Bible Wonders - I AM THAT I AM

Did you ever wonder? Did you ever wonder?

I do. Did you ever wonder? Why the sun always rises, but the stars never fall?

Why dry land is never satisfied by water? And why fire never says, enough? Enough. Excerpts from you today from chabad.org, of course, I'll post these in the show notes on where they came from. But essentially, this is from a Jewish perspective what they see in the statements that I really had never seen before, fresh information. So Exodus 3.

14. Here's their interpretation, I shall be with you in your present distress, and I shall be with you in future exiles and persecutions." So Rashi, their most famous – from my perspective, the one I always hear the most about – commentator, kind of like their Matthew Henry, this is what he had to say. When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush and charged him with a mission to take the people of Israel out of Egypt, Moses said to the Almighty, Behold, I will come to the children of Israel and say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they will say, What is his name? And what shall I say to them? And God replied to Moses, I shall be who I shall be.

Tell the children of Israel, I shall be has sent you. To name something is to describe and define it. Again, I'm still quoting Rashi here. To name something is to describe and define it. So God who is infinite and undefinable cannot be named, thus God has no name, only names. How does God, who brought everything into reality, define himself within that reality? So from Rashi's perspective, God really knew what was underneath Moses's question, the unspoken question, so to speak. And so here Rashi goes into what he believes was really underneath Moses's question, again quoting Rashi. Therein lies the deeper significance of the question that Moses anticipated from the children of Israel.

What is his name? They were sure to ask. What type of behavior are we seeing on the part of God in these times? You say that God has seen the suffering of his people in Egypt? Has he heard our cries and knows our pain?

And has he therefore sent you to redeem us? Where was he up until now? Where was he for 86 years that we were languishing under the slave driver's whip? That babies are being torn from their mother's arms and cast into the Nile? That Pharaoh is bathing in blood of Jewish children?

What name is he now assuming? And after 86 years in which he has apparently been nameless and aloof from our lives? Going to quote Rashi, here he is, from God's perspective, answering the questions that essentially Moses was asking for his people as he considered what he would say to them based on what they've experienced.

So here's the quote from Rashi. Where was I all these years with you? I am being, I am existence, I am reality, I am the groan of a beaten slave, in the wail of a bereaved mother, in the spilled blood of a murdered child. Certain things must be no matter how painful and incomprehensible to your human selves in order that great things, infinitely great and blissful things should be. But I do not orchestrate these things from some distant heaven, holy and removed from your existential pain. I am there with you, suffering with you, praying for redemption together with you. If you cannot see me, it is not from my ether reality, it is because I am so real. Now that's something to wonder about today.