unwavering commitment to God. However, in verse 13 Moses remains hesitant.
Specifically, Moses now requires God to explain God’s name and its significance.
The reader will notice that Moses desires to express to the Hebrews continuity between the God who now speaks to him through the bush and the God of their ancestry. In other words, the God who is now speaking to Moses, the God whom Moses will reveal to the Hebrews, is no new God. “Rather,” says John Oswalt, “[he] was the God who had
revealed himself to the past generations of ancestors through promises that obligated him to intervene in the lives of the descendants of those ancestors.”42
To the claim that the God of the ancestral fathers had sent Moses, Moses pictures the Hebrews asking, “What is his [God’s] name?” Worthwhile is a careful meditation on the why, how, and what of that hypothetical question: Why might the Hebrews ask such a question, how does Moses frame the question (and does the very framing of the question bear on its interpretation), and what precisely is being asked.
“What Is His Name?”: Why?
The reason the Hebrews might ask, “What is [God’s] name?” can be discerned upon consideration of their context. Douglas Stuart has observed that although people were calling upon the name of Yahweh as early as Genesis 4:26, and although patriarchs such as Noah (Gen 9:26), Abraham (Gen 12:8), Isaac (Gen 26:25), Jacob (Gen 28:16), and Laban (Gen 30:27) all called upon the name Yahweh, the name “was not used, or not prominently used, by any of the children of Jacob, at least in terms of what is in the biblical record.”43 Indeed, after Jacob spoke the name Yahweh in Genesis 32:9, the name does not appear on the lips of any of Jacob’s sons. After Genesis 32:9, the only other time in Genesis where a character speaks the name Yahweh is Genesis 49:18 as Jacob is blessing Dan. Thus judging by the biblical record it would appear that the name Yahweh began to fall out of use after Jacob’s generation, and the book of Exodus began with the
42Oswalt, Exodus, 303.
43Stuart, Exodus, 120.
notice that the generation of Jacob died once the Hebrew people were inside Egypt (Exod 1:6).44 Victor Hamilton makes the astute observation that God is never “more than a generation away from being forgotten (Judg. 2:10).”45 Thus one wonders if the
hypothetical “what is his name?” in Exodus 3:13 can be taken as genuine ignorance of the name.46 By the time Moses spoke with God at the burning bush, the Hebrew people were hundreds of years removed from Jacob and languishing in a foreign land where a host of other gods were worshipped. Perhaps the people were honestly oblivious to the name Yahweh.
The Hebrew people found themselves in an Egyptian context where the general populous lauded a multiplicity of gods. Indeed according to Joshua 24:14 and Ezekiel 20:7—both of which look back retrospectively at Israel’s time in Egypt—Israel herself served many gods and worshipped idols even while living in Egypt.47 The many gods each needed a specific name in order that the people could keep straight their functions and abilities. One wonders whether “what is his name?” also reflects a basic desire to
44As noted by Thomas B. Dozeman, Commentary on Exodus, Eerdmans Critical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 133.
45Hamilton, Exodus, 63.
46My focus in this section concerns ignorance of God’s name that was (possibly) shared by the masses of Hebrew people living inside Egypt. However, the suggestion has been raised that the Hebrews did in fact know the name, whereas Moses did not. Hamilton, Exodus, 64, explains this possibility and its relevance to Moses’s question: “The Hebrews, thinks Moses, will inquire about God’s name not because they are ignorant of it. Rather, they will ask about the name because they know it and will not listen to somebody who cannot name the name of the God they know. . . . In effect, this makes God’s name a password, a badge of acceptance among his peers. It surely is possible that Moses might not know God’s special name, given that he has spent all of his postweaning years in Egypt or in Midian.” See also Houtman, Exodus, 366. Against this proposal is Enns, Exodus, 106. Enns wonders why no record of the question
“What is God’s name, Moses?” is offered on the part of the Hebrews in their “initial meeting” with Moses in Exod 4:29-31. If the question, “What is God’s name, Moses?” was such a vital question for which the Hebrews must obtain an answer in order for them to accept Moses, Scripture gives no record of the question being asked.
