God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM,” and he said, “You shall tell the children of Israel this: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
⛓ Read Exodus 3 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion6
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
Jesus' 'It is I (ego eimi); do not be afraid' atop the storm reads, in John's idiom, as the divine self-naming 'I AM.' High Coherence with the chapter's later absolute 'I am' sayings; the theophanic-on-the-water setting elevates the otherwise ordinary phrase to divine self-disclosure.
High confidenceJesus' absolute 'I am' (ego eimi) before the arresting party, at which they fall back, deploys the divine self-naming of the burning bush as rendered in the LXX (ego eimi ho on). The soldiers' collapse functions as a theophanic reaction, and John's repeated, climactic placement of ego eimi gives high Volume and Coherence with the Gospel's I-am Christology.
High confidenceGod reveals his name 'I AM' (egō eimi) to Moses. Jesus' self-identification 'It is I' (egō eimi) on the water, joined to the theophanic passing-by, evokes the divine Name as reassurance. The phrase plus the do-not-be-afraid formula marks a deliberate I-AM theophany.
High confidenceJesus' self-identification, 'It is I' (egō eimi), reprises the divine self-naming 'I AM' given to Moses at the bush. Combined with the sea-walking theophany and 'Don't be afraid,' the egō eimi reads as a claim to the divine name and presence.
High confidence'Who is and who was and who is to come' expands the divine Name of Exod 3:14 (LXX ho ōn, 'the one who is') into a three-tense formula. High thematic coherence on the eternal self-existent God; John adds 'who was' and 'who is to come' to render the Tetragrammaton's timelessness, a known Targumic/Hellenistic-Jewish expansion.
High confidenceThe repeated 'who is and who was and who is to come' restates the Exod 3:14 Name (LXX ho ōn). Recurrence from 1:4 raises verbal volume; here joined to 'the Almighty' (LXX pantokratōr), the standard rendering of 'Yahweh of Armies / El Shaddai.'
High confidenceEcho4
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
“Who was and who is and who is to come” is widely read as a temporal paraphrase of the divine Name revealed at the bush — the ehyeh / 'I AM' of Exod 3:14 — expanded across the three tenses in line with Targumic and Hellenistic-Jewish triple-time glosses of the Tetragrammaton. Coherence is high; this is a contested-but-common scholarly identification. NOTE: text supplied from WEB, NOT fetched live (rate-limit avoidance) — flag for verification. LXX Exod 3:14 ego eimi ho on ('the Being One') is itself the ontological reading Rev's formula presupposes.
Medium confidenceThe water-angel's 'who is and who was' (16:5) draws on the divine name formula rooted in 'I AM,' the eternal Holy One whose self-naming guarantees the justice of judgment.
Medium confidenceThe divine self-naming 'I AM' stands behind John's recurring ego eimi, here in v26. Faint at this point (the absolute uses come later in John), but Availability and Coherence with John's theme are real.
Low confidenceJesus' bare 'I am' (ego eimi) in answer to the high priest may carry an overtone of the divine self-naming 'I AM' of the burning bush, especially given Mark's other ego-eimi sayings. The reading is contested, since the phrase functions primarily as a plain affirmative, but the loaded context invites the figural divine-name resonance.
Low confidence◇ Figural4
A typological pattern re-read in a later text — no verbal quotation, high figural coherence.
'Unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins' and 'then you will know that I am he' deploy the absolute egō eimi rooted in God's self-revelation 'I AM WHO I AM.' High Coherence with the chapter's climactic I AM in v.58; Jesus appropriates the divine Name as the object of saving faith.
High confidence'Before Abraham came into existence, I AM' (egō eimi) climactically claims the divine Name revealed at the burning bush, asserting timeless self-existence over against Abraham's createdness. Highest Volume of the chapter and total Coherence; the immediate attempt to stone him for blasphemy confirms the hearers grasped a divine self-identification.
High confidence'That when it happens, you may believe that I am he' (ego eimi) draws on the divine self-naming 'I AM.' The absolute ego eimi pervades John's Christology and here is tied to prediction-and-fulfillment as proof of identity. Coherence with the Johannine I-AM sayings is very high.
High confidence‘But you are the same’ (v. 12) — the divine immutability — figurally invokes the self-identical ‘I AM’ of Exod 3:14, the name of the unchanging God now predicated of the Son. No verbal volume; a contested figural reading scholars note behind Hebrews' immutability claims (cf. 13:8).
Low confidence