Reading Isaiah like an Early Christian (3): "It was no ambassador or angel but the Lord himself that saved them" (Isaiah 63:9)

Continuing our series on Christological texts in Isaiah, we turn to the rich and fascinating text that is Isaiah 63:9. We will first look at the text in its context in the Hebrew Bible and its translation in the Septuagint. We will then look at its reception in the New Testament before surveying its interpretation in the early Church.

Isaiah 63:9 in Context 

Isaiah 63:1-6 is a "divine warrior scene" in which a figure comes from Edom and "marches toward Zion wearing red garments, which at first glance appear regal (63:1) but actually are covered with the blood of the nations (63:3)."¹ Although the figure is not explicitly identified, the lofty language used of the figure and the connection with the earlier divine warrior scene in Isaiah 59:15b-21 (where the Warrior is explicitly YHWH) leaves no doubt as to his identity.² The Divine Warrior comes to save his people and to destroy their enemies.

The Divine Warrior scene ends at 63:6 and gives way to a "communal lament" that runs from 63:7-64:11. The lament "begins in hymnic style in verse 7 by urging the people to commemorate YHWH's glorious deeds," an appeal followed by "two historical reflections in verses 8-10 and vv. 11-14."³ 63:7-14 as a whole establishes "the covenantal nature of the human-divine relationship," strains in which are lamented in vv. 15-19a, eliciting a petition for God to visit Israel anew as he had once done at Sinai.⁴ Despite the shift from divine warrior scene in 63:1-6 to communal lament from 63:7-64:11, there are obvious connections between the two passages. Above all, "theophanic themes" involving YHWH's deliverance and judgment, past and present, are evident throughout.⁵

Isaiah 63:9 is a verse with significant textual difficulties in the Hebrew text. As Bogdan G. Bucur explains, the textual variations hinge on two short words, לא and ער:

In the former case, the question is whether to choose the ketiv לא ('not') or the qere, the homophone לו ('to him'). As for צר, the question is whether to accept the MT vocalization of צַר ('constraint,' 'distress,' 'affliction') or to vocalize it as צִיר, which would yield 'messenger.'⁶

Depending on the textual decision one makes and how one reads the syntax, one arrives at one of two quite different renderings:⁷

8 [...] and he became their savior. 9 In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. (RSV)

8 [...] and he became their savior 9 in all their affliction. It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. (NRSV)

The second of the above readings was followed by the Septuagint translators:

8 [...] And he became to them salvation out of all affliction. It was no ambassador or angel but the Lord himself that saved them, because he loved them and spared them; he himself ransomed them and took them up and lifted them up all the days of old.⁸

The idea is similar to that in Isaiah 35:4 LXX, the text we looked at in the previous article: "God...himself will come and save us." There is a notable difference, in that Isaiah 35:4 is a prophecy of the future whereas Isaiah 63:9 recalls past events—probably, above all, those of the Exodus. However, given the prominence of New Exodus language in Isaiah, the wider idea in this communal lament is that what God had done in the past, he will do in the future: "O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence" (64:1 NRSV).

What is particularly significant about the second reading of Isaiah 63:9 above—the one that the Septuagint followed and that was therefore dominant in early Christianity—is that it contrasts God's direct saving activity with the notion of his working through an agent such as a messenger or an angel. Bucur notes that this contrast also features in rabbinic Jewish exegesis of the Exodus story, with several rabbis insisting that it was the Holy One himself and no agent who undertook certain key acts of deliverance.⁹

Isaiah 63 in Revelation 19

Isaiah 63:9 is never quoted in the New Testament. The Divine Warrior Scene that shortly precedes it, however, is alluded to in Revelation 19. Interestingly, while the Divine Warrior in Isaiah 63:1-6 is undoubtedly God, Revelation 19 applies this imagery to Christ:

11 Then I saw heaven opened, and there was a white horse! Its rider is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and wages war. 12 His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name inscribed that no one knows but himself. 13 He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called The Word of God. 14 And the armies of heaven, wearing fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. 15 From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a scepter of iron; he will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, “King of kings and Lord of lords.” (Revelation 19:11-16 NRSV)

There is no mistaking that this figure wearing a robe dipped in blood and treading the winepress of the wrath of God is the figure described in Isaiah 63:2-3. And yet Isaiah 63:3-5 contains language similar to 63:9 about God working alone rather than through an agent or messenger: "I have trodden the winepress alone, and from the peoples no one was with me... I looked, but there was no helper; I was abandoned, and there was no one to sustain me, so my own arm brought me victory". It is difficult to understand how Revelation could identify the Divine Warrior of Isaiah 63:1-6 as someone other than God—unless there is someone other than God who is also fully divine, as the names "the Word of God" and "King of kings and Lord of lords" already suggest.¹⁰

Isaiah 63:9 in the Early Church

Irenaeus of Lyons, writing c. 180-185 C.E., comments thus on our passage: 

And Isaias says that those who served God are in the end to be saved through His name… And that He was Himself to bring about these blessings in person, Isaias declared in the words: Not an intercessor, nor an angel, but the Lord Himself hath given them life, because He loves them and has pity on them; He Himself redeemed them. (Proof of the Apostolic Preaching 88).¹¹

In his better-known work, Against Heresies, Irenaeus offers a similar interpretation: 

So again, that He who was to save us would not be purely a man, nor a being without flesh—for angels have no flesh—Isaiah announced by saying: "It is not an elder, nor an angel, but the Lord himself who will save them; because he loves them and spares them, himself will deliver them." (Adv. Haer. 3.20.4)¹²

The anonymous Epistle to Diognetus, usually grouped among the Apostolic Fathers but dated to c. 200 A.D., does not quote Isaiah 63:9 but probably alludes to it in the following words:

But the truly all-powerful God himself, creator of all and invisible, set up and established in their hearts the truth and the holy word from heaven, which cannot be comprehended by humans. To do so, he did not, as one might suppose, send them one of his servants or an angel or a ruler or any of those who administer earthly activities or who are entrusted with heavenly affairs, but he sent the craftsman and maker of all things himself, by whom he created the heavens, by whom he enclosed the sea within its own boundaries, whose mysteries all the elements of creation guard faithfully, from whom the sun was appointed to guard the courses that it runs during the day, whom the moon obeys when he commands it to shine at night, whom the stars obey by following the course of the moon, by whom all things are set in order and arranged and put into subjection, the heavens and the things in the heavens, the earth and the things in the earth, the sea and the things in the sea, fire, air, the abyss, creatures in the heights, creatures in the depths, creatures in between—this is the one he sent to them. (Ep. Diognetus 7.2)¹³

