Before Abraham Was, I Am

This note is interpretation, not translation. Jesus says “I am” in two ways in John’s Gospel: with something after it, “I am the bread of life”, and with nothing after it, “before Abraham came to be, I am”. This note lays out both kinds from the Greek, says where the two words come from in the Hebrew scriptures and their Greek translation, and ends with what this book does with them. Everything in it is quoted; the one step that is a reading is marked as the note’s.

Two kinds of sentence. The Greek is egō eimi, “I am”, and on its own it is an ordinary thing to say. The man born blind says it when the neighbours argue over whether he is the beggar: “he kept saying, I am” (John 9:9), that is, “it is me”. Peter says it to Cornelius’s men, “I am the one you are looking for” (Acts 10:21). Gabriel says “I am Gabriel” (Luke 1:19). So the two words do not carry a divine name by themselves; what follows them, and what the hearers do next, decides what they mean. In John the words are on Jesus’ lips in twenty-three verses, and they fall into two kinds. In fourteen something follows: a picture of what He is. In nine nothing follows, and the sentence is left standing on the verb.

The seven pictures. Seven times He says what He is, and each saying comes with what a person does to have it. “I am the bread of life; the one who comes to me will never hunger, and the one who trusts in me will never thirst” (6:35; said again at 6:41, 6:48 and 6:51, where the bread is His flesh given for the life of the world). “I am the light of the world; the one who follows me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life” (8:12). “I am the door of the sheep … through me, if anyone enters, he will be saved, and will go in and go out and find pasture” (10:7, 10:9). “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep … I know my own and my own know me” (10:11, 10:14). “I am the resurrection and the life; the one who trusts in me, even if he dies, will live” (11:25). “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me” (14:6). “I am the true vine, and my Father is the farmer … I am the vine, you are the branches; the one who stays in me and I in him bears much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (15:1, 15:5). The verbs attached are come, trust, follow, enter, know, stay. None of the seven says “believe about me”; each names a thing done toward Him. The eighth saying with a predicate is not a picture: “I am the one who testifies about myself, and the Father who sent me testifies about me” (8:18).

The ones with nothing after. Nine verses have the two words bare. To the woman at the well, who has just said the Messiah is coming: “I am, the one speaking to you” (4:26). To the disciples on the water, at night, in the wind: “I am; stop being afraid” (6:20; Mark 6:50 and Matthew 14:27 report the same words). To the Jerusalem crowd: “unless you trust that I am, you will die in your sins” (8:24); “when you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am” (8:28); and, when they ask whether He has seen Abraham, “Amen, amen, I tell you, before Abraham came to be, I am” (8:58). To the twelve at the supper: “I am telling you now before it happens, so that when it happens you may trust that I am” (13:19). To the party that came to arrest Him: “I am” (18:5), “so when he said to them, I am, they went backwards and fell to the ground” (18:6), “I told you that I am; if then you are looking for me, let these go” (18:8). In each of these a reader can supply a word, “I am he”, and the sentence works. What the Gospel records is how it was heard. At 8:58 the tense is the point: Abraham “came to be” (an aorist, a thing that happened) and Jesus “am” (a present that does not end), and the next verse is “so they picked up stones to throw at him” (8:59), the response the law reserves for blasphemy (Leviticus 24:16; compare John 10:33, “you, being a man, make yourself God”). At 18:6 armed men fall to the ground at two words. At 8:24 and 13:19 there is nothing in the sentence for “he” to point to: they are to trust “that I am”, full stop. Mark has the same thing once, at the trial: “Are you the Anointed, the Son of the Blessed?” “I am; and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power” (14:61–62), and the high priest tears his clothes and says “you have heard the blasphemy” (14:63–64). And Jesus warns that the words will be counterfeited: “many will come in my name saying, I am, and will lead many astray” (Mark 13:6; Luke 21:8).

