Six thousand, eight hundred twenty-three times, that’s how often the name “LORD” is used in the Bible as it refers to the Deity. The usage of LORD far surpasses the use of all other names that address the Almighty, and the first time we encounter an explanation of the name is when the Creator speaks with Moses in Exodus, chapter 3. You may recall it is in connection with His having called Moses to go to pharaoh and demand the release of the enslaved Israelites. Moses, after initially declining the assignment, becomes intrigued after all, and, in requesting further orders, Moses said, “When I tell them the God of my fathers has sent me to tell you ‘Let My people go,’ the Egyptians are going to say, ‘Who’s He? What’s the name of the God of your fathers? I won’t know what to tell them.’” And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Thus shall you say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM hath sent me to you.’”
The English renders the tetragrammaton, or the four letters, as “I AM”. Well, what kind of a name is that? “I AM”, that’s your name…I AM? How utterly strange. Well, seemingly so, but, in reality, not strange at all but very logical because the tetragrammaton, YHVH, in Hebrew is derived from the verb “hyah”, which means “to be”. “To be” is the idea of perpetual being, the idea of being “ad infinitum”, or being without ever not being. Most translations simply render it “I AM”. And note, there is no hint of “I WAS” or “I WILL BE”, both of which denote limitation, but “I AM”, an ever-perpetual “amness”. The Deity said to Moses, “I AM THAT I AM. That’s who I am.”
Linguists see this as meaning “I am the One who exists because of Myself,” or “I am the Self-existent One.” You can readily see, can you not, that this is but one kind of being, because all of life, every living creature of whatever status exists because another existed before him and was, thus, responsible for his existence. But not so with the “I AM”. This One, THE I AM, is because He is.
This was all new to Moses. This “I AM” is now telling Moses to go to the Egyptians and tell them that a God utterly unlike their gods has sent you. Their gods, and the Egyptians had many, all derived their being from the gods previous to them. Egyptians had gods of satanic origin or derived from their imagination, cohabiting and producing a new generation of gods. But this God, the God of the Hebrews, was God whose existence was connected with His own being of the eternally self-existent One. The I AM… “tell them, Moses, that’s Who sent you…I AM THAT I AM.”
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