In his work On the Flesh of Christ, Tertullian, writing in the early third century, seeks to refute those who say that Christ was clothed with an angel. At the conclusion of his argument, he writes, "What more do we need, when we hear Isaiah crying out, 'Not an angel nor a delegate, but the Lord himself hath saved them?'" (De Carne Christi 14.6)¹⁴

Origen, the great Alexandrian exegete, quotes the passage a few decades later in his commentary on the Song of Songs. He regards the woman's longing for her lover as signifying the Church's longing for Christ himself and no mere minister: 

This is the content of the actual story, presented in dramatic form. But let us see if the inner meaning can also be fittingly supplied along these lines. Let it be the Church who longs for union with Christ… [after the Law] But, since the age is almost ended and His own presence is not granted me, and I see only His ministers ascending and descending upon me, because of this I pour out my petition to Thee, the Father of my Spouse, beseeching Thee to have compassion at last upon my love, and to send Him, that He may now no longer speak to me only but by His servants the angels and the prophets, but may come Himself directly and kiss me with the kisses of His mouth—that is to say, may pour the words of His mouth into mine, that I may hear Him speak Himself, and see Him teaching. The kisses are Christ’s, which He bestowed on His Church when at His coming, being present in the flesh, He in His own person spoke to her the words of faith and love and peace, according to the promise of Isaias who, when sent beforehand to the Bride, had said: Not a messenger, nor an angel, but the Lord Himself shall save  us. (Commentary on Song of Songs 1.1)¹⁵

Highlighting the similarity between Isaiah 35:4 (discussed in the previous article) and 63:9, Cyprian of Carthage—a contemporary of Origen—quotes the two texts in immediate succession in his list of proof texts supporting the proposition "That Christ our God should come as the Enlightener and Saviour of the human race" (Ad Quirinum 2.7).¹⁶

Conclusion

Isaiah 63:1-6 is a divine warrior scene that depicts YHWH's theophanic deliverance of Israel and wrathful judgment of her enemies. Following on that, Isaiah 63:7-64:11 is a communal lament that petitions God to make just such a theophanic intervention. It recalls how God has done this in the past, and one possible reconstruction of the text of Isaiah 63:9—which the Septuagint follows—emphasises that it was God himself and no mere agent (messenger or angel) who intervened.

Already in the Book of Revelation, the Divine Warrior of Isaiah 63:1-6—who had emphasised that he worked alone, because there was no helper—is interpreted as Jesus, the Word of God. In like manner, the Church Fathers of the second and third centuries consistently interpret the language of 63:9 ("It was no ambassador or angel but the Lord himself that saved them") as a reference to the Incarnation, in which the divine Son of God personally came in human flesh to save humanity from their enemies.

• 1 Matthew J. Lynch,  "Zion's Warrior and the Nations: Isaiah 59:15b-63:6 in Isaiah's Zion Traditions," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 70 (2008): 245, 256.
• 2 These two divine warrior scenes "form an inclusio around and are textually joined to chaps. 60-62," which speak of Zion's restoration (Lynch, "Zion's Warrior," 245).
• 3 Judith Gärtner, "'...Why Do You Let Us Stray from Your Paths...' (Isa 63:17): The Concept of Guilt in the Communal Lament Isa 63:7-64:11," in M. J. Boda, D. K. Falk & R. A. Werline (eds.), Seeking the Favor of God. Volume 1: The Origins of Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), 146.
• 4 Richard J. Bautsch, "Lament Regained in Trito-Isaiah's Penitential Prayer," in Boda, Falk & Werline, Seeking the Favor of God, 87.
• 5 Lynch, "Zion's Warrior," 259.
• 6 Bogdan G. Bucur, "The Lord Himself, One Lord, One Power: Jewish and Christian Perspectives on Isaiah 63:9 and Daniel 7:13," in Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism, ed. Andrei A. Orlov (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 241-42. The ketiv refers to the orthographic consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible, and the qere to the suggested vocalisation of the Masoretic Text.
• 7 In fact two further renderings are possible; see Bucur, "The Lord Himself," 242 for the details.
• 8 Moisés Silva, "Esaias," in New English Translation of the Septuagint, ed. Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 872. The Greek text reads: 8 [...] καὶ ἐγένετο αὐτοῖς εἰς σωτηρίαν 9 ἐκ πάσης θλίψεως. οὐ πρέσβυς οὐδὲ ἄγγελος, ἀλλʼ αὐτὸς κύριος ἔσωσεν αὐτούς διὰ τὸ ἀγαπᾶν αὐτοὺς καὶ φείδεσθαι αὐτῶν· αὐτὸς ἐλυτρώσατο αὐτοὺς καὶ ἀνέλαβεν αὐτοὺς καὶ ὕψωσεν αὐτοὺς πάσας τὰς ἡμέρας τοῦ αἰῶνος. (Septuaginta, ed. Joseph Ziegler [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983], 14:355.)
• 9 See Bucur, "The Lord Himself," 243-54.
• 10 On the latter title, see my article, "Lord of lords" and "King of kings" as Hebraic Superlatives.
• 11 Trans. Joseph P. Smith, S.J., St. Irenaeus: Proof of the Apostlic Preaching (Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1952), 102.
• 12 This is my translation of the French translation by Adélin Rousseau: "De même encore, que Celui qui devait nous sauver ne serait ni purement un homme, ni un être sans chair - car les anges n'ont pas de chair -, Isaïe l'a annoncé en disant: «Ce n'est pas un ancien, ni un ange, mais le Seigneur lui-même qui les sauvera, parce qu'il les aime et qu'il les épargne, lui-même les délivrera.»" (Adelin Rousseau, Irénée de Lyon: Contre les hérésies [Paris: Cerf, 2001]).
• 13 Trans. Bart D. Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers (2 vols.; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 2:145.
• 14 Trans. Ernest Evans, Tertullian's Treatise on the Incarnation (London: SPCK, 1956), 53.
• 15 Trans. R. P. Lawson, Origen, The Song of Songs: Commentary and Homilies (New York: Newman, 1956), 59-60.
• 16 Trans. A Library of the Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1840), 3:37.

'Believe that I Am': Encountering John's Christ in the Light of Isaiah (Part 3)

100-Word Summary

The seven 'I am' (egō eimi) sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of John are shown to contain striking allusions to deutero-Isaiah, implying that to understand their meaning we must see them as echoes of God's egō eimi sayings in the Septuagint version of Isaiah 40-55. Proceeding with this line of interpretation, we reach the conclusion that John presents Jesus as the God of Israel. Jesus' identification with God is not exhausted by his function as God's agent, since his 'I am' sayings are primarily about himself. Instead, they reflect his ontological status as the pre-existent divine Word and Son.

