{"id":106602,"date":"2026-09-02T01:10:06","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T05:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=106602"},"modified":"2026-09-02T01:10:06","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T05:10:06","slug":"names-of-god-what-god-said-when-moses-asked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/bible-resources\/bible-answers\/names-of-god-what-god-said-when-moses-asked\/","title":{"rendered":"The Names of God: What God Said When Moses Asked"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='booster-block booster-read-block'>\n                <div class=\"twp-read-time\">\n                \t<i class=\"booster-icon twp-clock\"><\/i> <span>Read Time:<\/span>11 Minute, 52 Second                <\/div>\n\n            <\/div><p>You are somewhere quiet. Maybe it is early, before anyone else is up. Maybe it is late, after a day that took more out of you than you had to give.<\/p>\n\n<p>You start to pray. You get one word out \u2014 &#8220;God&#8221; \u2014 and then you stop. Because a small, strange question shows up that you were not expecting: <em>am I even calling You the right thing?<\/em><\/p>\n\n<p>So later you look it up. What are the different <strong>names of God<\/strong>? And the internet hands you a list. Sixteen names. Twenty-one names. Nine names and what they mean. Each one with a neat translation beside it, like a menu.<\/p>\n\n<p>Those lists are not wrong. The names really are in there, and knowing them genuinely changes how you read your Bible. But there is exactly one moment in all of scripture where a human being stands in front of God and asks, straight out, for a name.<\/p>\n\n<p>And the answer that came back does not fit on a list.<\/p>\n\n<h2>The Names of God People Actually Search For<\/h2>\n\n<p>Let&#8217;s start where you started, because it is worth knowing. These are the ones that come up most:<\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Elohim<\/strong> \u2014 the Hebrew word for God in the very first line of Genesis.<\/li>\n<li><strong>YHWH<\/strong> \u2014 four Hebrew letters, printed as &#8220;LORD&#8221; in small capitals in most English Bibles. Often spoken as Yahweh, and rendered &#8220;Jehovah&#8221; in older English translations.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Adonai<\/strong> \u2014 Lord, or Master. The word Jewish readers came to say aloud in place of YHWH. We wrote a whole piece on <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/articles\/what-does-adonai-mean-the-hebrew-name-that-calls-god-master\/\">what Adonai actually means<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>El Shaddai<\/strong> \u2014 usually rendered &#8220;God Almighty.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><strong>El Roi<\/strong> \u2014 the God who sees. Notably, this one was not given by a priest or a prophet. It was given by Hagar, a pregnant runaway servant girl alone in the desert in Genesis 16.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jehovah Jireh<\/strong> \u2014 the LORD will provide, from Genesis 22.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jehovah Rapha<\/strong> \u2014 the LORD who heals, from Exodus 15:26.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p>Read that list again and notice something. Almost every one of those names came out of a situation. Somebody was starving, or cornered, or sick, or invisible, and a name got attached to what God turned out to be in that exact moment. The names of God are not a filing system. They are a record of what people found.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"6491fb8269\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/6491fb8269\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>The One Time Someone Asked God Directly<\/h2>\n\n<p>Exodus 3. Moses is eighty years old and has not been anybody important for forty years. He is out in the back of the desert, minding someone else&#8217;s sheep, when he sees a bush on fire that does not burn up.<\/p>\n\n<p>God speaks out of it and gives him a job: go to the most powerful ruler in the world and tell him to release an entire enslaved nation.<\/p>\n\n<p>Moses has two questions. Only two. And it matters enormously which one he asks first.<\/p>\n\n<p>The first one is about himself: <em>&#8220;And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?&#8221;<\/em> (Exodus 3:11)<\/p>\n\n<p>Hold on to that. We are coming back to it.<\/p>\n\n<p>Then comes the second question, the one nobody else in the Bible ever asks so directly:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;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?&#8221; (Exodus 3:13)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>That is a completely reasonable question. In the world Moses was walking back into, gods had names, and a name told you what a god was for. Which one is this? What is the department? What am I telling people they can count on?<\/p>\n\n<h2>&#8220;I AM THAT I AM&#8221; \u2014 and Why Translators Do Not Agree<\/h2>\n\n<p>Here is the answer, word for word:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;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.&#8221; (Exodus 3:14)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>In Hebrew that is <em>ehyeh asher ehyeh<\/em>. And this is where it gets interesting, so let&#8217;s be careful and honest about it.<\/p>\n\n<p><em>Ehyeh<\/em> is a verb \u2014 a form of the verb &#8220;to be.&#8221; It is not a noun. It is not a title. Moses asked for a name and received an action.<\/p>\n\n<p>And the form of that verb is what Hebrew grammar calls the <em>imperfect<\/em>. Biblical Hebrew does not carve up time into past, present and future the way English does, so the imperfect does not map cleanly onto any one English tense. It can be read as present. It can be read as ongoing. It can be read as still-coming.