Commentaria in Exodum
11. AND MOSES SAID TO GOD: WHO AM I?—as if to say: I am nobody, and plainly unfit for this embassy: it is a modest and humble confession of his own weakness. Moses knew that he had long since been chosen by God for this office, as I showed chap. 2, verse 19. He does not therefore here shrink from God’s call, but from his own weakness; or rather he humbly confesses to God his unfitness to obey and satisfy him, that he may either choose another, or give strength and fitness.
Morally learn hence that the office of ruling and feeding others is to be undertaken hesitantly and with trembling, and only when God calls: by no means to be sought; on which see St. Gregory, part 1 of the Pastoral.
12. AND THIS THOU SHALT HAVE FOR A SIGN THAT I HAVE SENT THEE: WHEN THOU SHALT HAVE BROUGHT MY PEOPLE OUT OF EGYPT, THOU SHALT OFFER SACRIFICE TO GOD UPON THIS MOUNTAIN,—upon Sina. Hugh of St. Victor explains thus, as if he said: Of that which I have said, namely that I shall be with thee in the liberation of Israel, have this sign, namely that I have destined thee for this, sent thee, and still send thee. Secondly, Abulensis also punctuates this otherwise, and understands the sign to be the burning bush, of which verse 2. But our text requires that this sign be referred not to what precedes but to what follows. The sense therefore is, as if he said: Receive, O Moses, the sign of thy mission, my promise and assurance, that thou, with the people whom thou shalt lead out of Egypt with me as leader, shalt sacrifice to me on this mount Sina in thanksgiving for so happy an exit and liberation from Egypt; and on this mount I shall then appear to you again: the Hebrew words “on this mountain” can be referred both to God existing on the mountain and there to show himself, and to the sacrifice: God therefore here, by a new and more express promise, establishes the mission of Moses, and as with a surer seal seals it, and confirms and encourages Moses: for it is more to promise than to send; again it is more to promise and to send than only to send. This sign therefore as to the promise was present, but as to execution depended on a future event, which God most certainly foretells will come to pass and promises. A like sign is given to Ezechias, 4 Kings 19:29, and to David, 1 Kings 21:43.
THOU SHALT OFFER SACRIFICE,—thou namely as leader in the place of the whole people; whence some read, ye shall sacrifice. The Hebrew is, “ye shall serve,” by worship namely of latria, whose only external act is to immolate or sacrifice: that this in fact so came to pass is plain chap. 24, vers. 3.
13. IF THEY SHOULD SAY TO ME: WHAT IS HIS NAME? WHAT SHALL I SAY TO THEM?
Moses had already been satisfied by God, through the sign of immolation given a little before; now Moses labours how to satisfy the people, and asks the name of the one sending him, which he may put before his words, and by which God especially wishes to be called among the Israelites, that they may believe.
Note: God has no need of a proper name, both because he is one and because he is ineffable. Whence Attalus the Martyr, asked in contempt by the tyrant what name God had? answered: “Those who are many are distinguished by names; he who is one needs no name.” So Eusebius, book 6 Hist. chap. 1. Evagrius the Bishop, when a question arose about the divinity: “I,” he says, “assert that the divinity is not to be defined, and therefore to be adored only by the speech of silence, because it is ineffable.” So Socrates. See therefore here the condescension of God, who to our name, as
14. I AM WHO AM.—Hugh of St. Victor thought that God here does not declare but rather with a certain majesty keeps silent his name, as if some grave person, asked his name, should answer: I am who I am, as if to say: I am called what I am called. But this is improbable. For a little after he commands Moses to put this name, “He who is,” as God’s legate’s proper name and title, before his mission: read verse 15. The Hebrew is ehje aser ehje, I will be who I will be, which Solomon [the Rabbi] and Burgensis explain thus: “I will be,” supply with you in this tribulation, freeing you from it, “who I will be,” supply henceforth always with you in all your affliction; but this is narrower and colder.
I say therefore, “I will be who I will be,” that is, I am who I am; whence the Septuagint also render, ego eimi ho on, I am he who is; which St. Justin in the Exhortation to the Gentiles thinks is said by way of difference from idols, as if to say: Idolaters worship idols, that is gods that are not; but I am he who is, that is the truly existing God, whom you, O Hebrews, worship. But this too is narrower. Whence I say secondly, the sense is: “I am who am,” as if to say: I, God, have no proper name distinguishing me from others, but what is most general, being, is proper to me.
First, because I am the enfolding of all being, and what in others is distinguished in certain grades flows from me as from a universal fountain. The “I am who am” therefore signifies an immense and boundless ocean of essence and of being, says Nyssen and St. Bernard, book 5 On Consideration to Eugene: “God,” he says, “is the first that is, that is, is his own being and that of all other things; he is for himself, he is for all, and hence in a manner he alone is.” And, some things intervening, he teaches that “is” embraces all the attributes of God and of things. “If you call him good,” he says, “if great, if wise, it is restored in this word, He who is: for this is to be to him what all these are. If you say more, you have added nothing; if you do not say, you have not diminished.” This is what Pindar says in the Pythians, hymn 2: “God is he who contains the beginning, middle and end of all things.” And Plato: “God is he who embraces the universe of all things.”
Second, “I am who am,” that is, I am immutable, constant and stable. For what is changed properly is not so much as ceases to be what it was and begins to be what it was not. So St. Gregory, hom. 2 on Ezech.
Third, “I am who am,” that is, I am eternal, I am who am in the present, lacking past and future; hence the Hebrew is, “I will be who I will be”: for the Hebrews use the future for the present, where custom, continuation, or perseverance and constancy of a thing is signified. Therefore “I will be who I will be” is among the Hebrews the same as “I am who am” among the Latins; for, as Nazianzen says, “was” and “will be” are segments of our time and fleeting nature; but God always is. Whence “I am who am” signifies the eternity of God, and is opposed to the changeableness of time, which is extended and distinguished through future, present and past; for it is proper to eternity always to be immutably. Hence St. Justin above: ho on, he says, embraces the three times. Whence Plato also says: “God, who, as the old saying is, has beginning, end and middle of all things.” This force of the name St. John expressed, kai ho erchomenos, which our version renders: “From him who is, and who was, and who is to come.”
So Thales of Miletus, asked “what is oldest?” answered: “God, for he lacks birth; what is greatest? place; what most beautiful? the world; what wisest? time: for it has found out other things and will find out the rest; what most common? hope: for hope is present to those to whom other things are lacking; what most useful? virtue; what most harmful? vice of the mind; what strongest? necessity: for it alone is insuperable; what easiest? what is agreeable to nature.” So Plutarch relates in the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men. The same Thales, as Laertius attests in his Life, being asked what God was, answered: “That which lacks beginning and end.” For this reason among the Egyptians the hieroglyphic of God was a circle, because it has neither beginning nor end, says Pierius, hieroglyph. 39. “God,” says St. Dionysius, chap. 5 On the Divine Names, “is the age of ages, and king of the ages; because he himself is being to existing things, and the very being of existing things, and existing before the ages.” Of us it is said: “My days have declined like a shadow, we all like waters flow away.” But of God: “But thou art the selfsame, and thy years shall not fail: but thou, O Lord, endurest for ever, and thy memorial unto all generations;” on which place St. Augustine, conc. 2: “Eternity,” he says, “is the substance of God, which has nothing mutable; there nothing is past, as if it no longer were; nothing is future, as if it were not yet: because there is not, except is.” God is he of whom it is said: “Thou enlightenest wonderfully from the everlasting hills.” This is that Ancient of days, whose hair, says Daniel, was white with age as clean wool. “Thousands of thousands ministered to him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before him.”