AM has sent me to you.”’” God gives Moses a Name made of a single verb, to be. The Hebrew ʾehyeh ʾăšer ʾehyeh can be read “I am who I am” or “I will be who I will be,” and scholars have not settled which. That open tense is the point. He is the One who simply, always, is, and who will already be there when you arrive.

The Question Moses Actually Asked

Moses was not asking for a vocabulary word. He was barefoot on holy ground (Exodus 3:5), eighty years old, forty of them spent keeping another man’s sheep in Midian.

So he asked the question any of us would have asked: “Indeed, when I come to the children 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 shall I say to them?” (Exodus 3:13)

Moses was asking: who are You, really, and what can I tell a slave people to expect from You?

And God answered with a verb.

The Word Study: ʾEhyeh

The Hebrew is ʾehyeh ʾăšer ʾehyeh. Three words. The first and the last are the same: ʾehyeh, the first-person form of hāyâ, the ordinary Hebrew verb to be. The middle word, ʾăšer, means who or that. So the Name, as plainly as it can be put, is I am who I am, or I will be who I will be.

Hebrew verbs do not carry tense the way ours do. The form ʾehyeh describes an action that is not finished, and it can be translated as present or as future depending on where it sits. Two verses earlier, God uses the very same word to Moses, and the NKJV translates it as future: “I will certainly be with you.” (Exodus 3:12) Then in verse 14 the same word is translated “I AM.”

Scholars have not settled it. Some hold to “I am who I am,” a declaration of pure being. Some read “I will be who I will be,” a promise of presence that refuses to be pinned down in advance. The Greek translation Israel read in Jesus’ day rendered it egō eimi ho ōn, “I am the One who is.” A standard lexicon will bear any of these; it will not force you to pick. I will not pick for you either. He is, and He will be.

Then God gives Moses the Name itself, the four letters Israel came to guard: “This is My name forever, and this is My memorial to all generations.” (Exodus 3:15) Wherever you see LORD in capitals in your Bible, that is this Name, and most scholars trace it to the same root as ʾehyeh. It means, as nearly as anyone can say, He Is.

This is the Name you are standing on when you close a prayer in Jesus’ name. Not a title. A verb.

Two Words in a Temple Courtyard

Now jump fourteen centuries. Israel had guarded that Name until no one would say it aloud. Then a Galilean carpenter stood in the temple courtyard, in an argument about Abraham, and said this: “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” (John 8:58)

Hear the grammar, because the men around Him did. Abraham was: past tense, finished. Jesus did not say before Abraham was, I was. He said I AM. Present tense, no end on it, the same open word from the bush.

“Then they took up stones to throw at Him; but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.” (John 8:59)

They reached for stones because the law said whoever blasphemed the Name was to be stoned (Leviticus 24:16). They heard exactly what He had said. He had taken the Name from the bush and put it on Himself. He did not take it back.

What the Greek word for name carries into all this has its own guide: what onoma means in the New Testament.

The Tense You Need Tonight

Was He here, or is He, or will He be? You know why the tense matters. She is the mother of a soldier, and she keeps a second clock on the kitchen counter, set to where her son is. At 5 a.m. her time it is early afternoon his. She reads Exodus 3 with her thumb resting on the clock, and the question she cannot stop asking is which tense God is in. Was He with her son on the road yesterday. Is He now. Will He be at 2 p.m. tomorrow, when the next convoy rolls out.

She reads the verse one more time, I AM WHO I AM, and she does not get an answer to which tense. She gets all three.

Scripture to Hold the Name

Keep these near.

• “And God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And He said, ‘Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, “I AM has sent me to you.”’” (Exodus 3:14)
• “Jesus said to them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.’” (John 8:58)
• “Before the mountains were brought forth, Or ever You had formed the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.” (Psalm 90:2)
• “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8)
• “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,’ says the Lord, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.’” (Revelation 1:8)

A Prayer to the One Who Is

The book behind these guides begins at this bush and follows the Name all the way to the last page of the Bible. This prayer is where it starts.

Lord, You told Moses Your Name, and it was a verb. I AM. I have wanted You in one tense, the one I am afraid in, and You have refused to be that small. You were with me in what already happened. You are with me in this kitchen, at this hour. You will be there on the day I am dreading, before I arrive. Jesus, You said the same two words and let men reach for stones rather than take them back. Thank You that You did not take them back. Be to me who You are. In Jesus’ name, amen.

And listen for what He has been saying since the bush:

I am. I was there, I am here, I will be there. You do not have to choose the tense. I am all of it.

The Name has no settled tense, because He has never been absent from one.