<\/p>\n\n<p>Which is why serious translators have genuinely landed in different places. &#8220;I AM THAT I AM&#8221; is the traditional rendering, and it is the one nearly every English Bible carries. But &#8220;I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE&#8221; is also a defensible reading of the same two words, and a number of scholars now lean that way.<\/p>\n\n<p>Nobody should pretend this is settled. It is not. The point worth taking is smaller and stronger than a winning translation: <strong>the answer was deliberately open.<\/strong> A name that pins God down to one department was exactly what Moses asked for, and exactly what he did not get.<\/p>\n\n<p>And then \u2014 this part almost never makes the lists \u2014 God <em>does<\/em> give a name, one verse later. &#8220;The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob&#8230; this is my name for ever&#8221; (Exodus 3:15). So it is not that God refused to be named. It is the order. The verb came first. Then the name, tied not to a job description but to three specific people God had already walked with.<\/p>\n\n<h2>The Detail Almost Everyone Reads Past<\/h2>\n\n<p>Now go back to Moses&#8217; first question. &#8220;Who am I?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>Look at what God said in reply, two verses before the famous one:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;And he said, Certainly I will be with thee&#8230;&#8221; (Exodus 3:12)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>The Hebrew behind &#8220;I will be&#8221; in verse 12 is <em>ehyeh<\/em>. The same word. The identical form of the identical verb that becomes the name in verse 14.<\/p>\n\n<p>Read the chapter with that in your hand and something quietly reorganises itself.<\/p>\n\n<p>Moses asked, &#8220;Who am I?&#8221; \u2014 and the answer was not about Moses at all. God did not say &#8220;you are stronger than you think.&#8221; God changed the subject entirely and said <em>ehyeh<\/em> \u2014 I will be there.<\/p>\n\n<p>Then Moses asked, &#8220;What is Your name?&#8221; \u2014 and the answer was the same word again. <em>Ehyeh.<\/em><\/p>\n\n<blockquote><p>God&#8217;s name and God&#8217;s promise turned out to be the same word.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<h2>What This Means on a Day You Cannot See the End Of<\/h2>\n\n<p>Most of us do not really want a name. We want a forecast.<\/p>\n\n<p>We want to know whether the test result is going to be fine. Whether the money stretches to the end of the month. Whether the person we are worried about comes back. Whether we are making the right call about the move, the job, the marriage, the child. We phrase it as a question about God, but underneath it is almost always a question about outcomes.<\/p>\n\n<p>Moses wanted a forecast too. He wanted a name he could hand to a frightened crowd like a guarantee.<\/p>\n\n<p>What he was given instead was not information. It was company.<\/p>\n\n<p><em>I will be.<\/em> Not &#8220;here is how it turns out.&#8221; Not &#8220;here is the plan, in order, with dates.&#8221; Just: whatever that day is, when you get there, I will already be there.<\/p>\n\n<p>That is a smaller answer than the one we ask for. It is also the only answer that still works when the forecast turns out wrong. A promise about outcomes can break. A promise about presence cannot, because it does not depend on the outcome at all.<\/p>\n\n<p>Centuries later, in a temple courtyard, Jesus said two words that sent people scrambling for stones \u2014 and those two words came straight out of this bush. We looked at that moment in <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/what-jesus-teaches\/what-jesus-actually-said-about-himself-and-the-two-words-that-made-jewish-leaders-pick-up-stones\/\">what Jesus actually said about Himself<\/a>. The thread runs all the way through.<\/p>\n\n<h2>What to Do With This Today<\/h2>\n\n<p>None of this is worth much as information. It is worth something as practice. Three things you could do in the next ten minutes:<\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Say it out loud once, with the real thing named.<\/strong> Not &#8220;God is with me&#8221; in general. Name the actual unknown: &#8220;I don&#8217;t know how Thursday goes. God will be there.&#8221; Say it in the room you are standing in right now, at normal volume. It lands differently out loud than it does in your head.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Put the word where tomorrow-you will hit it.<\/strong> Write &#8220;I will be&#8221; on a scrap of paper and tape it by the light switch, or set it as your phone&#8217;s lock screen. Not as decoration \u2014 so that it reaches you before you are awake enough to argue with it.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Tell one person where you are standing.<\/strong> Send one message to someone you trust naming the part of this week you are most unsure about. Do not ask for advice. Presence is the whole point of the passage; let a human give you some too.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p>And if you are not sure how near or far God feels right now, our free <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/how-to-get-closer-to-god\/\">How Close Am I to God?<\/a> walk-through is an honest, no-guilt place to find out where you actually stand.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Two Things Worth Writing Down<\/h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li>When you picture the next six months, what is the one unknown your mind keeps circling back to? Write it plainly, without softening it or adding &#8220;but it&#8217;ll probably be fine.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>You have been asking God for information about that. What would actually change in how you carry it if what you received instead was company?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<h2>A Prayer for When You Do Not Know What Is Coming<\/h2>\n\n<p>God, I came here wanting to know how this turns out, and I am not going to pretend I have stopped wanting that. But what I keep hearing is something else \u2014 that You will be there. I do not fully know how to hold that yet, so I am just going to say it back to You: You will be there on the day I am most afraid of. Be there. That is the whole prayer.