Exodus 1:1 – 6:1

Who Am I?

 

Despite Pharaoh’s cruel decrees against the people of Israel, the Israelite population just kept increasing. Even his order to have all newborn babies thrown into the Nile didn’t work: the mother of the newborn Moses did indeed cast her baby into the Nile, but inside a little waterproof box. The box floated down the river and was picked up by Pharaoh’s own daughter, who adopted him as her own.

 

Moses grew up in the royal court, but—aware of his Hebrew origins—at one point he ended up on the wrong side of the king and fled to “beyond the wilderness” in nearby Midian. There he married the daughter of Reuel/Jethro, a high official who was, apparently, also a wealthy man.

 

At this point Moses seems, after a rocky start, to be set on a fairly even course. The old king of Egypt had meanwhile died, so Moses was no longer in danger. As the son-in-law of a prominent citizen, he could now look forward to an untroubled existence, indeed, a life of relative ease. But just at that moment, God appeared to Moses at Mount Horeb and ordered him to return to his former homeland and lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Moses was not eager to take on this commission. “Who am I,” he asks, “to go to Pharaoh and lead the Israelites out of Egypt?”

 

On consideration, this seems to be a pretty strange objection. What did Moses mean by saying “Who am I?” He was the ideal person! He grew up in Pharaoh’s court, no doubt knew all the intricacies of Egyptian governance, and spoke Egyptian with a royal accent—who better could represent the Israelites than Moses? But sometimes people’s words reveal more than they intend.

 

In the case at hand, Moses seems to have been at a turning point. He could seek to shrug off the divine summons and lead the rest of his life in the tranquility of Midian, raising his family and enjoying all that was destined to be his. Or he could do the opposite and take this jump into the unknown. The precise wording of his question to God thus seems to reflect, unintentionally, what is really on his mind: Am I the person who does this thing, or is the whole idea absurd?

 

God tries to reassure Moses, but Moses raises a new objection, a rather silly one: “I don’t even know Your name,” he says to God. “How will the Israelites believe me if I can’t even tell them Your name?” God brushes this off with a curt response, “I am who I am.” On the face of things, this is just a way of God’s saying, “None of your business, Moses.” But as commentators have long pointed out, the word that means “I am” in Hebrew, ehyeh, sounds a lot like the divine name spelled Y-H-W-H—as if in telling Moses to mind his own business, God was also hinting at the true answer to his question. And, to drive the point home, God then says: “This is what you should tell the Israelites, Moses. Ehyeh has sent me to you.”

 

But then God goes on to tell Moses in the next breath, “This is what you should say to the Israelites. Y-H-W-H, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me (Moses) to you. This is My name forever, this is how I am to be called for generations.”

 

One has to wonder why God hadn’t simply told Moses to tell the people, “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has sent me to you,” without mentioning the meaning of the word ehyeh, “I am.” The reason seems to be that God’s earlier words, “Ehyeh has sent me to you,” were directed to answer Moses’ previous question to God, “Who am I?” “You want to know who you are, Moses?” God then says. “You’re not the person you’ve been before this moment. You’ve become someone else, the person I am sending. So tell the Israelites who you are now: I am has sent me to you.”

 

Shabbat shalom!