1. Introduction
2. ʾ^anî hûʾ and egō eimi in deutero-Isaiah  
3. The Meaning of egō eimi in Greek
4. The Seven egō eimi Sayings of Jesus in John
 4.1. John 8:24: 'If you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins'
 4.2. John 8:28: 'When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am'
 4.3. John 8:58: 'Before Abraham came into being, I am'
 4.4. John 13:19: 'so that when it happens you may believe that I am'
 4.5. John 6:20: 'I am; do not be afraid'
 4.6. John 4:26: 'I am—the one who is speaking with you'
 4.7. John 18:5-8: 'When he said to them, "I am," they turned away and fell to the ground'
5. Christological Implications  


Erratum: The author regrets that an earlier version of this article reported that the form of the verb ginomai in John 8:58 is egeneto (aorist indicative); it is in fact genesthai (aorist infinitive). The difference, however, has little bearing on the meaning in this case.

1. Introduction

In the first article in this series, we provided a brief introduction to the Book of Isaiah and the Gospel of John, and gave a very brief overview of the close literary relationship between them. In the second article, we went into much more detail about specific allusions to Isaiah in John, focusing primarily on a discussion between Jesus and the Pharisees in John 8:12-30. One of our key findings was that Jesus' language in this passage is saturated with allusions to Isaiah 43 in the Septuagint (an ancient Greek version of the Old Testament). In particular, the lines 'For if you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins' (John 8:24) and 'When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am' (John 8:28) were seen to be allusions to Isaiah 43:10 LXX ('so that you may know and believe and understand that I am'). In this article we are going to more closely study the intriguing expression 'I am' (Greek: egō eimi) as used by Jesus in the Gospel of John. The insight we bring from the previous study is that, in order to understand what egō eimi means in John, we must first understand what it means in Isaiah LXX.

Attempts to interpret the 'I am' (egō eimi) sayings in John, particularly in the context of theological debates over Jesus' deity, often focus on the question of whether the expression alludes to the Divine Name as explained to Moses in Exodus 3:14. This approach can easily become bogged down in the difficult question of what the Divine Name (in Hebrew, ʾęh^eyęh ʾ^ašęr ʾęh^eyęh) means. In deutero-Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55), however, we have a Hebrew expression that corresponds more exactly to egō eimi, that indeed is translated as egō eimi in the Septuagint. Moreover, we have already shown in Part 2 that at least one of the egō eimi sayings in John alludes to one of the egō eimi sayings in deutero-Isaiah. Thus, we may bracket out the issue of the Divine Name and and focus on what is known.

2. ʾ^anî hûʾ and egō eimi in deutero-Isaiah

The expression 'I am he' is used by God nine times in the Hebrew Bible:¹ once in Deuteronomy and eight times in deutero-Isaiah (Deut. 32:39;² Isa. 41:4;³ 43:10,⁴ 13,⁵ 25;⁶ 46:4;⁷ 48:12;⁸ 51:12;⁹ 52:6¹⁰).¹¹ In seven of these instances the Hebrew text is ʾ^anî hûʾ (literally, 'I he,' with the verb 'am' implied). The other two instances have the more emphatic ʾânōkî ʾânōkî hûʾ ('I, I [am] he'; these are Isa. 43:25 and 51:12).¹² The significance of the phrase in deutero-Isaiah, which always has God as its speaker, is summarised by Catrin H. Williams:

Deutero-Isaiah, who may have been inspired by the self-proclamation that brings the Song of Moses to its climax [Deut. 32:39], presents אני הוא as a succinct expression of Yahweh's uncontested claim to exclusive divinity. His unique capacity to predict and control events, having fulfilled his promises in the past (41:4; 43:10), serves as a guarantee to Israel that Yahweh will continue to support and deliver his people (43:13; 46:4), for he is the eternally active God, ראשון and אחרון a(41:4; 44:6; 48:1), the Creator of all things (48:13).¹³

The expression is used interchangeably with 'I am God' and 'I am YHWH' (see, e.g., Isa. 43:10-15); it is just as definitive a declaration of God's unique deity that separates him from all other reality. The Septuagint renders ʾ^anî hûʾ into Greek as egō eimi and ʾânōkî ʾânōkî hûʾ into Greek as the double egō eimi egō eimi. There are nine occurrences in the Septuagint of God's self-declaration egō eimi without a predicate.¹⁴ These are Deut. 32:39,¹⁵ Isa. 41:4,¹⁶ 43:10,¹⁷ 43:25,¹⁸ 45:18-19 (twice),¹⁹ 46:4 (twice),²⁰ and 51:12.²¹ (The list does not correspond exactly to the list of Hebrew ʾ^anî hûʾ/ʾânōkî ʾânōkî hûʾ passages above.)²² In Isaiah 47:8, 10 LXX, God twice accuses the daughter of Babylon of saying in her heart, 'I am (egō eimi), and there is no other,' and declares that destruction shall befall her.²³ The implication is that for anyone other than God to make such a declaration would be blasphemous. 'I am' (egō eimi) in these passages thus clearly functions as a 'theophanic formula,'²⁴ a claim to absolute uniqueness that only God can make.²⁵

3. The Meaning of egō eimi in Greek

It is important to note that the Greek phrase egō eimi has an mundane meaning in ordinary human conversation. It can function as a simple affirmation about oneself ('I am') or as a way of identifying oneself as a particular person under consideration ('I am he'; 'it is I'), which we will refer to as a 'self-identificatory affirmation' (SIA). In the Septuagint, this usage can be seen for instance in 1 Kingdoms (1 Samuel) 9:18-19. Saul approaches Samuel (whom he does not know) and says, 'Tell, now, which is the house of the seer?' To which Samuel replies, 'I am he' (egō eimi).²⁶ This ordinary SIA sense also occurs in the New Testament, including in John. After Jesus heals a blind beggar, others dispute whether the man before them is really the one who used to sit and beg. The man says, 'I am' (egō eimi, John 9:9). A number of other such occurrences can be found in the Synoptic Gospels, usually on the lips of Jesus or with reference to Messianic claims.²⁷

A key question, therefore, as we come to Jesus' use of egō eimi in John, is whether he is using it in the ordinary SIA sense, to identify himself as some person under consideration (e.g., the Messiah, or Jesus of Nazareth), or whether he is using it in the loftier sense of deutero-Isaiah, thus making a claim to deity, to be the one Lord God who created the world, who is eternal, and who will redeem Israel. The contention here is that in some of the passages a double meaning is present, and both meanings are in play. We saw in Part 1 that John is fond of double meanings, and we saw in Part 2 that Jesus' egō eimi saying in John 8:24 clearly alludes to God's egō eimi saying in Isa. 43:10 LXX (whereas the Pharisees miss the double meaning and, thinking Jesus means 'I am he' in the SIA sense, ask, 'Who are you?')

