Exodus 3, - ‘The One Who Is’

5. God’s Name
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-June 2001

- Exodus 3:14, A sermon about ‘God’s Name’
- Exodus 3, About God’s divine name ‘The One Who Is’
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Exodus 3:14,
1 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight--why the bush does not burn up.”
4 When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, "Moses! Moses!" And Moses said, “Here I am.” 5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God 7 The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey--the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” 11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 12 And God said, "I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain." 13 Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘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, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.

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Among the characters in the Bible are names ending with ‘(i)ah,’

For example, there are Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Josiah, Hezekiah and others.

Elijah – Yahweh is my God.
Isaiah - Yahweh helpes.
Jeremiah - Yahweh uplifts.
Josiah – Yahweh supports.
Hezekiah - Yahweh strengthens.

To look at the meanings of these names, one common point is that ‘the end of the words (i)ah’ means ‘Yahweh.’ As much, the name of God meant significantly to Israelites. Also because they thought so divine of it, they even didn’t put it on their lips.

On the Bible we (Protestants) use, ‘God’s name is recorded as Jehovah.’ This is the name that occurred because they didn’t put it on their lips as the ancient Israelites thought so valuable of God’s name.

For instance, while recording the Holy Scriptures, the scribes had to bathe themselves even at the name of God on their lips. So they couldn’t easily use ‘Yahweh,’ which is God’s name. In other words, during transcribing, even if God’s name ‘Yahweh’ was called just once, they had to bathe themselves after writing. Or about 3 lines afterwards, the also had to bathe themselves after writing. In this situation, they are almost in the situation where they couldn’t work their job. For this reason, they afterwards used ‘Adonai’ as God’s name.

Under the surmise that ‘Jehovah’ was originally used without a vowel and descendant scholars pronounced that way, they read the original for Jehovah.

For example, it is just like they interpret the Korean word 아버지(Ah-beo-ji) with only the consonants O(A), ㅂ(B), ㅈ(J).

After descendant theologians studying and studying the part again, they gathered the original name of ‘Jehovah’ to be Yahweh(YHVH). Me too think ‘Yahweh’ to be righter.

In Elijah – the meaning of ‘My God is Yahweh,’ ‘Jah’ is the abbreviation of ‘Yahweh,’ which theologians say. (Elijah – ‘My God is Yahweh’ is more natural than Elijah – ‘My God Jehovah.’) Today, let me talk about God’s name ‘Yahweh.’

It has a meaning of
1. ‘God who cares for the sufferings of his people’

The Israelites groaned in their slavery - and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery - went up to God. God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them. (Exodus 2:23,25))
I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. (Exodus 3:7)
I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land. (Exodus 3:8)
The cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt. (Exodus 3:9~10)

Some of these words are frequently repeated from Exodus Chapter 1 through 3.

Behind the repetition of these words, there is an aim to inform that Yahweh God cares for Israel with whom he made a promise and Israel who wails in suffering, that He holds them, and that He responds sincerely to their cries that wail in suffering.

It is written in 1:7, the descendants of Jacob who went to Egypt ‘were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous.’ The rapid increase of Israelite people became a big threat in the eyes of Egyptian king. Especially, what the king and his people were afraid of was, that, if war broke out, Israelites would join the enemies of Egypt and leave the country (1:10).

The Egyptian king and his authorities tried to restrain the multiplication of descendants through the means of forced labor on Israelite people (1:11).

However, the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread (1:12). At that, the Egyptian king Pharaoh attempted to eradicate the seeds of Israelite offspring through the means of his ‘policy of murdering newborn male babies.’ Moses was rescued from killing by the help of two midwives ‘Shiphrah’ and ‘Puah’, his mother Jochebed, his sister Miriam, and his foster mother who was Pharaoh’s daughter under the situation to be killed due to the pharaoh’s policy of murdering male newborn babies.

The first half of Exodus Chapter 2 describes the process of Moses being adopted by Pharaoh’s princess, emphasizing once again that, though man proposes, it is God that plans the process and disposes.

