(13) Moses said to God, “When I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers’ [house] has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is [God’s] name?’ what shall I say to them?” (14) And God said to Moses, “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh ['I will be what I will be],”continuing, “Thus shall you say to the Israelites, ‘Ehyeh [I-will-be] sent me to you.’” (15) And God said further to Moses, “Thus shall you speak to the Israelites: YHWH ['Making-Be?],” the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you:
This shall be My name forever,
This My appellation for all eternity.
אהיה אשר אהיה. אֶהְיֶה עִמָּם בְּצָרָה זוֹ אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה עִמָּם בְּשִׁעְבּוּד שְׁאָר מַלְכֻיּוֹת. אָמַר לְפָנָיו, רִבּוֹנוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם, מָה אֲנִי מַזְכִּיר לָהֶם צָרָה אַחֶרֶת? דַּיָּם בְּצָרָה זוֹ, אָמַר לוֹ יָפֶה אָמַרְתָּ, כה תאמר וגו' (ברכות ט'):
אהיה אשר אהיה I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE — I will be with them in this sorrow — I Who I will be with them in the subjection they will suffer at the hands of other kingdoms (Berakhot 9b). Whereupon Moses said to him: Lord of the Universe! Why should I mention to them other sorrows: they have enough with this sorrow! God replied to him: You have spoken rightly — כה תאמר THUS SHALT THOU SAY etc.… Ehyeh, “I will be” — without the addition of אשר אהיה "what I will be" which has reference to future sorrows — has sent me unto you”.
אהיה אשר אהיה ההוה תמיד על ענין אחד מצד עצמו, ומזה יתחייב שיאהב המציאות וישנא כל הפסד מנגד למציאות, כאמרו כי לא אחפוץ במות המת ומזה יתחייב שיאהב משפט וצדקה, אשר תכליתם מציאות, וישנא העול והאכזריות, המטים עקלקלות אל העדר והפסד, ובזה שנא חמס ואכזריות המצרים נגדכם:
אהיה אשר אהיה. I will be that which I will be, existing always as One from Its own perspective. And because of that, It is obligated to love existence and to hate every diminution opposed to existence, as It says, "For I do not desire that the dead die." And therefore, [too,] It is obligated to love equity and justice, which have existence as their endpoint, and to hate iniquity and cruelty, which bend crookedly toward loss and diminution, and so, hates the Egyptians' violence and cruelty against you.
Behold, everything is bound together in one thing, and the mystery of the thing is Ehyeh. It includes everything...the sum of all, hidden and not revealed.
This was the holy path of Abraham our father, peace be upon him, who did not want to observe “a commandment that has been learned by rote” (Isaiah 29:13), that is, he did not want to learn from his father Terach to worship in an idolatrous manner. Rather, he wanted to ascertain reality through his own effort and his own capacity. So it was that at first he thought the sun was the Sovereign over everything. And then he saw it setting on one day, and on the next day, he saw it rising from the east just as on the previous day, and so he came to understand that the sun must also have a Sovereign and a Master. And so too with the moon and the stars and all of the planets – until he attained, from the depth of his own wisdom, an awareness of the Holy Blessed One, who is Sovereign and Creator of all.
In the same way, when Isaac our father saw Abraham his father, he did not want to follow commandments that have been learned only by rote or by habit. So he too followed in Abraham’s path, and investigated the reality of Divinity according to his own holy path, until he perceived the reality of the Blessed Holy One. And similarly, Jacob did not want to follow commandments that have been learned only by rote or by habit, doing like the previous generation without coming to an understanding through his own intellectual and spiritual capacity.
This is why there are many names for God. For everyone, must worship God in his or her own way and must find his or her own name for the Holy Blessed One.
And so, Abraham our father, peace be upon him, whose worship was characterized by the attribute of love and kindness, and by the recognition of God’s greatness, called God “hagadol” (“the Great One”). And Isaac, whose worship was characterized by the attribute of awe and fear, called God “hagibor” (“the Mighty One”). And Jacob, in his own way, worshipped by calling God “hanora” (“the Awesome One”). This is the source of “hagadol, hagibor, v’hanora.” “The great, mighty, and awesome One”. This suggests that each one of the ancestors called God according to his or her own spiritual qualities and capacities.
In this way, we come to explain what Moses said to the Blessed Holy One when he spoke of Israel asking for God’s name. When they ask what they should call You, they are asking what they should call You, given their own spiritual qualities, that they may be able to worship You according to those qualities. That is what it means when Moses asks: “What is Its Name?” and “What shall I say to them? (Exodus 3:13)
And God said to Moses, “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh. I will be what I will be. And God said, “So shall you speak to the children of Israel: Ehyeh [I will be] sent me to you.” (Exodus 3:14) The meaning of the name Ehyeh is: “I will be called by each person according to his or her own spiritual qualities.
To listen to the God who says "I shall be" is to surrender the illusion that we are masters of our own fate. It is to open ourselves and to trust completely. It is not to trust that any particular result is the one that will occur, but to trust that whatever the result, the One will be there in it.
Future Tense – How The Jews Invented Hope
Rabbi Sacks
...Human beings are the only life form capable of using the future tense. Only beings who can imagine the world other than it is, are capable of freedom. And if we are free, the future is open, dependent on us. We can know the beginning of our story but not the end. That is why, as God is about to take the Israelites from slavery to freedom, God tells Moses that His name is ‘I will be what I will be.’
In such a worldview, God is not outside the system as some unchanging, eternal abstraction. Instead, God permeates every aspect of becoming, indeed grounds all becoming by inviting us and every level of reality toward our own optimal possibilities. The future remains open, through God’s lure, to our own decisions of how or what we will choose next. God, then, uses a persistent, persuasive power, working in each of us (and all creation at every level) to nudge us toward the best possible outcome. But God’s power is not coercive and not all powerful. God cannot break the rules or unilaterally dictate our choices. Having created and then partnered with this particular cosmos, God is vulnerable to the choices that each of us makes freely as co-creators.
Rabbi Toba Spitzer, originally published in the CCAR Journal, Winter 2012
[At] the Burning Bush, God is described as the Power of Becoming itself. When Moshe asks for a name for the divinity that has called to him, he learns that God is called “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh,” “I will be that I will be.” These verses are a kind of biblical proof text for Whitehead’s contention that God is the ultimate Source of all possibility and potentiality in the universe. [Alfred North Whitehead was the originator of "Process Theology" - Rav Jeremy] In the words of our liturgy, Ehyeh is that which m’chadeish b’cholyom tamid maaseih b’reishit (renews each and every day—in every moment—the work of creation). Without this ongoing, dynamic Power, the created universe would be incapable of unfolding and evolving as it has been since the moment of the Big Bang. The God of the Torah, and the God of our daily experience of the world, is not an abstract, unchanging, and immutable Unmoved Mover, but That which allows the universe to unfold in all of its dazzling complexity. Process theology echoes this traditional Jewish notion and gives it resonance with contemporary understandings of the dynamism of physical reality, and the truth of evolution in the biological realm.
We are called into presence by the sudden knowledge that the ground upon which we stand is holy. We are commanded to take off our shoes for nothing must come between us and this sacred ground. We are called into prophecy as we receive the great name, which is the Ground of Being- Ehyeh Asher Eheh. Standing on that ground we are sent to do the work of liberation, freeing ourselves from societal expectations of what is deemed "normal."
The blessing of Shemot sends us to a work that to "normal mind" seems impossible.