By Mitch Miller, January 10, 2026
There are many opinion as to what is the most important verse in the Torah.
Rabbi Akiva said it’s “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Lev 19:18)
Ben Zoma said it is the Shema.
Ben Azzai said its “This is the book of the generations of man.”
And there are many others.
None of the Sages voted in the Most Valuable Verse competition for the verses that I’m interested in, specifically, the question and answer about names in Chapter 3, v. 6, and 13-14, pages 329-330 in Etz Chayim.
Which is perfectly fine with me, since I approach Torah from the p’shat point of view, with a little bit of Anthro minor from grad school back in the early Bronze Age thrown in. Which means I read the Torah as though it is a true account of historical events, with, of course, all the difficulties that historians have always faced, doing the best job they can at getting things right – but not through the rabbinic eye.
Let’s look at this whole dialog about the identification of God. First, in verse 6 , God identifies Himself.
“I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.
It should be pretty clear to Moses whose talking to him, right? Apparently not.
While Moshe is trying to get out of leading the children of Israel out of Egypt, he comes up with a question which is very jarring and very indicative of ideas and practices far removed from Judaism.
“When I come to the children of Israel and say to them the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they say to me, what is his name, what shall I say to them?”
Every time I read that, it brings me to a complete halt. Wouldn’t Moshe tell them that the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob sent him? Isn’t that enough? Have they completely forgotten their heritage?
It doesn’t seem so. Clearly they know they are the children of Israel, the Hebrews, They lived in a particular area, they were sheepherders and cattlemen, as opposed to the Egyptians, who were for he most part farmers, as we learn from the story of Joseph.
So how do we explain the question? It seems to me that it can only be explained in terms of the absorption of the Israelites of some the surrounding pagan culture, or more specifically, magic-based culture, including Egyptian culture: specifically, the notion of secret names.
B’nai Israel were perfectly aware of pagan culture – after all, Abraham came from a polytheistic culture.
Moshe is gone for 40 days receiving the Torah, and what do the Israelites do? They build an idol and have an orgiastic festival around it, just like the rituals of their pagan neighbors.
In addition to their long interaction with their pagan neighbors in and around Canaan, the Israelites have spent centuries in Egypt. They’ve lived among their neighbors (Ex. 4:22), talked over the back fence, they’ve watched the Egyptian festivals, priesthood, and observances, and they inevitably will have picked up some Egyptian ideas and words, just like they eat bagels and cream cheese in Evansville, Indiana, and the Wall Street Journal uses “shlep” without definition, on its editorial page.
One of the elements of pagan culture is the concept of a “Secret Name.” The idea is that knowing a person, demon, or god’s secret name gives you power over them.
As Egyptologist Franz Cumont wrote, “if a divinity was invoked according to the correct forms, especially if one knew how to pronounce its real name, it was compelled to act in conformity to the will of its priest. The sacred words were an incantation that compelled the superior powers to obey the officiating person, no matter what purpose he had in mind.” Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, (1911), p.93.
As we see from v.6, God has made a perfectly clear and understandable identification. It seems pretty conclusive that Moshe is asking God for His Secret Name, either because Moshe believes that it will give him power over God, or because he believes the Israelites will want it for the same reason.
So, how does God answer this presumptuous question?
We know quite a bit about gods and goddesses among Israel’s neighbors. Egypt had the most elaborate system, with literally dozens of deities, each specializing in a particular life-cycle event, condition, or area of behavior. During the time of Israel in Egypt the gods were very localized to Egypt.
Similarly, while the gods of Canaan are by no means as numerous as the Egyptian, they are quite localized as well: we see Ba’al-Peor, Ba’al-Zephon, Ba’al-berit, Ba’al-this and Ba’al-that. In Judges 11:24, we also see Yiftach, a flawed hero of the Israelites, trying to negotiate a peace with the Ammonites, saying to the king of the Amorites, “Do you not hold what Chemosh your god gives you to possess?” In other words, each tribe and city-state had its own as well.
This is what makes God’s answer to Moshe so important. God is saying that His real name is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God’s answer to Moshe’s question is:
3:13-14 “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh.” “I AM THAT I AM.” “You tell them Ehyeh – I AM” sent you.!”
The answer is powerful, blunt, and unheard of – it’s not seen anywhere else, before or after, in the Torah. This is a unique and explosive answer in the context of its day.
God is saying, “No! I’m not just the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I’m not just the god of your little tribe. I am not the god of sun, or moon, or rain, or beauty or war. I am the only God. I am the God of existence itself. I am extra-universal and extra-temporal. I am omniscient and omnipresent, and I am not exclusive to the Children of Israel. I AM!”
Someone will inevitably point me to Rashi’s determination that Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh should be translated as future perfect tense: “I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE”
What is implicit in Rashi’s reading of the passage? Are Rashi and the commentators who follow him rejecting the breadth of I AM? Rashi limits God’s actions to the future and to the Jewish people. He says “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh means “I will be with you (the Israelites) in this trouble, in the house of bondage” and so forth.
Rashi seems to minimize the notion of the God who controls the entire universe and the entire course of time – without a doubt the most radical, mind-boggling idea in the history of religion. But why?
I AM is a necessary precursor to the Second, Third, and Fourth Commandments, the mainstay of Jewish anti-paganism:
“You shall have no other gods besides Me
You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth.
You shall not bow down to them or serve them…”
By limiting Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh to the future and to the Israelites in Egypt, is Rashi trying to soften the gross failure of the Israelites to observe these Mitzvot?
Throughout the Tanakh, we see the Israelites constantly going back to pagan practices; worshiping Ba’alim and Ashterots and setting up Terebinths and all kinds of other non-Jewish practices. Every time you turn your back they’re doing that stuff.
The Israelites get to Shtittim, and right away the Israelite men start to party down with the Moabite women in traditional pagan worship.
Solomon, the “wisest man who ever lived,”™ personally rewarded by God, builder of the Temple, allowed his foreign wives to build shrines to their gods, and, according to the text, participated in their rites. Even from peoples who had been enemies of Israel; and who, if the description in the Prophets is correct, still practiced infanticide.
Certainly there were always stalwarts – not only prophets, but some of the kings and some of the people – who held to the Commandments that there is only one God and that God is not a localized national God but is a universal God, that is
I AM.
It doesn’t appear from the Tanakh that there is a solid majority who reject paganism until the time of the Maccabees. That’s what the Maccabean revolt is all about – rejecting the polytheistic paganism of the Greeks and accepting only I AM. And by the time of the Roman occupation, the vast majority of Jews say no to pagan sacrifices, no to god-emperor statutes in the Temple.
Today, we like to think that the Abrahamic world – Jews, Christians and Muslims – follows I AM, the extra-universal, extra-temporal, non-exclusive only God. But look at the billboards, look at the ads, look at the videogames and the headlines. I would join with those who think that Astarte, Mammon, and Moloch have more followers today than in the days of our ancestors. I would suggest that we turn again to I AM THAT I AM.