In what follows, we will examine the individual egō eimi sayings in John. We will argue that not only those in John 8:24, 28 but also several others contain echoes of deutero-Isaiah that allow us to recognise them as veiled divine claims.

4. The Seven egō eimi Sayings of Jesus in John

 4.1. John 8:24: 'If you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins' 

These two sayings will be discussed only briefly, since they were dealt with in Part 2. We found there that Jesus' discourse in John 8:12-30 contains numerous conceptual parallels with and allusions to deutero-Isaiah LXX. These include:

• Having light vs. walking in darkness (John 8:12 vs. Isa. 9:2, 50:10 LXX)
• God and his Servant as two witnesses (John 8:16-18 vs. Isa. 43:10 LXX)
• Contrast between those who belong to earth and the transcendent one (John 8:23 vs. Isa. 41:24; 55:9)²⁸
• The expression, 'in your sins' (John 8:24; Isa. 43:24 LXX)
• The expression, 'believe that I am' (John 8:24; Isa. 43:10 LXX)
• The expression, 'at/from the beginning the one who speaks' (John 8:25; Isa. 43:9, 45:19, 48:16 LXX)
• The reference to entering into judgment (John 8:26; Isa. 43:26 LXX)

Thus it is clear that the 'I am' saying of John 8:24 is rooted in an Isaianic background and above all in Isa. 43:10 LXX. Thus Jesus is claiming for himself precisely what God is claiming for himself with the 'I am' sayings of deutero-Isaiah: he is making the claim that 'I am God, and besides me there is none who saves' (Isa. 43:11 LXX). For that reason, to fail to believe in him is to forfeit salvation.²⁹

 4.2. John 8:28: 'When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am'

This saying falls within the same discourse as 8:24, and thus what we have already said above about the Isaianic background to this passage applies here. Moreover, in Part 2, we discussed the rich double meaning of the term 'lifted up' in John (crucified/exalted), which is also rooted in deutero-Isaiah. Thus the 'I am' saying of John 8:28 is also best understood in terms of this Isaianic background. Indeed, 'then you will realize that I am' repeats the idea of v. 24 (which was expressed negatively), and both echo Isa. 43:10 LXX with two of the three Greek verbs used there: 'so that you may know [John 8:28] and believe [John 8:24] and understand that I am.' What is new in John 8:28 is the paradoxical notion that it is above all through his death, his 'lifting up,' that Jesus' deity is recognizable.

 4.3. John 8:58: 'Before Abraham came into being, I am'

This saying is the climax of the discourse and dialogues of John 8:12-59. Vv. 12-30 contain an exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees, and vv. 31-59 continue uninterrupted with an exchange between Jesus and 'those Jews who believed in him' (though they prove instead to be hostile), apparently in the same setting. The focus of the discussion shifts to paternity (his and theirs), and especially their relationship to the patriarch Abraham. Jesus claims in John 8:56, 'Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad.' This remark parallels the Fourth Evangelist's editorial comment in John 12:41 (after quoting from Isaiah's throne vision in Isaiah 6), 'Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke about him.' Since this comment refers to Isaiah's actually having seenJesus (as the Lord high and lifted up in his temple), it is unlikely that in John 8:56, Jesus is referring merely to Abraham during his lifetime 'seeing' the Messiah with eyes of prophetic faith. A more direct communion between Abraham and Jesus is in view. Sensing this, 'the Jews' respond with incredulity: 'You are not yet fifty years old and you have seen Abraham?' This produces the climactic claim: 'Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came into being, I am.'

The earlier 'I am' sayings in John 8:24, 28 had seemingly not been understood by Jesus' opponents. As already mentioned, the Pharisees' question 'Who are you?' in 8:25 shows that they understood egō eimi in its ordinary SIA sense ('I am he'; 'it is I'). However, the remark in 8:58 is unmistakable, and his opponents immediately seek to stone him. Challenged as to whether he might have seen Abraham, he has not only claimed to have pre-existed Abraham, but has done so using the egō eimi formula that God uses in deutero-Isaiah to declare his unique deity. Translations such as the KJV, ESV, and NRSV, which render the saying, 'Before Abraham was, I am,' fail to convey the full sense of the verb genesthai: 'came to be/came into being.' It is not just the 'when' of existence that is being contrasted here but the kind of existence. The status of a creature—even one as renowned as Father Abraham—who 'comes to be' is contrasted with the One who simply 'is.'

Like John 8:24 and 8:28, the 'I am' saying in John 8:58 closely parallels Isaiah 43:10 LXX. There, God declares, '...I am (egō eimi). Before me no other god came to be (egeneto), and none will be after me.' Here, too, God sets forth his unique deity by contrasting his absolute existence ('I am') with the 'coming to be' of other realities. Another such parallel is found in Isaiah 48:16 LXX, where a mysterious speaker who identifies himself as sent by the Lord and his spirit states, 'From the beginning I have not spoken in secret; when it happened (or 'came to be'; Greek: egeneto) I was there.' This passage has already been discussed in Part 2.³⁰ In both John 1:1-3 and 8:58, as in both Isaiah 43:10 and 48:16 LXX, the time-transcending 'being' of deity (described using a present or imperfect tense of eimi is contrasted with the 'coming to be' in time of other reality (described using an aorist form of ginomai).

If we cast our net wider than deutero-Isaiah, we can find other verbal and conceptual parallels to John 8:58 in the Septuagint. The most striking of these is in Psalm 89:2 LXX (90:2 Eng), where the psalmist addresses the Lord, 'Before mountains were brought forth and the earth and the world were formed, and from everlasting to everlasting you are.' The Greek for 'you are,' su ei, is the second-person equivalent of egō eimi. Thus we have the same pattern as John 8:58: before some created reality (in this case mountains, earth, world) came to be (aorist infinitive of ginomai), the Lord is. The inclusion of the words 'from everlasting to everlasting' convey explicitly what is implicit in the egō eimi sayings: that the quality of existence referred to as 'I am/you are' is eternal. Further Septuagint parallels to John 8:58 can be found. They cannot detain us here,³¹ but the parallels we have seen in deutero-Isaiah and Psalm 89 compel us to conclude that in John 8:58, Jesus' provocative declaration amounts to a claim of deity and eternal pre-existence.

