Psalms 83:18

83:18 Then they will know ¹  that you alone are the Lord, ² 

the sovereign king ³  over all the earth.

Isaiah 42:8

The Lord Intervenes

42:8 I am the Lord! That is my name!

I will not share my glory with anyone else,

or the praise due me with idols.

Isaiah 44:6

The Absurdity of Idolatry

44:6 This is what the Lord, Israel’s king, says,

their protector, ⁴  the Lord who commands armies:

“I am the first and I am the last,

there is no God but me.

Isaiah 52:5-6

52:5 And now, what do we have here?” ⁵  says the Lord.

“Indeed my people have been carried away for nothing,

those who rule over them taunt,” ⁶  says the Lord,

“and my name is constantly slandered ⁷  all day long.

52:6 For this reason my people will know my name,

for this reason they will know ⁸  at that time ⁹  that I am the one who says,

‘Here I am.’”

John 8:58

8:58 Jesus said to them, “I tell you the solemn truth, ¹⁰  before Abraham came into existence, ¹¹  I am!” ¹² 

Revelation 1:4

1:4 From John, ¹³  to the seven churches that are in the province of Asia: ¹⁴  Grace and peace to you ¹⁵  from “he who is,” ¹⁶  and who was, and who is still to come, ¹⁷  and from the seven spirits who are before his throne,

¹ tn After the preceding jussives (v. 17), the prefixed verbal form with prefixed vav (ו) indicates purpose (“so that they may know”) or result.

² tn Heb “that you, your name [is] the Lord, you alone.”

³ tn Traditionally “the Most High.”

⁴ tn Heb “his kinsman redeemer.” See the note at 41:14.

⁵ tn Heb “and now what [following the marginal reading (Qere)] to me here?”

⁶ tn The verb appears to be a Hiphil form from the root יָלַל (yalal, “howl”), perhaps here in the sense of “mock.” Some emend the form to יְהוֹלָּלוֹ (yÿhollalo) and understand a Polel form of the root הָלַל meaning here “mock, taunt.”

⁷ tn The verb is apparently a Hitpolal form (with assimilated tav, ת) from the root נָאַץ (na’ats), but GKC 151-52 §55.b explains it as a mixed form, combining Pual and Hitpolel readings.

⁸ tn The verb is understood by ellipsis (note the preceding line).

⁹ tn Heb “in that day” (so KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV).

¹⁰ tn Grk “Truly, truly, I say to you.”

¹¹ tn Grk “before Abraham was.”

¹² sn I am! is an explicit claim to deity. Although each occurrence of the phrase “I am” in the Fourth Gospel needs to be examined individually in context to see if an association with Exod 3:14 is present, it seems clear that this is the case here (as the response of the Jewish authorities in the following verse shows).

¹³ tn Grk “John.” The word “From” is not in the Greek text, but has been supplied to indicate the sender of the letter.

¹⁴ tn Grk “Asia”; in the NT this always refers to the Roman province of Asia, made up of about one-third of the west and southwest end of modern Asia Minor. Asia lay to the west of the region of Phrygia and Galatia. The words “the province of” are supplied to indicate to the modern reader that this does not refer to the continent of Asia.

¹⁵ tn It is probable that the ὑμῖν (Jumin) applies to both elements of the greeting, i.e., to both grace and peace.

¹⁶ tc The earliest and best mss (Ì^18vid א A C P 2050 al lat sy co) lack the term “God” (θεοῦ, qeou) between “from” (ἀπό, apo) and “he who is” (ὁ ὤν, Jo wn). Its inclusion, as supported by the bulk of the Byzantine witnesses, is clearly secondary and a scribal attempt to achieve two things: (1) to make explicit the referent in the passage, namely, God, and (2) to smooth out the grammar. The preposition “from” in Greek required a noun in the genitive case. But here in Rev 1:4 the words following the preposition “from” (ἀπό) are in another case, i.e., the nominative. There are two principal ways in which to deal with this grammatical anomaly. First, it could be a mistake arising from someone who just did not know Greek very well, or as a Jew, was heavily influenced by a Semitic form of Greek. Both of these unintentional errors are unlikely here. Commenting on this ExSyn 63 argues: “Either of these is doubtful here because (1) such a flagrant misunderstanding of the rudiments of Greek would almost surely mean that the author could not compose in Greek, yet the Apocalypse itself argues against this; (2) nowhere else does the Seer [i.e., John] use a nom. immediately after a preposition (in fact, he uses ἀπό 32 times with the gen. immediately following).” The passage appears to be an allusion to Exod 3:14 (in the LXX) where God refers to himself as “he who is” (ὁ ὤν), the same wording in Greek as here in Rev 1:4. Thus, it appears that John is wanting to leave the divine name untouched (perhaps to allude to God’s immutability, or as a pointer to the Old Testament as the key to unlocking the meaning of this book), irrespective of what it “looks” like grammatically. The translation has placed the “he who is” in quotation marks to indicate to the reader that the syntactical awkwardness is intentional. (For further comments, see ExSyn 63).

¹⁷ tn BDAG 106 s.v. ἀπό 5.d states: “The expr. εἰρήνη ἀπὸ ‘ὁ ὢν καὶ ὁ ἦν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος’ Rv 1:4 is quite extraordinary. It may be an interpretation of the name Yahweh already current, or an attempt to show reverence for the divine name by preserving it unchanged, or simply one more of the grammatical peculiarities so frequent in Rv.”