Mind Your Own Business
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.
So Moses grew up in the royal court, but—aware of his Hebrew origins—he “went out to his kinsfolk” and soon ran afoul of the authorities. He ended up having to flee to nearby Midian. There he married the daughter of Reuel/Jethro, a high official who was, apparently, also a wealthy man—someone whose flocks were so numerous that they had to be grazed “on the far side of the wilderness.”
At this point Moses seems, after a rocky start, to be set on a fairly even course. As the son-in-law of a prominent citizen, he can look forward to an untroubled existence, indeed, a life of relative ease. But just at that moment, God appears to Moses at Mount Horeb and orders him to return to his former homeland and lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Moses is 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 could better represent the Israelites than Moses? But sometimes people’s words reveal more than they intend.
In the case at hand, Moses is at a turning point. He can simply refuse the divine summons and lead out the rest of his life in Midianite tranquility, raising his family and enjoying all that is his. Or he can 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, or is this 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. “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.” There have been lots of philosophical elaborations on these words, but their literal meaning in Hebrew is quite clear. They are just a way of saying, “None of your business, Moses,” who I am doesn’t concern you. 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 is 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: Ehyeh has sent me to you.” They’ll figure it out.
This not-too-subtle pun ought to have ended the matter, but then God goes on to say to 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 to you—this is My name forever, this is how I am to be called for generations.” If so, one has to wonder why God didn’t say that in first place instead of (so to speak) beating around the bush with the word ehyeh.
But God’s first answer, “Ehyeh has sent me to you,” actually seems to be addressing Moses’ original question, “Who am I?” “You want to know who you are?” God says. “You’re not the person you’ve been before this moment; you’ve become someone else, the person that I am sending. So tell the Israelites who you are now: I am has sent me to you.”