The content of 2:23~25, 3:7~8, 3:9~10 speaks of Israelites’ oppression by the king of Egypt and the sufferings from it - their wailing - and Israelites’ plight. Behind ‘Suffering - and wailing,’ God will listen, watch, know, and bring them into salvation, Exodus Chapters 1,2,3 says.

Moses is a person who was chosen by God according to His plan. Though Moses was chosen according to God’s plan and selection, God’s activities for salvation didn’t start of themselves at short once.

Having grown up, Moses sees a Hebrew slave of the same race being beat by an Egyptian, and kills the Egyptian. Soon, what he did had become known and ran away to Median.

In the Median wilderness, he meets some girls and their father Jethro, both tribal head and priest in the district. He helps Jethro’s daughters, getting married to ‘Zipporah,’ one of Jethro’s daughters before beginning his new life as a shepherd in the land of Median. (2:11~22)

God’s stupidity stands above man’s wisdom, and His abounding wisdom and knowledge are beyond measure, says Romans 11:33.

Egypt at the time was a big power in the world. Moses, who was bred as a prince in Egypt, received world-highest education and benefits in such as what he wears, what he eats, what he speaks(oratory, rhetoric), and what he writes. But these are not the wisdom and knowledge with which he can live out in the wilderness.

Even if God hears Israelites’ suffering and brings them out of Egypt, God have to have them receive a certain period of education at a certain place to be God’s own people. It is the place called wilderness. (Exodus 2:15, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua)

And even if wilderness is chosen as a place for education(Exodus 19~20), it involves an important person who may take and lead so many people in the wilderness. Right this is one of God’s plans. Though the knowledge, education and leadership acquired in Egypt were necessary for Moses, they weren’t yet available right here at the moment.

Although he received the best riches, benefits and education as a princess in Egypt, those education and knowledge were yet only necessary for an agricultural country or military state. The education he got in Egypt was a mere crap in the wilderness, where there are such as plenty of young small miscellaneous trees, gravels, sand, thirst, hunger, dry weeds and scorpions crawling about. It is said in the Bible, Moses had to spend a long time as a shepherd in the Median wilderness.

As in Moses’ words in Exodus 4:10 ‘I am slow of speech and tongue,’ you might imagine Moses might have been a person of congenital slow and stammering speaker. On the other hand, he is a person who acquired the best knowledge education at the time such as Wisdom, social politics, rhetoric and oratory at the palace of Egypt, and even how to speak proficiently at an available moment as a prospective leader(Acts 7:22).

This Moses, with such best elite education and nothing lacking, yet married a daughter of the priest in the Median wilderness, whom Moses had neither heard nor seen.

Imagine!
How long could Moses have previously talked with folks there and with his wife Zipporah? For his son Zipporah gave birth to, Moses gave the name ‘Gershom’ (Exodus 2:22), which means ‘I have become an alien in a foreign land.’ As much, Moses’ living in Median was a life as a ‘lonely shepherd.’

Yet, only this living in solitude as a lonely shepherd would rather give one an opportunity to learn a life in the wilderness. A most distinct characteristic of living in the wilderness is, water, grass, food and everything are so scarce compared with Egypt that the inhabitants have to repeat setting up and pulling down their tents around the wilderness in accordance to periodic cycles in their lives.

If you move too early, there might be no feed for the sheep flock because there is little grass grown yet. If you move too late, both men and livestock might be exhausted running out of water.

To associate the severe trials of Moses’ life in the Median wilderness with Exodus 16 and below - Numbers - and Deuteronomy, you might understand why God had Israel suffer such process in the wilderness while God was delivering Israel. Presenting Himself at last in front of Moses leading this life, God is telling what God’s plan is (3:1~12).

Please refer to verse 12 in particular!

Chapter 12 is a summery verse of God’s plan for salvation. Equipped with Moses’ elite education and his wisdom to survive in the barren land, the plan for ‘Israel’s salvation’ is being brought to reality.

2. ‘God who exists Himself’

Exodus 3:14, ‘I AM WHO I AM’ means God is not created by somebody mortal but that he is ever present from before eternity.

