Exodus 3:14
Exodus 3:1414God 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.’”
JWs treat as the foundation for God's personal name (Jehovah/Yahweh), derived from the Hebrew "I Am Who I Am" or "I Will Be What I Will Be." The Watchtower denies any connection between this divine self-identification and Jesus' ego eimi statements in John's Gospel, arguing that Jesus' "I am" claims are simple self-identification, not divine-name claims.
God reveals himself at the burning bush as ehyeh asher ehyeh — "I AM WHO I AM" — the ultimate declaration of self-existent, eternal being. The Septuagint renders this as ego eimi ho on ("I am the one who is"). Jesus' unpredicated ego eimi statements in John's Gospel (8:24, 8:28, 8:58, 13:19) echo this divine self-designation. In , Jesus says "before Abraham came into existence, I am" — and the Jews understood exactly what he claimed, picking up stones for blasphemy. has Jehovah using the same phrase: "I am the same One" (NWT) — the Hebrew ani hu rendered ego eimi in the LXX. Jesus stakes eternal destiny on believing this claim: "if you do not believe that I am he, you will die in your sins" (). The hostile witnesses understood the claim better than modern JWs do.
NWT renders ehyeh asher ehyeh as "I Will Become What I Choose to Become" rather than "I AM WHO I AM" — a future / voluntative reading that obscures the self-existent-being declaration the Septuagint rendered egō eimi ho ōn ("I am the one who is"). Load-bearing for the argument: NWT also softens egō eimi there into "I have been," so the two texts no longer obviously point to each other. Virtually every major English translation preserves the present-tense self-existent "I AM" at , which lets the John 8 egō eimi claims echo back to the divine name.