 4.4. John 13:19: 'so that when it happens you may believe that I am'

In John 13:18-19, after making reference to his betrayer with a scripture quotation, Jesus declares to his disciples, 'From now on I am telling you before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe that I am.' The form of this 'I am' saying is very similar to that of John 8:24 (but this time worded positively) and even closer to that of Isaiah 43:10 LXX in Greek.³² One of the characteristics by which God's unique deity may be known, according to deutero-Isaiah, is his ability to declare events before they happen.³³ It is just this characteristic that Jesus claims here will enable his disciples 'to believe that I am.' Hence, the deutero-Isaianic background of this egō eimi is clear.

 4.5. John 6:20: 'I am; do not be afraid'

We now move backward in the Gospel to egō eimi sayings prior to the discourse in John 8. John 6:16-21 describes the episode of Jesus walking on the sea during a storm, and includes the only one of John's egō eimi sayings that to be paralleled in the Synoptic Gospels (see Matt. 14:27; Mark 6:49). Upon seeing Jesus (and presumably not recognising him), the disciples became afraid. Jesus then declares, 'It is I. Do not be afraid' (egō eimi, mē phobeisthe). John differs from the Synoptic accounts on what happens next. In Mark and Matthew, Jesus gets into the boat (in Matthew's case, only after Peter walks on water), the wind dies down, and the disciples are amazed. In John, 'They wanted to take him into the boat, but the boat immediately arrived at the shore to which they were heading.'

It is clear that in John 6:20, as in the Synoptic parallels, egō eimi carries its ordinary sense as a way of identifying oneself (an SIA). Jesus is saying, 'It's me, Jesus.' The question is whether this is all he is saying. In Matthew and Mark, that may be the case.³⁴ In John, however, we know (based on the foregoing analysis) that Jesus is going to say egō eimi with a higher, more profound meaning at least four subsequent times, and this raises at least the possibility that such a meaning is intended here. This possibility exists even though (a) it may well have escaped readers/hearers on their first time through the Gospel (since they would encounter it before John 8), and (b) we know almost for certain that the Fourth Evangelist did not construct this egō eimi saying, but took it from the tradition.³⁵ What will help us to move from guesswork to insight about the meaning of egō eimi in John 6:20 is to read the passage in light of its Old Testament, and particularly Isaianic, background.

One of the characteristics of Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible is his power over the sea. The event that demonstrates this par excellence is his parting of the Red Sea and defeat of the Egyptian army (Exodus 14). Readers of the 'walking on the water' narrative (in Matthew, Mark, and John) have long seen in Jesus' walking on the sea a narrative allusion to this power of Yahweh. An oft-quoted passage in this respect is Job 9:8 LXX, which says of the Lord that he 'walks on the sea as on dry ground,' using language very close to that of the Gospels.³⁶ God's power over the sea also features in deutero-Isaiah. In Isaiah 43:16 (alluding to the Exodus), the prophet writes that the Lord 'provides a way in the sea, a path in the mighty water,'³⁷ which is precisely what Jesus does in this narrative: he not only provides a path for himself, but he miraculously conveys his tempest-tossed disciples to the other side, as God did for Israel at the Red Sea.³⁸ No early Jewish reader of John 6:16-21 with a sound knowledge of salvation-history could fail to be reminded of the Exodus narrative and the subsequent scriptures that retell it in terms of God making a way in the sea.

A second feature of this egō eimi saying that should not escape our notice is contained in the words, 'Do not be afraid.' This comforting phrase occurs frequently in Scripture, but never (at least in the Septuagint) is it pronounced more frequently by God than in Isaiah, and especially deutero-Isaiah. God repeats this to his people in Isaiah 40:9,³⁹ 41:10,⁴⁰ 41:13-14,⁴¹ 43:1,⁴² 43:5,⁴³ and 44:2.⁴⁴ Of special interest is Isaiah 51:7-15, which reassures Israel that they need not be afraid precisely in the context of an 'I am' saying (51:12) and a reminder about the Exodus (51:9-10, 15).⁴⁵ In fact, if we had to sum up the message of this oracle, we could not do much better than, 'I am; do not be afraid'!

Thus, when the saying of John 6:20 is read in the context of (a) the subsequent egō eimi sayings in John, (b) the wider parallel between Jesus' exploits over the sea in this narrative and God's exploits over the sea in the Old Testament, and (c) the prevalence of the instruction 'Do not be afraid' from God to his people in deutero-Isaiah, it is at highly plausible that John intends egō eimi here to convey the same secondary meaning that it has in chapter 8. That is, the meaning drawn from God's pronouncements of his exclusive deity in deutero-Isaiah LXX.

 4.6. John 4:26: 'I am—the one who is speaking with you'

The saying of John 4:26 occurs in the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. The woman says to Jesus, 'I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Anointed; when he comes, he will tell us everything.' Jesus replies, 'I am he (egō eimi), the one who is speaking with you.' As with John 6:20, this is a saying in which, on its surface, egō eimi bears only the ordinary SIA sense that it has in John 9:9 when the healed blind man says it. The woman refers to the Messiah, and Jesus says, 'I am he,' meaning 'I am the Messiah'—a theologically profound statement, to be sure, but not a claim to the attributes of deity.

Is there any reason to see a double meaning here in which egō eimi means more than this, and bears the loftier sense that it has in deutero-Isaiah? That it clearly bears this sense in John 8 at least gives this interpretation prima facie plausibility. Perhaps we can go further than conjecture, however. The key attribute of the Messiah that is emphasised both in the woman's remark ('he will tell us everything') and in Jesus' reply ('the one who is speaking with you') is speech. This emphasis relates to the Prologue of John (1:1-18), which identifies Christ as the pre-existent Word.⁴⁶ Deutero-Isaiah repeatedly emphasises God's unique identity as the One who speaks with his people and declares the truth. We now want to consider the relevance of two particular texts from deutero-Isaiah LXX that closely parallel John 4:26.

First, we have Isaiah 45:18-19 LXX: 'I am (egō eimi), and there is no other. I have not spoken in secret nor in a dark place of the earth; I did not say to the offspring of Iakob, "Seek a vain thing." I am (egō eimi), I am the Lord, speaking righteousness and declaring truth.' In this text, God twice expresses his deity using the expression egō eimi, while simultaneously emphasising his character as the one who speaks. We have already observed that the statement, 'I have not spoken in secret' is echoed by Jesus in John 18:20.⁴⁷

Second, we have Isaiah 52:6-7 LXX, where God foretells Israel's redemption, saying, 'Therefore my people shall know my name in that day, because I myself am the one who speaks: I am here, like season upon the mountains, like the feet of one bringing glad tidings of a report of peace...' As noted earlier, Isaiah 52:6 MT is an ʾ^anî hûʾ saying. Isaiah 52:6 LXX does not contain an absolute egō eimi saying, because egō eimi has a predicate, 'the one who speaks.' Nevertheless, the Greek is very close to that of John 4:26. Isaiah 52:6 LXX includes the words egō eimi autos ho lalōn, while Jesus' saying in John 4:26 is, egō eimi ho lalōn soi. The only difference is that John lacks autos ('myself'), which is merely for emphasis, and adds soi ('to you'/'with you'), to indicate that he is currently speaking with the woman. The parallels between John 4:26 and these two texts from deutero-Isaiah are close enough that, in light of the wider use of egō eimi in John, it is quite likely that the Isaianic sense of the phrase is intended here as well.