In the garden, before the arrest. The scene where the words do something is the arrest, and John tells it so that the two words are the centre of it. Judas comes with the cohort and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, “with lanterns and torches and weapons” (18:3). Jesus, “knowing everything that was coming on him, went out and said to them, Whom are you looking for?” (18:4). “Jesus the Nazarene.” “I am” (18:5). John stops the story to add that Judas, the one handing Him over, was standing with them, and then: “so when he said to them, I am, they went backwards and fell to the ground” (18:6). He has to ask a second time, “Whom are you looking for?”, and they give the same name (18:7), and He says, “I told you that I am; if then it is me you are looking for, let these men go” (18:8), which John reads as keeping His own word from the prayer of the night before, “of those you have given me I have lost none” (18:9; 17:12). Then Peter’s sword, and “the cup the Father has given me, shall I not drink it?” (18:10–11). Three things are in the telling. The ones with the weapons fall, and the one with no weapon is left standing and giving orders. He is not taken; He goes out to them, asks, answers, and is taken only after He has said “let these go”, as He had said, “no one takes it from me; I lay it down of myself” (10:18). And the answer that floored them is the plainest possible: in the mouth of anyone else, “I am” to “Jesus the Nazarene?” means “that is me”, and the arresting party plainly heard it so, since they got up and arrested Him. John does not say why they fell; he says that they did, at those words. The psalm has the picture, “when evildoers came near me to eat my flesh, my adversaries and enemies, they stumbled and fell” (Psalm 27:2; the Greek numbers it 26:2), and Luke has Jesus name the hour, “this is your hour, and the authority of darkness” (22:53), but neither is quoted here, and the note joins them only as likeness of scene.

Why they fell — Jon’s reading. John says that they fell and not why. Jon’s reading is that it was the “I am” itself: said with everything He is behind it, the words released His glory, and glory is weight, and the weight put them on the ground. And no one can stand before the glory of Jesus unless He grants it. Jon holds that last part less surely, but it seems that way to him, because in this book it happens to John, one of His closest friends: even John cannot stand under it.

What the scriptures give for it. Glory is weight in the Hebrew: kavod is from kaved, heavy. Eli “fell backwards … because the man was old and heavy” (1 Samuel 4:18), and Moses’ hands were “heavy” on the hill (Exodus 17:12), with the same root. Paul joins the two in Greek, where they are not one word: “an eternal weight of glory”, baros doxēs (2 Corinthians 4:17). People fall where the glory is. Ezekiel saw “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD; and I saw, and I fell on my face” (1:28), and fell again at 3:23, 43:3 and 44:4; the people fell on their faces when fire came out from before the LORD (Leviticus 9:24) and bowed to the ground when the glory was on the house (2 Chronicles 7:3). And where the glory fills a place, people cannot stand in it: “the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the house” (1 Kings 8:11); “Moses could not enter the tent of meeting … the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle” (Exodus 40:35); in this book, “the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the temple” (15:8). John says the glory is His: “we beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father” (1:14); at Cana He “revealed his glory” (2:11); Isaiah “saw his glory, and spoke about him” (12:41); and He prays for His own to “see my glory” (17:24). Hebrews calls Him “the radiance of the glory” (1:3).

John fell twice, and both times He lifted him. On the mountain, with Peter and James, “his face shone like the sun … and the disciples fell on their faces and were very afraid; and Jesus came and touched them and said, Get up, and stop being afraid” (Matthew 17:2, 6–7). In this book: “I fell at his feet like a dead man; and he put his right hand on me, saying, Stop being afraid; I am the first and the last” (1:17). The same fall, the same touch, the same “stop being afraid”, and in Revelation an “I am” after it. Whether the John of the mountain and the John of this book are one man is set out in His Servant John. Saul too “fell to the ground” at the light, and was told “rise and stand on your feet” (Acts 9:4; 26:16).

Standing, when it comes, is given, and how much of the glory is seen is His to decide. Moses asked, “show me your glory”, and was told “you cannot see my face, for no one can see me and live”; then: “while my glory passes by, I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed; then I will take away my hand, and you will see my back, but my face will not be seen” (Exodus 33:18, 20, 22–23). At Sinai the elders “saw the God of Israel … and against the nobles of the sons of Israel he did not stretch out his hand; they saw God, and ate and drank” (24:10–11): the text gives the reason they stood, that He did not lift His hand against them. John says it of the Son: “no one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known” (John 1:18). So where people see His glory and are not floored, as at Cana (John 2:11), the text is consistent with Jon’s answer, that it is up to Him. “The Spirit entered me … and set me on my feet” (Ezekiel 2:2). Daniel lay with his face to the ground; “a hand touched me and set me trembling on my knees … stand where you are; and when he had said this to me I stood up trembling” (Daniel 10:9–11). Jude ends on it: “to the one who is able to guard you from stumbling and to make you stand before his glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Saviour, through Jesus the Anointed our Lord” (Jude 24–25). Paul: “through him we have access by trust into this grace in which we stand, and we boast in the hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2). The prophets ask who can stand on the day He appears (Malachi 3:2), this book asks it at the sixth seal, “who is able to stand?” (6:17), and its next scene is a crowd no one could count “standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (7:9).