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Your Turn<\/h2>\n\n<p>Do you think the openness of God&#8217;s answer to Moses was a limit on what could be put into words \u2014 or was that openness itself the message? We would genuinely like to know how you read it. Leave a comment and tell us.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"6491fb8269\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/6491fb8269\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>Share This<\/h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Moses asked God for a name. What came back was not a title \u2014 it was a verb. &#8220;I will be.&#8221; I have not stopped thinking about it.<\/li>\n<li>In Exodus 3, the word God uses as a name is the same Hebrew word God used two verses earlier to promise &#8220;I will be with thee.&#8221; The name and the promise are one word.<\/li>\n<li>I keep asking God what is coming. Exodus 3 suggests the answer on offer is not information. It is company.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<h2>Questions People Ask About the Names of God<\/h2>\n\n<p><strong>What are the different names of God in the Bible?<\/strong><br>\nThe most commonly cited names of God in the Bible include Elohim (the Hebrew word for God in Genesis 1:1), YHWH (four Hebrew letters printed as &#8220;LORD&#8221; in small capitals in most English Bibles, and often spoken as Yahweh), Adonai (Lord or Master), El Shaddai (usually rendered &#8220;God Almighty&#8221;), El Roi (the God who sees, from Genesis 16), Jehovah Jireh (the LORD will provide, from Genesis 22), and Jehovah Rapha (the LORD who heals, from Exodus 15:26). Most of these names were attached to God in the middle of a specific crisis rather than assigned as formal titles.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>What does &#8220;I AM THAT I AM&#8221; mean in Exodus 3:14?<\/strong><br>\n&#8220;I AM THAT I AM&#8221; is the King James rendering of the Hebrew phrase <em>ehyeh asher ehyeh<\/em>, spoken by God to Moses at the burning bush when Moses asked what name to give the Israelites. Rather than a noun or title, the phrase is built from a verb meaning &#8220;to be,&#8221; which is why it reads as a statement of existence and presence rather than as a job description.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>Is Exodus 3:14 &#8220;I am&#8221; or &#8220;I will be&#8221;?<\/strong><br>\nTranslators genuinely differ, and the question is not settled. The Hebrew verb <em>ehyeh<\/em> appears in the imperfect form, which in biblical Hebrew does not correspond neatly to a single English tense. &#8220;I AM THAT I AM&#8221; is the traditional rendering carried by nearly all English Bibles, while &#8220;I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE&#8221; is a defensible alternative that a number of scholars favour. The ambiguity is a feature of the Hebrew itself, not a translation error.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>What is the difference between Yahweh and Jehovah?<\/strong><br>\nBoth come from the same four Hebrew consonants, YHWH. Ancient Hebrew was written without vowels, and out of reverence the name was not spoken aloud, so its original pronunciation was not preserved. &#8220;Yahweh&#8221; is the reconstruction most scholars use today. &#8220;Jehovah&#8221; arose later in European translation, from combining the consonants YHWH with vowel marks belonging to the word Adonai. They refer to the same name, not two different ones.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>Why did Moses ask God for a name?<\/strong><br>\nAccording to Exodus 3:13, Moses expected the enslaved Israelites to ask which God had sent him. In the ancient Near East, a god&#8217;s name signalled what that god was believed to govern, so a name functioned as credentials. Moses was asking for something he could hand to a frightened people as proof.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>Did God ever give Moses an actual name?<\/strong><br>\nYes. In Exodus 3:15, immediately after the &#8220;I AM THAT I AM&#8221; reply, God instructs Moses to tell the Israelites that &#8220;the LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob&#8221; has sent him, and calls this a name for ever. The order matters: the open-ended verb came first, and the name that followed was anchored to relationships with specific people rather than to a role or a department.<\/p>\n        <div class=\"booster-block booster-reactions-block\">\n            <div class=\"twp-reactions-icons\">\n                \n                <div class=\"twp-reacts-wrap\">\n                    <a react-data=\"be-react-1\" post-id=\"106602\" class=\"be-face-icons un-reacted\" href=\"javascript:void(0)\">\n                        <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/booster-extension\/\/assets\/icon\/happy.svg\" alt=\"Happy\" title=\"\">\n                    <\/a>\n                    <div class=\"twp-reaction-title\">\n                        Happy                    <\/div>\n                    <div class=\"twp-count-percent\">\n                                                    <span style=\"display: none;\" class=\"twp-react-count\">0<\/span>\n                      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But the one time a man asked God directly for a name, the answer was not a title. It was a verb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":106601,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[669,3458],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible-answers","category-bible-study"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106603,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106602\/revisions\/106603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}