 4.7. John 18:5-8: 'When he said to them, "I am," they turned away and fell to the ground'

The last of the egō eimi sayings in John occur at the moment of Jesus' arrest in John 18:5-8. At the approach of a band of soldiers and guards, Jesus goes forth and asks, 'Whom are you looking for?' The narrative proceeds:

5 They answered him, "Jesus the Nazorean." He said to them, "I am." Judas his betrayer was also with them. 6 When he said to them, 'I am,' they turned away and fell to the ground. 7 So he again asked them, "Whom are you looking for?" They said, "Jesus the Nazorean." 8 Jesus answered, "I told you that I am. So if you are looking for me, let these men go."

As with the egō eimi sayings in John 4:26 and 6:20, it is clear that the primary sense of the phrase is SIA: Jesus is saying, 'I am he' or 'it is I,' confirming that he is Jesus the Nazorean whom they seek. However, in addition to what we have seen in the six preceding egō eimi sayings in John, there are indications that a secondary, more profound meaning of egō eimi is in view here. The first indication is that the expression is repeated three times, placing special stress upon it. The second indication is the soldiers' reaction when he first says it: 'they turned away and fell to the ground.' The verb piptō ('fall down') is often used of an act of worship.⁴⁸ Given the Fourth Evangelist's penchant for ironic actions by non-believers (cf., e.g,. John 11:49-51, 19:2-3; 19:19-22), this is surely more than just an interesting anecdote about the soldiers' surprise at Jesus' willingness to present himself for arrest. Rather, it is likely that the soldiers are ironically making the correct response to the full meaning of Jesus' self-declaration, egō eimi: they fall down in worship.

There is no verbal parallel to this saying in deutero-Isaiah. However, in light of the parallels already seen between Johannine egō eimi sayings and God's egō eimi sayings in Isaiah 45:18-19, John may see in this episode a provisional fulfillment of the words of Isaiah 45:23 LXX: 'to me every knee shall bow and every tongue shall acknowledge God.' Hence, rather than seeing in this passage merely a proactive effort by Jesus to identify himself as Jesus to the authorities, we ought to see the threefold occurrence of egō eimi as 'an emphatic climax of the series' of egō eimi sayings in John.⁴⁹

5. Christological Implications

In this series of articles, we have argued that Jesus' three egō eimi sayings in John 8 (vv. 24, 28, 58) as well as those elsewhere in the Gospel (John 4:26; 6:20; 13:19; 18:5-8) are best understood as profound Christological declarations that allude to, and draw their ultimate meaning from, the use of egō eimi in the Septuagint version of deutero-Isaiah. Accordingly, we must conclude that John understood Jesus to identify himself as the divine Word who, together with the Father, is the one God of Israel.

The series has had only limited interaction with secondary scholarship, but most of the ideas presented here are not novel. As D. A. Carson remarks, 'the majority of interpreters today' understand the egō eimi sayings of John 8 to be rooted in those of Isaiah 40-55.⁵⁰ Numerous scholars such as Richard Bauckham have made the same claim for the other egō eimi sayings in John. There is not, however, general agreement on the Christological implications of this connection. For instance, whereas Richard Bauckham asserts that the link between the Johannine egō eimi sayings and those of deutero-Isaiah mean that John's Jesus 'is unambiguously identifying himself with the one and only God, YHWH, the God of Israel' and not 'merely as an..."agent" or "emissary",'⁵¹ other scholars such as James F. McGrath see the Isaianic background as pointing to just such an 'agency' Christology. McGrath regards the egō eimi sayings as depicting Jesus as 'the bearer of the divine name,' as 'God's principal agent,' on whom was bestowed an authority equal to the sender.⁵²

What makes an 'agency' reading of the egō eimi sayings inadequate is that an agent's message is not about himself; he is a representative and spokesperson for another and his words, even when spoken in the first person, are primarily about the sender and not the agent.⁵³ Thus, under an agency Christology, Jesus' egō eimi sayings would be statements by and about the Father, conveyed to humanity by his agent, Jesus, whose own characteristics would be of secondary importance. This does not fit the context of the egō eimi sayings, which are clearly about Jesus himself (although of course Jesus is sent by the Father and is indeed his spokesperson as the Word). In John 4:26, Jesus is identifying himself as the speaker who is the Messiah. In 6:20, Jesus is identifying himself as the one they saw walking on the water, displaying divine power over the sea. In 8:24 it is Jesus himself in whom the Pharisees must believe to avoid dying in their sins. In 8:28 it is Jesus himself who will be lifted up and who does nothing on his own. In 8:58 it is Jesus who identifies himself as existing before Abraham came to be, and it is consequently Jesus that his hearers want to stone. In 13:19 it is Jesus himself who is telling the disciples events before they happen. In 18:5-8 it is, of course, Jesus who identifies himself as Jesus the Nazorean. Thus, the 'I am' sayings serve primarily to communicate truths about Jesus, implying that their lofty ontological claims (seen in light of the Isaianic background) cannot be shifted from Jesus onto the Father. This is by no means to deny that Jesus is the Father's agent; it is to understand that the Father's choice of Jesus as his agent is not arbitrary but follows from the ontological reality of who Jesus is: the divine and pre-existent Word and Son.⁵⁴ Thus, David M. Ball rightly states that

Jesus can only claim a phrase that was reserved for YHWH and apply it to himself because it is not only YHWH's Son but is in fact YHWH speaking... The connection between Jesus' use of "I am" and the Logos of the prologue again suggests that the Johannine church believed in an ontological identification of the historical person Jesus and the Jewish God.⁵⁵

