Genesis 32:29 And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray you, your name. And he said, Why is it that you do ask after my name?… This answer of the Being — "Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after My name?" — what does it mean? So far as I can judge, it is the same reply that was given long afterward to the wise and learned Moses — "When I speak to the people, who shall I say hath sent me? What is Thy name? .... I am that I am. This shalt thou say, I AM hath sent me unto you"; that is, as I think, "I am, the nameless One, the One who refuses to be named, whose being transcends all description." The highest revelation of God must consist of two sides — the apprehensible, the inapprehensible. God must be the apprehensible and inapprehensible God. Throughout the Bible He is introduced generally with the definition and distinction of a high man; He talks, acts, feels before us as plainly as any character in the history, and we have the satisfaction of the clearest knowledge. But were this all, it would not have been God, and would have ended in the rankest idolatry. So in this singular tale of Jacob — so far back — for the first time, I think, is there a revelation of the infinite, unspeakable God, manifested so simply in the fact that He refuses to be or cannot be revealed. "Wherefore?" "I am." (A. G. Mercer, D. D.) He blessed him there. — Parallel Verses KJV: And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. |
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