"I will be Who I will be."

In the third chapter of Exodus there’s a wonderfully detailed account of a conversation that Moses had with the Lord at the beginning of his ministry as a prophet. In spite of Jehovah’s reassurances that He would qualify him for the work of helping liberate captive Israel from bondage, Moses wondered why he had been chosen to lead God's people and voiced his concern that Pharaoh and even the Israelites themselves wouldn’t believe that the Lord had sent him. During the course of the conversation, the hesitant messenger-to-be asked Jehovah how he should reply when the Israelites asked who had sent him.

“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.”

The self-identifier the Lord uses here, “I AM THAT I AM,” has become one of the best known and (to me, at least) one of the most difficult to understand names that He has assigned Himself. The curious part of the English translation of the Hebrew phrase אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה (ehyeh asher ehyeh) is that it was rendered in the present tense in spite of the fact that the verb form the writer used is actually in the future tense. The sentence literally means “I will be Who I will be.”

With that background info out of the way, I’ll bring this down to a personal level. I’ve read that phrase many times, but before reading the passage in the original Hebrew, the Lord’s statement to Moses always seemed very abstract and cryptic to me. It was as if there were some mysterious code to be cracked that I couldn’t quite access. It turns out that, for me, the key to understanding part of what the Lord may have meant was reading His statement in the future tense. It's so much more understandable in my opinion reading the phrase literally.

The doctrinal applications started to flow once I viewed the Lord’s statement as an affirmation made in the present regarding His status and actions that were then future. Here’s what I mean. Jehovah’s comments made at other times regarding His role as the promised Messiah seem to dovetail with what He affirmed to His prophet on that occasion. I now read something along the lines of “I will be Who (I covenanted with you and the rest of the human family to be before the Earth was created, namely your Savior. I am the same yesterday, today, and forever, and I always keep my promises. I will come to Earth in the Meridian of Time, take upon Myself flesh, and live as a mortal, although I will continue to be God, the same as I am now.”)

In “ehyeh asher ehyeh,” I hear an echo of the Lord’s words to the Brother of Jared found in the Book of Mormon (Ether 3:16):

"Behold, this body, which ye now behold, is the body of my spirit; and man have I created after the body of my spirit; and even as I appear unto thee to be in the spirit will I appear unto my people in the flesh."

Or in other words, “I will be Who I will be.”