• 1 Unless otherwise indicated, translations from the Hebrew Bible and New Testament follow the New American Bible, Revised Edition; translations from the Septuagint follow the New English Translation of the Septuagint.
• 2 'See now that I, I alone, am he, and there is no god besides me. It is I who bring both death and life, I who inflict wounds and heal them, and from my hand no one can deliver.'
• 3 'Who has performed these deeds? Who has called forth the generations from the beginning? I, the Lord, am the first, and at the last I am he.'
• 4 'You are my witnesses—oracle of the Lord— my servant whom I have chosen To know and believe in me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, and after me there shall be none.'
• 5 'yes, from eternity I am he; There is none who can deliver from my hand: I act and who can cancel it?'
• 6 'It is I, I, who wipe out, for my own sake, your offenses; your sins I remember no more.'
• 7 'Even to your old age I am he, even when your hair is gray I will carry you; I have done this, and I will lift you up, I will carry you to safety.'
• 8 'Listen to me, Jacob, Israel, whom I called! I, it is I who am the first, and am I the last.'
• 9 'I, it is I who comfort you. Can you then fear mortals who die, human beings who are just grass, And forget the Lord, your maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of earth?'
• 10 'Therefore my people shall know my name on that day, that it is I who speaks: Here I am!'
• 11 The second-person equivalent ʾatâ hûʾ ('you are he') occurs in Psalm 102:28 MT (102:27 Eng.), in a passage that is applied to Christ by the author of Hebrews.
• 12 Deut. 32:39 actually has ʾ^anî ʾ^anî hûʾ.
• 13 Catrin H. Williams, I Am He: The Interpretation of ʾAnî Hûʾ in Jewish and Early Christian Literature (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 304. Similarly, Richard Bauckham writes concerning chapters 40-55 of Isaiah, 'Their proclamation of eschatological salvation is intimately linked to their emphatic assertion of the absolute uniqueness of the God of Israel, who in these chapters constantly asserts his unique deity in contrast with the idols of the nations who are no gods, and defines his uniqueness as that of the eternal Creator of all things and the unique sovereign Ruler of all history. His great act of eschatological salvation will demonstrate him to be the one and only God in the sight of all the nations, revealing his glory so that all the ends of earth will acknowledge him as God and turn to him for salvation. All this is summed up in the divine self-declaration "I am he"' ('Monotheism and Christology in the Gospel of John', in Contours of Christology in the New Testament [ed. Richard N. Longenecker; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005], 158).
• 14 That is, in an absolute sense as opposed to linking to a noun such as 'the Lord' or 'God' or an adjective.
• 15 'See, see that I am, and there is no god except me. I will kill, and I will make alive; I will strike, and I will heal.'
• 16 'Who has wrought and done these things? The one calling her from the beginning of generations has called her. I, God, am first, and for the things that are coming, I am.'
• 17 'Be my witnesses; I too am a witness, says the Lord God, and the servant whom I have chosen so that you may know and believe and understand that I am.'
• 18 'I am, I am the one who blots out your acts of lawlessness, and I will not remember them at all.' Or, 'I am "I Am," the one who blots out your acts of lawlessness...
• 19 18 Thus says the Lord, who made heaven—this is the God who displayed the earth and made it; he himself marked its limits; he did not make it to be empty but to be inhabited: I am, and there is no other. 19 I have not spoken in secret, nor in a dark place of the earth; I did not say to the offspring of Iakob, "Seek a vain thing." I am, I am the Lord, speaking righteousness and declaring truth.'
• 20 'Until your old age, I am, and until you grow old, I am; I bear with you; I have made, and I will set free; I will take up and save you.'
• 21 'I am, I am he who comforts you. Acknowledge of whom you were cautious; you were afraid because of a mortal man and a son of man, who have dried up like grass.
• 22 The LXX of Isaiah 43:13 ('Even from the beginning there is also no one who rescues from my hands; I will do it, and who will turn it back?') and 48:12 ('Hear me, O Iakob, and Israel, whom I call: I am the first, and I am forever') do not correspond exactly to the MT and there is no Greek phrase corresponding to ʾ^anî hûʾ. Isaiah 52:6 LXX ('Therefore my people shall know my name in that day, because I myself am the one who speaks: I am here') does have egō eimi corresponding to the MT's ʾ^anî hûʾ, but strictly speaking it is not absolute. Isaiah 45:18 and 45:19 LXX have egō eimi where the MT does not have a corresponding absolute ʾ^anî hûʾ  (45:18 does have ʾ^anî y^ehwâ, 'I am Yahweh').
• 23 In the MT, the daughter of Babylon does not say ʾ^anî hûʾ but merely ʾ^anî. See a similar usage in Zeph. 2:15 LXX.
• 24 G. H. Parke-Taylor, Yahweh: The Divine Name in the Bible (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1975), 73.
• 25 Williams notes, 'The renderings principally favoured by the Septuagint (ἐγώ εἰμι) and the Vulgate (ego ipse) clearly seek to maintain the bipartite character of אני הוא in its role as a claim to uniqueness' (I Am He, 304).
• 26 Similarly, 2 Kingdoms 2:20 LXX: 'And Abenner looked behind him and said, "Are you Asael himself?" And he answered, "I am" (egō eimi).'
• 27 Jesus identifying himself in an epiphanic setting: Matt. 14:27, Mark 6:50, Luke 24:39. In this article we will leave open the question of whether these Synoptic sayings may already allude to the divine egō eimi formula of deutero-Isaiah. Jesus responds affirmatively to the question of whether he is the Messiah in Mark 14:62 with 'I am' (egō eimi) and in Luke 22:70 with 'You say that I am.' In the Olivet discourse, Jesus foretells of Messianic pretenders 'coming in my name' and saying, 'I am' (egō eimi, Mark 13:6; Luke 21:8; Matt. 24:5 has egō eimi ho Christos, 'I am the Messiah'). Finally, Acts 13:25 has John the Baptist confessing, 'I am not he' (ouk egō eimi).
• 28 This parallel was not explored in Part 2. In John 8:23, Jesus tells the Pharisees, 'You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world.' This parallels Isaiah 41:24 LXX, where God enters into judgment with men and declares, 'Because whence are you and whence is your work? From the earth.' Similarly, Isaiah 55:9 LXX contrasts God's ways with men's ways using the analogy of heaven's distance from earth: 'But as heaven is far from the earth, so is my way far from your ways and your notions from my thought.'
• 29 Of course, Jesus is not making an exclusive claim to deity that excludes the Father. As he consistently points out throughout this Gospel whenever making lofty claims about himself, he is not independent of the Father but is his beloved Son, who was sent by him, who obeys him, who does nothing without him (John 8:28-29).
• 30 Briefly, it has strong resonances with the Word in John 1:1-3, since the speaker emphasises his 'speaking' function from the beginning, and contrasts an imperfect form of eimi ('be') with an aorist form of ginomai ('come to be' or 'become'). As was noted previously, the statement in Isaiah 48:16 that 'I have not spoken in secret' parallels Jesus' statement before the high priest in John 18:20.
