04 D. The Great "I AM"

The Great “I Am”

 Revelation 1:4-“Him which is and which was and which is to come.”

Parallels: 1:8-“The Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.”

4:8-“The Lord God Almighty, which was and is and is to come.

 11:17-“Lord God Almighty, which art and wast and art to come, because thou hast taken to thee thy great power and hast reigned.”

 16:5-“Thou who art and wast, O Holy One.”

             This phrase is Christ‘s identification of Himself as the Great I Am of Exodus 3:13-15.[1]  The divine Name is a verb of existence: Yahweh I am He who creates,” or “I am that I am,” or “Being, I cause to be.”[2]

            The Name YAHWEH is called ‘the quadriliteral Name’ for in Hebrew it contains four letters and was considered by the Rabbis as being too holy to pronounce.  Another word which was used to represent this most holy Name was ‘oth.[3]

            In the RSV passages in 11:17 and 16:5 the future tense is conspicuously absent; there is no “is to come.”  This more accurately reflects the Greek text than does the KJV.  Perhaps this indicates that in the events seen in these visions He has come.  In 11:17 He has begun to reign; in 16:5 He has begun to judge.

            The Hebrew word standing behind this phrase might also be the word yesh.  As a noun it means ‘being, existence, that which is present, ready.’  It is most commonly used as a verb substantive, without distinction of number or tense, ‘is, was, will be.’  With a predicate yesh gives an emphatic force (BDB).  If the subject of the verb form, however, is a pronoun, it is expressed by a suffix as if it were a noun form instead of a verb form.  The form that would produce the translation “I Am” would then be almost or entirely the equivalent of ‘Jesus‘.

            The force of the Name Yahweh, I believe, is that of infinity brought into the present moment.  The eternally existent God, eternity past and eternity future, is brought into the present finite moment.[4]  Davies, W.D. Paul and Rabbinic Judaism says:

The community of Israel is a unity of past, present and future….  The Israelites to whom Amos spoke had come up from Egypt (3.2); this can be said because every Israelite shared in this experience….  Another excellent example of this method of thought occurs in the book of Joshua. {Note 2: “Joshua 24.  See also Deut.26.5f.”}  …. it follows that the experience of Christ can be re-enacted in the [individual Christian]: the Christian man can die and rise with his Lord (108-9).


[1] Summers says: “Grace and peace are here pronounced as coming from ‘the one who is and the one who was and the one who is coming.’  This was a typical Jewish conception of God.  It is a good reproduction of the Hebrew word for Jehovah– ‘the eternally existing one'” (Worthy Is the Lamb, 101).

[2] See also John Bright, A History of Israel, Second Edition, (Philadelphia, The Westminster Press. 1972), 151-2.

   In this and in the identification as “Aleph and Tau“, Christ is identifying with the Name Elohim” (God in the plural) which Bright sees to be a name constituting a claim that He is the totality (plurality) of the manifestation of the deity, (p. 153).  That is, not plural gods, but a plurality of manifestations of the One God.

[3] See M. Jastrow, Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature. (Brooklyn: Shalom. 1967 reprint).

[4] See also my Commentary on 1:8, “Alpha and Omega” and 1:17, “First and Last”.

Leave a Reply