Yahweh (YHWH)

Exod 3:11-20

We are still with Moses as he speaks with God at the burning bush.

God has asked Moses to be the leader of his people to rescue them from their life of slavery and hardship in Egypt. And Moses has heard this with some alarm. He feels unsuited to such a huge task. He is wanted by the Pharaoh for the murder of an Egyptian and he had angry words with some of his countrymen, making his acceptance even by his own people not very likely.

But God assures Moses that he will be with him all the way and the confirmation will come when the Hebrews will one day worship their God on Mount Horeb.

However, Moses is still not at ease with the proposed mission. If he tells the people that the God of their fathers has sent him and they ask “What is his name?”, what is he to tell them?

He wants to know what credentials he can bring to justify his being leader and the truth of his message. He asks God to give his name as proof. To know a person’s name was to have a certain power over them; to know the name of a deity was to be sure of a hearing. By being able to give God’s name, Moses would be able to claim a certain authority.

God replies, “I AM who I AM.” And Moses is to say to the people, “I AM sent me to you.” He is to say that it is “the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, has sent me to you.” Further, “‘I AM’”is my name forever”.

In a sense God’s words say everything and they say nothing. The Israelites are being given a name they can use but it does not give them, as with pagan gods, a power over God that they cannot have. “I am who I am” can be loosely translated as “I will be whatever I will be”—why worry about my name!

This also means that God is pure and infinite Being. He is not a being, one of the beings, but He is Being itself—existence and life and ground of all being itself. God simply is and everything else that is comes from him. His name is above all names; His nature is supreme to everything that is.

Many Christians think the second commandment (You shall not take the name of God in vain. Exod 20:7) is a prohibition against cussing. But perhaps the real meaning of speaking the name of God “in vain” is to speak God’s name casually or trivially, with a false presumption of understanding the Mystery—as if we knew what we were talking about!

The phrase ‘I am who I am’ apparently is the source of the word ‘Yahweh’, also written as YHWH, the proper personal name of the God of Israel. Many Jewish people concluded that the name of God should not be spoken at all. The Sacred Tetragrammaton, YHWH, was not even to be pronounced with the lips! Out of reverence this name was not pronounced; the term ‘Adonai’ (my Lord) was used as a substitute. In fact, vocalizing the four consonants does not involve closing the mouth. Jews know that God’s name was not pronounceable but only breathable: YH on the captured in-breath, and WH on the offered out-breath!

God’s eternal mystery cannot be captured or controlled, but only received and shared as freely as the breath itself—the thing we have done since the moment we were born and will one day cease to do in this body. God is as available and accessible as our breath itself. Jesus breathes the Spirit into us as the very air of life (see John 20:22)! Our job is simply to both receive and give this life-breath. We cannot only inhale, and we cannot only exhale. We must breathe in and out, accept and let go.

Today let us take several minutes to pause and breathe mindfully, surrendering to the mystery of wordless air, the sustainer of life. Part your lips; relax jaw and tongue. Hear the air flow in and out of your body:

Inhale: yh

Exhale: wh

Let your breathing in and out, for the rest of your life, be your prayer to—and from—such a living God, an utterly shared God. You will not need to prove it to anybody else, nor can you. Just keep breathing with full consciousness and without resistance, and you will know what you need to know.

Let this deep breath (in and out) be a way to know our God ever more deeply and become closer to Him. He is really the only thing (being) that matters.