Exodus: The Lord and His PilgrimsНамуна

Knowing God

From 3:11 – 4:17 Moses raises a series of objections to the Lord’s call, starting with his sense of inadequacy: ‘Who am I …?’ (3:11). The Lord in effect replies to this: ‘What matters is who am I!’ Christians should never pray to lose their sense of inadequacy but rather to fill their inadequacy with the adequacy of the God who promises to be with them (v. 12). This is, in fact, the significance of the puzzling and enigmatic name the Lord gives himself: ‘I AM WHO I AM’ (v. 14). As things work out in Exodus we could spell out the name like this: ‘I alone know who I am. You are dependent on what I reveal to you. In every situation I will show you that I am what you need.’ And indeed so it was. They needed a deliverer (from Egyptian power) and a redeemer to bring them to God: The Lord revealed himself as Deliverer and Redeemer (6:6–7). Indeed, this became, throughout the Old Testament, the basic definition of ‘I AM WHO I AM’ – the God who overthrows his foes and saves his people. 

It remains a bit of a mystery why Moses thinks people will ask him the name of the God he has met (v. 13). Some suggest that maybe asking for the name is equivalent to asking, ‘What revelation of God do you bring?’ This seems to me a bit roundabout, and I wonder if, through all their Egyptian years, the Hebrews had kept secret their God’s name and, at the crucial moment, they could use it as a test: if Moses really had met the God of their fathers (v. 15), he would be ‘in’ on the secret, and knowing the name would authenticate his mission. This is in line with Jesus’ command, ‘Take heed what you hear’ (Mark 4:24), and John’s injunction to ‘not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God’ (1 John 4:1) because false prophets abound. It means subjecting everything to the test of Scripture: ‘What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?’ (Luke 10:26). 

Reflection

Jesus also said, ‘Therefore take heed how you hear’ (Luke 8:18). Bible reading has got to be more than moving the bookmark on a page.