One difference in the telling is worth seeing. Everyone above falls forward, on the face, in fear or in worship. The arresting party “went backwards and fell to the ground” (18:6), eis ta opisō. In the Hebrew scriptures falling backward is what happens to the one who is judged or who stumbles: Eli (1 Samuel 4:18), the rider bitten at the heel (Genesis 49:17), and those to whom the word is given as a stumbling, “so that they go and stumble backward and are broken” (Isaiah 28:13). And then they stood up and arrested Him, because He let them (18:8; 10:18).

Red flag That the “I am”, carrying all He is, released His glory and that its weight is why they fell. John 18 does not use the word glory and does not give a reason; the falls before glory elsewhere are forward and in worship or fear, and these men fell backward and got up again. The nearest texts are John 1:14 and 12:41, which make the glory His, and 1 Kings 8:11, where glory is what no one can stand in.

Where the words come from. At the bush God gives Moses His name: אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה, ehyeh asher ehyeh, “I will be what I will be”, or “I am what I am”, and then “say to the sons of Israel, ehyeh has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14). The Greek translation renders it egō eimi ho ōn, “I am the One Who Is”, and “the One Who Is has sent me” (marked at 1:8). Then Isaiah. God’s own way of saying who He is in Isaiah 40 to 52 is אֲנִי הוּא, ani hu, “I am he”: “I, the LORD, am first, and with the last I am he” (41:4); “you are my witnesses, declares the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and trust me and understand that I am he; before me no god was formed, and after me there will be none” (43:10); “I, I am he who wipes out your transgressions for my own sake” (43:25); “to old age I am he, and to grey hair I will carry” (46:4); “I am he, I am first, I am also last” (48:12); “I, I am he who comforts you” (51:12); “therefore my people will know my name; therefore in that day, that I am he, the one speaking: here I am” (52:6); and before Isaiah, Moses’ song, “see now that I, I am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive” (Deuteronomy 32:39). In the Greek translation ani hu is rendered egō eimi at every one of these (Isaiah 43:10, 46:4, 48:12, 52:6, Deuteronomy 32:39; and doubled, egō eimi egō eimi, at 43:25 and 51:12), so the two words Jesus says bare are the two words a Greek reader of Isaiah had met as God’s “I am he”. Two of them stand very close to John. Isaiah 43:10 gives the purpose of God’s witnesses as “so that you may know and trust me and understand that I am he”; in the Greek, hina gnōte kai pisteusēte moi kai synēte hoti egō eimi. John has “so that … you may trust … that I am” (13:19, hina pisteuēte … hoti egō eimi), “unless you trust that I am” (8:24) and “you will know that I am” (8:28). The three verbs are Isaiah’s, and so is the clause “that I am”. What differs is the joining: in Isaiah the people trust me, and “that I am he” is what they come to understand; in John “that I am” is what they trust and know. Isaiah 52:6 in the Greek reads egō eimi autos ho lalōn, “I am he, the one speaking”, and John 4:26 is egō eimi, ho lalōn soi, “I am, the one speaking to you”, said in answer to “the Messiah is coming … he will announce everything to us” (4:25). How close this is: shared wording with the Greek Isaiah, not a quotation; John does not say “as it is written” at any of the nine.

In this book. Revelation has egō eimi in four verses, and every one of them has a predicate. “I am the Alpha and the Omega”, says the Lord God (1:8); “I am the first and the last” (1:17), Jesus, after “Stop being afraid”; “every assembly will know that I am the one who searches minds and hearts” (2:23); “I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star” (22:16). Twice more it is “I” with no verb at all: “I, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end” (21:6; 22:13). So the bare “I am” of John 8:58 and 18:5 is not in this book. What the book has instead is Isaiah’s sentence with the “he” filled in. “I am he, I am first, I am also last” (Isaiah 48:12) becomes, in Jesus’ mouth, “I am the first and the last” (1:17; marked there as Isaiah 44:6 and 48:12): the predicate of 1:17 is the clause that follows ani hu in Isaiah. Two smaller things. At 1:17 John “dropped at his feet like a dead man” and was told “Stop being afraid; I am the first …”, and the one earlier place where Jesus says “I am” and “stop being afraid” together is the water at night (John 6:20; Mark 6:50). And the name of Exodus 3:14 in its Greek form, ho ōn, “the One Who Is”, is in this book five times (1:4, 1:8, 4:8, 11:17, 16:5), and the grammar is bent to keep it whole (see the grey note at 1:4). The book never says Jesus is ho ōn; it says He is the first and the last, which is what Isaiah says of the one who says “I am he”.