Yahweh God is the beginning, and the driving force. For this reason, eternal God is the source of life, alpha and omega, the creator of everything, the doer of anything, and the mediator and supervisor among all matters.

To interpret Exodus 3:14 causatively, it can be interpreted like ‘Yahweh is the creator of...and the supporter of...’

To interpret the verse in connection with Israel wailing in tribulation, it means ‘the creator of salvation for the one who is wailing in suffering’ and ‘the supporter for the ones who are wailing in suffering’ (strengthener, Psalm 90).

To make its connection with Exodus Chapter 1,2, it means God keep good hold of the slave Israelites who are tender like bushes in the wilderness that disappear out of natural ignition under the scorching sun.

In other words, He approaches the Israel as the good holder, or the creator of salvation, for them that is in the fate like a bush disappearing without name that was present, ignited and distinguished in the desert under the influence of Egyptian Kings deified as a god of sun.

God, who can do everything, is saying “I am proposing myself as God who leads them out of slavery in Egypt which has been as in a pit of fire and as God who keeps care of them.”

To make a connection between Isaiah 43:10 ‘The LORD declares...so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me. I, even I, am the LORD, and apart from me there is no savior’ and Exodus 3:14, ‘I AM WHO I AM is also the God who bestows His people salvation.’

3. God who can bring life to our future

Among them that God’s name has, there is a characteristic of the future. To make a connection between Exodus 3:12 ‘This will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: ..., you will worship God on this mountain’ and 3:14, there comes a personality of the future and of the hope that Yahweh will be on the side of Israel who are under oppression.

Namely, the One who self-exists can bring existence to the future of His own people.

Exodus 3:12 depicts not the present under tribulation but the future of Israel which adores ‘God alone as a king’ in a new world. If Bible speaks of likelihood of the future, it tends to mention that the promise for the future shall have been achieved by the descendants who succeed.

When the Scripture was written, there was an Israelite King, a territory and a country. But when the Scripture was completed, there was neither King nor country, only Israel people left. For the reason, the measure for Israel to subsist till the end was neither a king to be placed nor a territory to be occupied. Instead, they recognized that only the flourishing of their offspring was the path for the Israel to survive generation after generation.

The promise in the Bible finds the accomplishment of Genesis 1:28 ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth’ at Exodus 1:7 ‘the sons of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly, and multiplied, and became exceedingly mighty.’

By the point of Exodus 1:7 ‘the sons of Israel were fruitful / and increased greatly, / and multiplied, / and became exceedingly mighty,’ the increase in population is repeated 4 times in a row, to emphasize how important the thriving of their offspring is for those who have lost their sovereignty.

Our country too, while deprived of our sovereignty and dispossessed of our country for 36 years, was under obligation to have our Joseon’s offspring for many and many years to come. The Korean national anthem’s phrase of refrain, ‘Cherish our Korea as a Korean for long and long,’ is also from the historical fact of being colonially governed by Japan.

It is written in the Bible, the length of stay in Egypt by Jacob’s offspring was 400, or 430 years.

The record has it that the first 70 or 74 members of Jacob’s offspring turned into over 600,000 by the time of the Exodus. Generally, a generation is counted as between 25~30 years. In the Bible, there is many a time where a generation is usually prescribed to be 40 years. While, if counted one generation as 100 years according to Genesis 21:5 Abraham’s blessing of having son Isaac at the age of 100, the numerical figures of 10x10x10x10x =10,000 turn out, if multiplied 10 times of descendants every generation. The growth from 70 up to 600,000 descendants is near 10,000 times.

Because they saw the highly-increased posterity as the very completion of promise, this counting was possible.

For another reference, such concept of numbers is also seen on 1 Samuel 18:7 “Saul has slain his thousands, And David his ten thousands.”

In other words, there are many times where the number ‘thousands’ means not 10,000 but actually a huge one. In the conditions with no king, no country and no sovereign, they sought the accomplishment of promise through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob right in the flourishing of their descendants. It was emphasized, only the thriving of their descendants was the condition and power for the promise to be fulfilled.

