Passage

Exodus 3.14

Book: Exodus · NASB95

Verse

"God said to Moses, 'I AM WHO I AM'; and He said, 'Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, "I AM has sent me to you."'" (Exodus 3:14, NASB95)

Immediate context (±2 verses)

NASB95 (NASB95)

"And He said, 'Certainly I will be with you, and this shall be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God at this mountain.' Then Moses said to God, 'Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, "The God of your fathers has sent me to you." Now they may say to me, "What is His name?" What shall I say to them?'"

"God said to Moses, 'I AM WHO I AM'; and He said, 'Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, "I AM has sent me to you."'"

"God, furthermore, said to Moses, 'Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, "The LORD, 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-name to all generations.' Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, 'The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, "I am indeed concerned about you and what has been done to you in Egypt."'" (Exodus 3:12-16, NASB95)

Setting

Speaker: YHWH, speaking from the burning bush.
Audience: Moses, on commission to lead Israel out of Egypt.
Location: "Horeb, the mountain of God" (Exodus 3:1), traditionally identified with Mount Sinai, in the wilderness of Midian (NW Arabian peninsula or the southern Sinai peninsula on different geographic theories).
Time period: before the exodus from Egypt; c. 15th-13th c. BC depending on dating school. Moses is in his 80th year (Exodus 7:7), after his Midianite exile.

Theological reading

The verse is the divine self-disclosure that grounds the rest of biblical theology proper. Two utterances in one verse:

Ehyeh asher ehyeh, "I AM WHO I AM" / "I will be what I will be", first-person imperfect of H1961 - hayah ("to be"). God's being is not derived; He simply is. He defines Himself by Himself, not by reference to anything outside Himself.
Ehyeh shelachani aleichem, "I AM has sent me to you." Moses is to identify the sender as the One who exists in this absolute way.

The next verse (3:15) gives the third-person form: H3068 - YHWH, "this is My name forever." YHWH is etymologically the third-person form of the same root: "He IS" / "He will be." The covenant proper name and the metaphysical self-disclosure are linked at the root.

Three nuances of ehyeh asher ehyeh:

Aseity, "I AM that I AM": God's existence is intrinsic, self-grounded, not dependent on anything else. Classical metaphysical reading (Augustine, Aquinas, Reformed scholasticism).
Eternality, "I will always be what I always have been": God is unchanging and timelessly the same. Patristic emphasis.
Covenantal presence, "I will be there as I will be there" / "I will be with whom I will be with": God's self is His covenant fidelity; His name is His promise to be present (Buber, Rosenzweig, modern Jewish exegesis).

These are not in tension. The classical reading marries them: God's metaphysical self-existence grounds His covenantal trustworthiness.

Patristic. Philo (Life of Moses 1.74-76, c. AD 30) reads the verse as the foundational metaphysical claim: God alone is; created things merely participate in being. This Jewish-Hellenistic reading is taken up by Christian theology directly. Augustine (Confessions 7.10-17; Tractates on John 38.10, c. AD 414) develops the doctrine of divine aseity from this verse, God is His own being (ipsum esse); we have being by gift. Aquinas (ST I, q.13, a.11) calls "He Who Is" the most proper name of God, since it names God directly without analogy or relation.

Christological. The LXX renders ehyeh asher ehyeh as ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν, "I AM the one who IS." Jesus's egō eimi sayings in John (especially 8:58, "before Abraham was, I AM", and 8:24, 13:19, 18:5-6) deliberately invoke this formula. The reaction in John 8:59 ("they picked up stones to throw at Him") shows the audience understood the claim: divine self-identification. Modern scholarship (Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ; Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel) traces the Christological "egō eimi" pattern as deliberate identification of Jesus with YHWH.

Reformed / modern. Calvin (Institutes I.10.2; Exodus commentary) reads the verse as YHWH grounding the covenant in His own being. Modern conservative scholarship (Bruce Waltke; T. Desmond Alexander, From Paradise to the Promised Land; John Currid, Exodus) confirms the metaphysical-and-covenantal joint reading.

Key words

H1961 - hayah, ehyeh (I AM / I WILL BE), first-person imperfect; the verbal root behind the divine self-disclosure
H3068 - YHWH, the divine name given in v. 15; etymologically the third-person form of hayah
H0430 - elohim, elohim (God), the speaker
G1510 - eimi, Greek "to be", used in LXX egō eimi and in Jesus's identifying egō eimi sayings