47As noted by Houtman, Exodus, 366.
categorize this God amidst a pantheon of other gods. The comments of Duane Garrett are apropos:
In short, “What is his name?” implies a specific set of presuppositions about the deity whom Moses will claim to represent. It suggests that he is not unique but one of many gods; that he is geographically limited to his special place or cult; that he has certain areas of specialization, whether it be making babies or ruling over the dead; and it suggests that YHWH is somewhere in the hierarchy of deities, with some gods above and some below him. In short, his “name” is a way to distinguish him from all the other gods in the pantheon.48
To summarize, the reason the Hebrews might ask, “What is his name?” was twofold: (1) to ascertain a name of which they were ignorant, and (2) to have a label that would help them differentiate this God from various others. However, the way in which Moses framed the question of Exodus 3:13 suggests that a yet deeper inquiry was in view.
Aside from access to a simple label, the people might also want to know the precise significance and meaning of the label.
“What Is His Name?”: How and What?
In biblical Hebrew, the interrogative pronoun mî (“who?”) is employed when one desires to ask a person’s name.49 The best example is found in Judges 13:17 where the initial portion of Manoah’s question to the angel of Yahweh—rendered literally—is,
“Who [mî] is your name?” In Judges 13:17, Manoah asked simply for the identity of the angel. However, when Moses asks, “What is your name?” in Exodus 3:13, he utilizes a different interrogative pronoun than mî, namely the pronoun māh (“what?”). The import of māh in Exodus 3:13 is best elucidated by Bruce Waltke:
48Garrett, A Commentary on Exodus, 206. See also Stuart, Exodus, 120.
49See especially Martin Buber, Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant (1946; repr., New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 48. See also Abba, “The Divine Name Yahweh,” 323; Michael A. Grisanti,
“היה,” in New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, ed. Willem A. VanGemeren (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 1:1024; Allan Harman, “Particles,” in New International Dictionary, 4:1034; and Bruce K. Waltke with Charles Yu, An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical, Canonical, and Thematic Approach (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 365.
The inanimate pronoun mah is used when the focus is on the circumstance rather than the person. Thus, mah šemekā (lit., “What is your name?”) seeks the meaning of the name (Gen. 32:28). It should not surprise us to find that Moses uses mah rather than mî in this pivotal text, asking mah šemô (“What is the meaning of his name?”).50
Thus in Exodus 3:13, the very way in which Moses posed his question is suggestive. Moses asked not merely for a label but also for the implications of the label.
Indeed, in his ancient Near Eastern context Moses assumed a much closer connection between name and the character of the name-bearer than is commonly assumed today.51 The assessment of Roland deVaux is concise: “For a Semite, a proper name is itself a definition of the person who bears it.”52 Nahum Sarna also helps the reader perceive the organic connection between name and being as understood by Moses: “The name is intended to connote character and nature, the totality of the intricate, interwoven, manifold forces that make up the whole personality of the bearer of the name.”53 In asking, “What is his name?” Moses desired a revelation from God concerning God’s very nature,
50Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 365. For the argument that in Exod 3:13 Moses asked for the meaning of the name, see also Abba, “The Divine Name Yahweh,” 323; Buber, Moses, 48; Brevard S.
Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974), 69, 75; William J. Dumbrell, The Faith of Israel: A Theological Survey of the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 33; Kaiser, Exodus, 370; Motyer, The Message of Exodus, 17-18; and Sailhamer, The Pentateuch as Narrative, 246, who writes, “When Moses asked about the ‘name’ of God, he was inquiring about more than just the identity of God. He was asking a question about the very nature of God. Within the world of the biblical text, the name was the expression of the nature of its bearer (cf. 1Sa 25:25).”
51G. Ernest Wright, “The Divine Name and the Divine Nature,” Perspective 12 (1971): 179.
52Roland deVaux, “The Revelation of the Divine Name YHWH,” in Proclamation and Presence: Old Testament Essays in Honor of Gwynne Henton Davies, ed. John I. Durham and J. R. Porter (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1970), 71.
53Sarna, Exploring Exodus, 52. See also T. Desmond Alexander, From Paradise to the Promised Land: An Introduction to the Pentateuch, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012), 191; Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2, God and Creation, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 98-99; Lanier Burns, The Nearness of God: His Presence with His People, ed. Robert A. Peterson (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2009), 68; Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 173-75;
Knowles, The Unfolding Mystery, 32-33; Laney, “God’s Self-Revelation in Exodus 34:6-8,” 40; Larsson, Bound for Freedom, 32; Oswalt, Exodus, 310-11; Christopher R. Seitz, Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 140; Smith, Old Testament Theology,116; von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 1:181-82; and Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 359.
character, and reputation. The answer that God provided is both revelatory yet mysterious.54