The Tetragrammaton

The Tetragrammaton, YHWH, is a verb. The name God condescended to put into human language had a tense, was in the first-person, and wasn't a "person, place, or thing" but an action.

Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?'" God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.'" God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, 'The LORD, the God of your fathers - the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob - has sent me to you.' This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation."

'I AM WHO I AM' is the translation of the Hebrew 'ehyeh 'asher 'ehyeh (YHWH is the transliteration). Ehyeh is the first-person, imperfect form of the verb "to be" while 'asher is a relative particle.

English contains neither an imperfect verb tense or a relative particle.

English contains three main verb tenses: past, present, and future. Actions in English either have happened, are happening, or will happen in the future. The name "imperfect" comes from the Latin word imperfectus which means "incomplete". The imperfect tense of a verb then denotes an action which has begun at some time in the past and which is ongoing.

Asher is a relative particle - something else not found in the English language. A particle is "a word that has a grammatical function but does not fit into the main parts of speech (i.e. noun, verb, adverb). Particles do not change. [for] example: The infinitive 'to' in 'to fly'". "A relative clause is a kind of subordinate clause that contains an element whose interpretation is provided by an antecedent on which the subordinate clause is grammatically dependent".

In other words, the "relative" aspect of asher means the interpretation of the second ehyeh depends upon its usage the first time - or, the interpretation of the second I AM depends upon the the interpretation of the first I AM. Asher itself means something along the lines of who, which, what, in order that, because, or since.

The verb "to be" has been called the most irregular verb because it usually a linking verb showing the condition of the subject as in "I am tall". When shorn of the link to the condition of the subject, it denotes existence, e.g., "he is" means he currently exists or "she was" means she did exist but is now dead.

The name by which God chose to give himself in human language is "I exist because I exist". I like to picture it as this primordial all-powerful utterance: "I AM" - perhaps I am existence itself. The name God gave himself is an action - He is being. And his own action of being is entirely reliant on his own act of being, it does not rely on anything else.

His name is the basis for the doctrine of aseity.