God
was faithful to Moses who had seemed to lose his courage and identity by
expressing to Moses His strong identity, “I AM THAT I AM”. Adam Clarke gave this lengthy and wonderful
explanation, “These words have been variously understood. The Vulgate translates EGO SUM QUI SUM, I am
who am. The Septuagint… I am he who
exists. The Syriac, the Persic, and the
Chaldee preserve the original words without any gloss. The Arabic paraphrases them, The Eternal, who
passes not away; which is the same interpretation given by Abul Farajius, who
also preserves the original words, and gives the above as their
interpretation. The Targum of Jonathan,
and the Jerusalem Targum paraphrase the words thus: "He who spake, and the
world was; who spake, and all things existed." As the original words literally signify, I
will be what I will be, some have supposed that God simply designed to inform
Moses, that what he had been to his fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he would
be to him and the Israelites; and that he would perform the promises he had
made to his fathers, by giving their descendants the promised land. It is difficult to put a meaning on the
words; they seem intended to point out the eternity and self-existence of God.”
Clarke’s
Commentary, by
Adam Clarke, Vol. 1, p. 306 As I
read the above explanation of how scholars have rendered the Hebrew words, EHEYEH
asher EHEYEH my heart soared with praise unto the God who is. This is the identity of the God who spoke from
the midst of a burning bush to the confused, lonely, and insecure Moses.
If you are questioning who you are
and what God wants you to do at this time in your life, lean hard on the Lord
God’s strong power, sure identity, and strong name. There are two name of god recorded in YHWH
(3068) which means the self-existent independent eternal god who now is and Elohiym (430) which means the supreme
exceeding God. He not only was during
Moses’ lifetime, but He also is right now.
This strong existence and identity separates Him from all other false
gods who are now dead. They are incapable
of helping you because they are dead—they do not exist now so they cannot say “I
AM”. However, I AM is sending you into
this sin curse wicked world to testify of His strong name and identity.
No comments:
Post a Comment