I AM

The phrase 'I am what I am' echoes the divine name, with Paul using it to ground his identity not in his achievements or his past but entirely in what God's grace has made him — a radical statement of dependent selfhood.

The present tense "I am" carries weight here as Paul refuses to distance himself from his sinful past — his ongoing awareness of being the "worst" sinner reflects a deepening, not diminishing, sense of how much grace he requires.

The phrase appears here in David's insistence that all his battle strength was sourced in God, not himself — a deflection of glory that echoes the divine self-sufficiency behind the name I AM.

The phrase 'I am' here captures Ahasuerus's implicit self-declaration — his feast is an attempt to assert his own supremacy, a posture that ironically echoes the divine name he has no claim to.

I AM surfaces here as God's personal identification with the vulnerable — declaring himself the safety net for foreigners, widows, and orphans, and warning that those who harm them will answer directly to him.

The phrase is used here to describe the burnt offering as the total-surrender posture — holding nothing back — echoing the nature of God himself, who gives fully and withholds nothing from his people.

I AM is God's direct answer to Moses' question about His name — an assertion of pure, self-sustaining existence that sets the God of Israel apart from every other deity in the ancient world.

The phrase appears here colloquially in the commentary's rhetorical point — the contrast is between rushing into worship exactly as one is versus pausing to acknowledge the sacred space being entered.

The divine self-identification intensifies the severity of God's declaration here — when the one who defines existence itself says 'I am against you,' it is the most absolute form of opposition possible.

The divine name appears here as the closing declaration that ties the entire chapter together — every act of judgment in Ezekiel drives toward this recognition, that the God who was forgotten and betrayed is still the Lord God.

The divine name 'I am the Lord' appears as the closing refrain of all four oracles — each judgment ends with this declaration, asserting that every nation will ultimately recognize God's sovereignty.

The phrase echoes Tyre's own self-declaration — 'I am perfect' — a human city borrowing the language of divine self-sufficiency, which is precisely what makes it so dangerous.

The divine name 'I AM' appears here as God's self-identification — 'I am God Almighty' — grounding the entire covenant in who God is rather than in Abraham's circumstances or performance.

God's self-identification as 'I am with you' echoes the divine name revealed to Moses — asserting not just presence but the active, covenant-keeping character of the God who makes unconditional promises.

The phrase echoes God's self-identification as the one who is and was and will be — here God declares himself as God Almighty, grounding the covenant promises in his own unchanging nature.

The divine 'I am' resonates here with its full Exodus weight — when God says 'I am with you,' the name carries the covenant-presence of Yahweh, the same God who led Israel out of Egypt and now re-engages a struggling remnant.

I AM appears here as the reason God's love transcends human limits — 'I am God and not a man' is the theological anchor for why divine compassion can hold both justice and tenderness without collapse.

God invokes his covenant identity here — 'I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt' — to remind Ephraim that their wealth came from him, not their own cleverness.

Babylon usurps this divine phrase — "I am, and there is no one besides me" — which belongs to God alone, revealing that her real sin is claiming the kind of absolute, unaccountable existence that only God possesses.

The divine name 'I AM' appears here as God's closing declaration after recounting decades of exile — three quiet words asserting that the God who seemed absent has been present all along and is now making himself known.

The divine name echoes here as God's personal pledge of presence — not triggered by fasting or ritual, but by the removal of oppression and care for the vulnerable.

I AM appears here as the divine name underlining the speaker's absolute resolve — this is not a human vow but the self-existent God declaring he is not finished and will not move on from his people.

The divine self-identification appears here in God's declaration that he is 'weary of relenting' — underscoring that the one who has been patient is the eternal God whose mercy has genuine, exhaustible limits within time.

The divine name surfaces here in the oath formula — 'As the Lord lives' — which God says will be redefined around a new exodus event, reasserting his identity through an act of restoration that eclipses even Egypt.

I AM is deployed three times in God's triple declaration of opposition — 'I am against' the copycats, the self-speakers, and the reckless liars — using the divine name to underscore the personal, weighty nature of his opposition.

I AM appears here as God's self-identification in the declaration 'I am a father to Israel' — grounding the promise to bring home the blind, lame, and pregnant in his own divine, relational identity.

The phrase 'I am' here carries existential weight in Job's declaration that God 'knows the path I'm walking' — it is Job asserting his own known presence before an all-seeing God even in the midst of divine silence.

Job uses the language of self-declaration — 'here is my signature, I am who I say I am' — staking his entire identity on the record he has just laid out before God.

The divine name appears here as a wordplay anchor — Job's closing plea that his friends stop pretending he is okay echoes the sacred 'I am,' grounding his cry for honest witness in his own God-given identity.

The I AM declaration 'I am the resurrection and the life' is Jesus' most direct claim yet in John's Gospel that he does not merely point to divine power — he is the source of it, present now.