Everything He is, without saying it every time — Jon’s reading. Jon reads the bare “I am” this way: it is a way of saying everything He is, without saying it every time. The sayings with a predicate show what the bare one leaves open, bread, light, door, shepherd, resurrection, way, vine, and that list is not closed; the bare form leaves the place after the verb empty so that everything else written of Him can stand there. How much longer the Bible would be if He had filled the place in each time can be counted. God or Jesus says “I am” of Himself in about 264 places of scripture. In the Hebrew Bible “I am the LORD”, ani YHWH or anokhi YHWH, is 215 words in 210 verses, 87 of them in Ezekiel and 52 in Leviticus; “I am he”, ani hu, is said by God in nine (Deuteronomy 32:39; Isaiah 41:4, 43:10, 43:13, 43:25, 46:4, 48:12, 51:12, 52:6); and ehyeh is three words at Exodus 3:14. In the New Testament egō eimi is on His lips in 37 verses: the 23 in John, Matthew 14:27 and 22:32, Mark 6:50 and 14:62, Luke 22:70 and 24:39, Acts 9:5, 18:10, 22:8 and 26:15, and the four of this book. The fullest short statement of what He is that scripture gives is Paul’s at Colossians 1:15–20, 112 words in the Greek; the seven pictures of John, said once each, are 141. Put Paul’s sentence in at every one of the 264 places and the Bible grows by about 29,600 words, three times the length of Revelation; put the seven pictures in and it grows by about 37,000. Those are two lists out of many. John says the arithmetic cannot be finished: “there are many other things Jesus did, which, if they were written one by one, I suppose the world itself would not have room for the books that would be written” (21:25; 20:30 says the same of the signs). So on this reading the bare “I am” is the shortest sentence in the book doing the most work: it names Him and leaves the rest to everything else that is written.

What is said of Him, that the bare “I am” leaves unsaid. John first: “all things came to be through him, and apart from him not one thing came to be that has come to be” (1:3); “the world came to be through him” (1:10). Then Paul. “In him all things were created, in the heavens and on the earth, the seen and the unseen, whether thrones or lordships or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him; and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16–17); the “before all things”, pro pantōn, sits beside John 8:58’s “before Abraham”, prin Abraam, the same thought in different words. “One God the Father, from whom are all things and we for him; and one Lord Jesus the Anointed, through whom are all things and we through him” (1 Corinthians 8:6); this is the context that matters, since Paul sets Father and Lord side by side with the same “all things”, and gives the Father “from” and Jesus “through”. “All the fullness was pleased to dwell in him” (Colossians 1:19); “in him dwells all the fullness of deity bodily” (2:9). The assembly is “the fullness of the one who fills all things in all” (Ephesians 1:23), and He ascended “so that he might fill all things” (4:10). “The Anointed is all and in all” (Colossians 3:11). Hebrews, which names no writer: “through whom he also made the ages … carrying all things by the word of his power” (1:2–3). And Paul of God: “from him and through him and to him are all things” (Romans 11:36). The same letters carry the other side of their own sentences, and a reader should see both: Colossians 1:15 calls Him “firstborn of all creation” in the line before “all things were created in him”, and 1 Corinthians 15:28 has the Son “subjected to the one who subjected all things to him, so that God may be all in all”. Red flag That the bare “I am” means everything He is. The texts above say all things were made through Him, hold together in Him and are filled by Him, and that the fullness dwells in Him; none of them is attached to an “I am”, and no verse says the bare saying carries them. The count is a count of places and of two lists, not a measure of what He is. The nearest texts are Colossians 2:9 and 3:11.

What this note reads, and what it does not say. This note’s reading is that John’s nine bare sayings are meant to be heard as Isaiah’s “I am he”, God’s own words, on Jesus’ lips. What carries it is in the text: the tense at 8:58, the stones at 8:59, the fall at 18:6, the know, trust and “that I am” of 8:24, 8:28 and 13:19 beside Isaiah 43:10, and the wording of 4:26 beside 52:6. What cuts against it is also in the text: the words are ordinary at 9:9 and Acts 10:21, and at 4:26, 6:20, 18:5 and 18:8 “I am he” or “it is I” reads naturally and no one reacts as to blasphemy. John never says “this is the Name”. The seven pictures are not in doubt; they are stated. Revelation does not use the bare form at all, so nothing here hangs on this book; what this book gives is Isaiah’s “first and last” in the same mouth. The title is Jesus’ sentence in English; the Greek says Abraham “came to be”, genesthai, not “was”, and the note keeps the Greek sense where it quotes the verse.