I am about to talk movies.

World-famous and extra-wealthy on the earth for ET(1982), Jurassic Park(1993), Raiders Of The Lost Ark(1981), etc, the movie-director Steven Spielberg is a Jewish. After leaving the following message in a press conference, “As yet, I have attained money and honor as a movie-director. I should like to make a movie that holds a racial spirit as a Jew for the rest of my remaining life,” there are two movies he made - ‘Schindler’s List(1993)’ and ‘Saving Private Ryan(1998)’

- Two key contents in ‘Schindler’s List(1993)’ are:

1) Persistence of Life - Through the children 7~10 years old in the filth of concentration camp, the movie shows an attachment to ‘living.’ Some scenes refer to their racial experiences to the bone in which they had to have been chased after in every persecution for 2500 years till Israel’s independence in 1948, demonstrating “A live dog is better than a dead lion”(Ecclesiastes 9:4).

2.) Multiplication of Offspring - At the end of the movie comes the caption that the number of 1000 survivors turned into 7000. The length between 45~92 falls a little short of 50 years. By showing through the caption that the offspring increased 7 times during the period, the move appreciates Israelis’ historical consciousness with which they maintain their history through their descendants rather than Shindler’s humanistic action.

- ‘Saving Private Ryan(1998)’

Simple but great human life - It tries to show the greatness of ordinary folks through the succession of generations by posterity.

This movie’s theme is not war, that focuses on the company’s having all gotten killed to save private Ryan. The story is, amid the history of a family that has its generation almost dying out, he is helped to succeed the generation no matter what the sacrifice. That is, the movie esteems the opinion that one’s succeeding to the generations of posterity is the most ordinary and greatest thing.

Jewish history is the Biblical history.

The director Steven Spielberg made especially the history of Exodus Chapter 1 and 2, to inform ‘the future going toward fulfillment by the descendants’ is the achievement of a certain promise that has descended from ancestors.

- Lastly, this is what happened on the Korean Memorial Day.

A husband, leaving behind age 5 child and 5 months fetus (posthumous child) in the womb during the Korean War(1950), said his last words to his wife before leaving for a battlefield, “Honey, without me, would you please grow the children preciously?” And then he died at the battle front. The fresh young wife, who had to have her lips bitten to the blood and just nod and nod at her husband saying last words while her husband was leaving, yet became a snow-haired old lady now in 50 years. In front of her husband’s tomb, she makes a loud scene with her children and grand children brought along, so that she can show off how her husband’s offspring has gotten thrived according to the earnest wishes her young husband said.

All these examples demonstrate that ‘posterity’ is the ‘future that connects from generation to generation’ and an ‘entity that makes our future exist.’

Near 300 years of the time until the Edict of Milan in 313 that first allowed the religious freedom of Christianity in the history of Christianity is the time during which they had remained in high hopes that ‘only God (who exists in history) can make humans exist.’

Through historical events, or in the history, only then we can see God who makes us exist.
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I am at the conclusion.

In the name of God called ‘Yahweh,’ or Jehovah, which we can tell, there are the following meanings:

1) God who helps in one’s suffering
Elijah - My God is Yahweh
Isaiah - God helps
As in the meanings of the names above, the Bible tells us it is Yahweh who helps us in suffering and has led us along.

2. God who exists Himself
God, who made everything in the universe, who is the beginning and the end and who monitors everything, still has hold of us. Faith is that you have that Holy Spirit as your Comforter.

3) God who makes things possible
Today’s depression as well as yesterday’s suffering cannot let us down, because there is future and hope. Because God has opened the door of future in front of us, we wait for Him.

Though it is God that manages the history, the Christian history proves that only when a human does one’s best can the fruit come into bearing.

The dynamic indicated in the Bible is that the future will find its own ‘settlement’ by God’s ‘righteousness,’ and God’s ‘involvement in the history,’ even if reality may tread you down with pain, suppression, mistreatment, irritation,...
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Please, your personal history as well move on in God’s name Yahweh! The very person concedes that our lives are in front of him is the one who reveres God.
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