Exodus 3:14

I Will Be What I Will Be

Side by Side

The Hebrew

The source text

And Elohim said unto Moses, Ehyeh asher ehyeh, I will be what I will be: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Ehyeh, I will be, hath sent me unto you.

The Greek

Septuagint, where it went wrong

And God spoke to Moses, saying, I am THE BEING; and he said, Thus shall ye say to the children of Israel, THE BEING has sent me to you.

Your KJV reads: the Hebrew words, but in the present tense: “I AM THAT I AM.” The Hebrew verb looks ahead.

See what changed and why ↓

What Your Bible Says

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
Exodus 3:14 KJV

Moses asks the Name of the One sending him to Egypt. In the King James the answer sounds like a statement about simply existing.

What the Hebrew Says

The Hebrew is ehyeh asher ehyeh. Ehyeh comes from the verb “to be” or “to become,” in a form that most often points forward: I will be. Two verses earlier the same word is a promise: “Certainly I will be with thee” (Exodus 3:12).

So the answer to Moses is a promise. I will be what I will be. Israel would know Him by what He did.

What the Greek Says

I am THE BEING; and he said, Thus shall ye say to the children of Israel, THE BEING has sent me to you.
Exodus 3:14, Septuagint

The Greek reads egō eimi ho ōn: “I am the one who is.” Ho ōn, “the one who is” or “the Being,” sounds like the language of the Greek schools, where the highest god was pure, unchanging Being, above all action and history.

What Changed

A promise to act became a definition of a nature. The Elohim who would go with Moses into Egypt became the philosophers’ timeless Being.

The Hebrew word did not change. The Greek gave it a meaning Moses never heard, and that meaning stuck.

The Verse Next Door

Verse 15 gives the Name itself, Yahuah, built on the same verb, and calls it “my memorial unto all generations.” The Name is remembered by His deeds for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not by a lecture on being.

Purpose of the Change

The effect is to dress Yahuah in Greek philosophy. Later teachers used that language of “Being” when they defined Elohim as one substance shared by three persons, words Scripture never uses.

The Bottom Line

Moses heard a promise: I will be. The Greek gave him a philosophy: the one who is.

Revelation uses the Greek title and still keeps the Father and the Son apart: “from him which is, and which was, and which is to come … And from Yahushua Messiah, who is the faithful witness” (Revelation 1:4–5). The One who is, and Yahushua, are two, not one.

Dig Deeper The evidence, for anyone who wants it

The Verb Behind the Name

Ehyeh is a form of hayah (H1961), “to be, to become, to come to pass.” It is the verb of things happening. The Name Yahuah in the next verse comes from the same root. Both point to an Elohim who acts.

“I Am” in John 8:58

Trinitarian teachers say Yahushua took the Name of Exodus 3:14 when He said, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). That argument stands on the Greek, not the Hebrew. And even the Greek does not carry it. The title in the Greek of Exodus 3:14 is ho ōn, “the one who is,” not egō eimi alone.

Egō eimi is ordinary Greek for “I am he.” The healed blind man says the same words of himself: “but he said, I am he” (John 9:9). In the same chapter as 8:58 the Son says, “I am he, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things” (John 8:28). He speaks as the One sent, not as the Sender.

Being Instead of Becoming

Greek thinkers such as Plato taught that the true god is changeless Being, set apart from a world of change. Philo, a Jewish writer in Alexandria in the first century, quoted the Greek of Exodus 3:14 and explained it in Plato’s terms. Many church fathers later read the Greek the same way.

Words Your Bible Borrowed

“The Being” is one of the Greek ideas that came into the churches through translation. The site page “Words Your Bible Borrowed” traces more of them.

An Honest Note

The Hebrew form can also be read “I am,” and some scholars defend the present tense. The King James made that choice, and it is a fair translation. The objection here is not to “I am” in English. It is to the Greek “the Being,” which adds a title of philosophy the Hebrew does not have.