The Tetragrammaton and its Theology

The Jewish Study Bible, Second Edition

God discloses [God's] proper name, preceded by its explanation. In Hebrew the name is spelled with the consonants "yod-he-vav-he." The exact punctuation is uncertain since the vowels were forgotten in ancient times; hence scholars often refer to the name only by its consonants YHVH. It was probably pronounced Yahweh. God's answer in verse 14, Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, is actually an explanation of its meaning, probably best translated as "I will be what I will be," meaning "My nature will become evident from my actions." [...]

King James Translation of Exodus 3:13-14

13 And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?

14 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.

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, https://rabbisacks.org/shemot-5780/

This was translated into Greek as ego eimi ho on, and into Latin as ego sum qui sum, meaning ‘I am who I am’, or ‘I am He who is’. The early and medieval Christian theologians all understood the phrase to be speaking about ontology, the metaphysical nature of God’s existence as the ground of all being. It meant that He was ‘Being-itself, timeless, immutable, incorporeal, understood as the subsisting act of all existing’. Augustine defines God as that which does not change and cannot change. Aquinas, continuing the same tradition, reads the Exodus formula as saying that God is ‘true being, that is, being that is eternal, immutable, simple, self-sufficient, and the cause and principal of every creature.’

But this is the God of Aristotle and the philosophers, not the God of Abraham and the Prophets. Ehyeh asher ehyeh means none of these things. It means ‘I will be what, where, or how I will be’. The essential element of the phrase is the dimension omitted by all the early Christian translations, namely the future tense. God is defining Himself as the Lord of history who is about to intervene in an unprecedented way, to liberate a group of slaves from the mightiest empire of the ancient world and lead them on a journey towards liberty. Already in the eleventh century, reacting against the neo-Aristotelianism that he saw creeping into Judaism, Judah Halevi made the point that God introduces Himself at the beginning of the Ten Commandments not by saying, “I am the Lord your God who created heaven and earth,” but rather, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”

Far from being timeless and immutable, God in the Hebrew Bible is active, engaged, in constant dialogue with His people, calling, urging, warning, challenging and forgiving. When Malachi says in the name of God, ‘I the Lord do not change’ (Malachi 3:6), he is not speaking about His essence as pure being, the unmoved mover, but about His moral commitments. God keeps His promises even when His children break theirs. What does not change about God are the covenants He makes with Noah, Abraham and the Israelites at Sinai.

Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar:

The imperfect as opposed to the perfect represents actions events or conditions which are regarded by the speaker at any moment as still continuing or in process of accomplishment or even as just taking place.

Rabbi Bradley Artson, God of Becoming and Relationship

In such a worldview, God is not outside the system as some unchanging, eternal abstraction. Instead, God permeates every aspect of becoming, indeed grounds all becoming by inviting us and every level of reality toward our own optimal possibilities. The future remains open, through God’s lure, to our own decisions of how or what we will choose next. God, then, uses a persistent, persuasive power, working in each of us (and all creation at every level) to nudge us toward the best possible outcome. But God’s power is not coercive and not all powerful. God cannot break the rules or unilaterally dictate our choices. Having created and then partnered with this particular cosmos, God is vulnerable to the choices that each of us makes freely as co-creators.