> A. H. McNeUe.
EXODUS III. 13, 14 281
with them, helper, strengthener, deliverer " ; the word is explained by the " I will be with thee," of verse 12.
^ Among other interpretations Davidson's is the most attractive. The passage receives a simple and beautiful explanation if the expression, " I will be what I will be," is taken as an instance of the idem per idem idiom, which a speaker employs when he does not wish to be explicit. Moses asked for God's name, i.e. for a description of His nature and character (cf. Gen. xxxii. 29 ; Judg. xiii. 17 f.); and he was taught that it was impossible to learn this all at once. God would be what He would from time to time prove to be ; each age would discover fresh attributes of His Being.^
3. The new name of God was no academic subtlety, no metaphysical refinement of the Schools, unfitly revealed to slaves, but a most practical and inspiring truth, a conviction to warm their blood, to rouse their courage, to convert their despair into confidence and their alarms into defiance. They had the support of a God worthy of trust. And thenceforth every answer in righteousness, every new disclosure of fidelity, tenderness, love, was not an abnormal phenomenon, the uncertain grace of a capricious despot ; no, its import was permanent as an observation of the stars by an astronomer, ever more to be remembered in calculating the movements of the universe. In future troubles they could appeal to Him to awake as in the ancient days, as being He who " cut Eahab and wounded the Dragon." " I am the Lord, I change not, therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed."
Therefore I trust, although to outward sense
Both true and false seem shaken; I will hold
With newer light my reverence for the old. And calmly wait the births of Providence. No gain is lost; the clear-eyed saints look down
Untroubled on the wreck of schemes and creeds ;
Love yet remains, its rosary of good deeds Counting in task-field and o'er peopled town; Truth has charmed life ! the Inward Word survives,
And, day by day, its revelation brings ;
Faith, hope, and charity, whatsoever things Which cannot be shaken, stand. Still holy lives
Eeveal the Christ of whom the letter told,
And the new gospel verifies the old.^
» A. H. McNeile. « J. G. Whittier,
282 THE ETERNAL NAME
4 Two thoughts are evidently contained in the Name.
(1) There is the thought, first, of the permanence of God. We have often heard an expression concerning the " Great I Am," as if, in popular esteem, it involved only the thought of self-sufficiency ; that God is complete in Himself, having no real need of others to augment His pleasure or to complete His world ; that He rules alone, absolute Master and Dictator of everything, and in no way bound to listen to any earthly voice or make change in the operation of ordinary laws or sequences. But that is not the idea He was giving to Moses. It is all that some men claim to see in Him, and so they ignore Him and live alone. God had come to each of the old Hebrew saints, being to each of them what He was not to the others, and yet being the complete answer to the needs and aspirations of all. And it was in just this sense that He wanted to come into touch with the individual lives of His people through all succeeding time. Along with the spirit of adaptability which would make Him of value to each life, regardless of its eccentricities, was to go the thought of permanency. He lives perpetually in the present tense. " I AM," is His name. We live, so often, in other tenses. Some of us in the past, perhaps, when life was serener and we had other difficulties to combat ; a past for which we long, because it was easier and more trium- phant. Or, perhaps, we are living in the future, and feeling that all the blessedness of God's presence will be given to us then. This is the view that so many of us get, of a God who is to be ours by and by, when we shall have struggled through the world by dint of hard endeavour and have saved our souls — that the vision of God will be ours when heaven begins. But the personal presence, personal co-operation, personal blessing, is to be ours all through the years.
(2) But there is a thought here, also, as to the permanence of life. Our Saviour quoted this text and gave such emphasis to His interpretation that St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke have noted it. St, Matthew quotes Him as saying : " But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob ? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." Christ emphasizes the eternal presence, and means us to note the tense. There is no statement
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which suggests that the personal relation of God to these men was merely a matter of history — that it is entirely a thing of the past. Every past moment was once present, and so the statement of this perpetual presence reaches back into the past. But every future moment will at some time be present, and the eternal presence reaches forward through all coming time.