• 31 In the soliloquy of Lady Wisdom in Proverbs 8:22-25 LXX, Wisdom describes herself as having been created, but 'as the beginning of his ways...before the present age...in the beginning...before he made the earth.' Significantly, while 'the Lord created me' (kurios ektisen me) uses an aorist verb, the subsequent statement 'before all the hills he begets me' is in present tense (genna me). In Job 38, the Lord speaks to Job through a whirlwind and contrasts at great length his own eternity and power with the puny existence of Job. In Psalm 109:3 LXX (110:3 Eng), one is addressed with the words, 'From the womb, before Morning-star, I brought you forth.' This psalm (esp. vv. 1, 4) played a very important role in earliest Christology, and Aquila H. I. Lee has argued in a monograph that v. 3 was pivotal in the development of a belief in the pre-existence of Christ in the pre-Pauline church (From Messiah to Preexistent Son: Jesus' Self-Consciousness and Early Christian Exegesis of Messianic Psalms [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005]). Finally, Sirach 42:21 says of God, 'since he is before the age and forever' (my translation); the Greek is close to that of, and may be dependent on, Psalm 89:2.
• 32 Both texts have hina pisteusēte...hoti egō eimi. We noted in Part 2 that this is a special case of a very common Old Testament formula by which God foretells that when some future event happens, his people will or may know/believe that he is their God. John contains frequent adaptations of this formula, with Jesus being the object in most instances.
• 33 'As for the things that were from the beginning, see, they have come; also new things, which I myself will declare, and before they sprang forth, they were made plain to you' (Isa. 42:9); 'Who is like me? Let him stand; let him call, and let him make ready for me, inasmuch as I have made man forever, and let them declare to you the things that are coming before they come' (Isa. 44:7); 'because I am God, and there is no other besides me, declaring the last things first, before they happen, and at once they came to pass' (Isa. 46:9-10); 'The former things I have moreover declared, and they went out from my mouth and came to be heard; suddenly I did them, and they came to pass... I declared to you the things of old; before they came upon you I made them to be heard by you; do not say, "The idols did them for me"' (Isa. 48:3, 5).
• 34 I do not discount the possibility of a secondary, epiphanic meaning in Matthew and Mark, for the same Old Testament contextual reasons about to be discussed, but it is beyond the scope of this article to argue the point.
• 35 This is assuming, with most scholars, that Mark predates John by at least a couple of decades. I am not implying that the Fourth Evangelist fabricated the other egō eimi sayings. However, if one takes the view that Jesus' discourses in John at least reflect significant editorial work by the author, one possible explanation for the egō eimi sayings is that John received some of them in his source material (certainly John 6:20, and possibly 4:26 and 18:5-8). Understanding egō eimi in these sayings to convey a double meaning (informed by his reading of deutero-Isaiah LXX), he then adapted other sayings of Jesus—which may or may not have already used egō eimi—to more clearly convey the double meaning. The result is the sayings in John 8:24, 28, 58 and 13:19. This is merely a conjecture; it is also entirely possible that the double meaning of egō eimi was well-developed already in the earliest stratum of the Signs source. Note the comment of James D. G. Dunn, who writes, 'Again, it is possible to see a Synoptic-type root for the weighty "I am" sayings – Mark 6:50, 13:6, 14:62; but again the indications are clear and strong that the weightier Johannine sayings are a development from the earlier tradition at best tangential to the earlier tradition. For the Markan ‘I am’ sayings are simply affirmative utterances (It’s me, I am he, Yes), as Matthew clearly indicates (Matt. 24:5; 26:64). But John has probably seen a potential link with the "I am" of Isa. 43:10 and exploited it accordingly (especially John 8:24, 28, 58; 13:19). It is surely scarcely credible that a saying like John 8:58, or the other "I am" sayings (the bread of life, the light of the world, etc.) were part of the earliest Jesus-tradition, and yet nothing approaching them appears in the Synoptic Gospels. Why should they be so completely neglected if part of the authentic sayings of Jesus, and why should only John preserve them? The most obvious explanation once again is that in a relatively insignificant element of the earlier tradition John has found the inspiration to fashion an invaluable formula for expressing Christianity’s claims about Christ' (Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation [2nd edn; London: SCM Press, 1989], 30-31).
• 36 Job 9:8 LXX has the Lord peripatōn...epi thalassēs, while John 6:19 has Jesus peripatounta epi tēs thalassēs.
• 37 A similar thought is conveyed in Psalm 76:20 (77:20 Eng): 'In the sea was your way, and your paths in many waters, and your footprints will not be known.'
• 38 God's power over the sea is also conveyed in Isaiah 50:2: 'Look, by my threat I will make the sea desolate'.
• 39 'Go up on a high mountain, you who bring good tidings to Sion; lift up your voice with strength, you who bring good tidings to Ierousalem; lift it up; do not fear; say to the cities of Ioudas, "See, your God!"'
• 40 'Do not fear, for I am with you; do not wander off, for I am your God who has strengthened you'
• 41 'I am your God, who holds your right hand, who says to you, "Do not fear, O Iakob, O small Israel."'
• 42 'But now says the Lord God, he who made you, O Iakob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are mine.'
• 43 'Do not fear, because I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you'
• 44 'Thus says the Lord God who made you and who formed you from the womb: You will still be helped; do not fear, O Iakob my servant and the beloved Israel whom I have chosen'
• 45 7 Hear me, you who know judgment, my people, you in whose heart is my law; do not fear the reproach of men, and do not be dismayed by their contempt. 8 For just as a garment it will be devoured by time, and like wool it will be devoured by a moth, but my righteousness will be forever and my salvation for generations of generations. 9 Awake, awake, O Ierousalem; put on the strength of your arm! Awake, as at the beginning of a day, like a generation of long ago! Are you not 10 she who made desolate the sea, the water, the abundance of the deep, who made the depths of the sea a way of passage for those being delivered 11 and those who have been ransomed? For by the Lord they shall be returned and come to Sion with joy and everlasting gladness; for gladness and praise shall be upon their heads and joy shall take hold of them; pain and sorrow and sighing have fled away. 12 I am (egō eimi), I am he who comforts you. Acknowledge of whom you were cautious; you were afraid because of a mortal man and a son of man, who have dried up like grass. 13 And you have forgotten God who made you, who made heaven and laid the foundations of the earth. And always, all the days, you feared the face of the fury of the one who was oppressing you, for just as he planned to do away with you, and where now is the fury of the one who was oppressing you? 14 For when you are saved, he will not stand nor linger, 15 because I am your God, who stirs up the sea and makes its waves to sound—the Lord Sabaoth is my name.
• 46 This emphasis on Jesus as speaker, reflecting his character as the Word, is also present in sayings such as John 3:34, 6:63, 9:37.
• 47 As noted previously, this parallels not only Isaiah 45:19 LXX but also 48:16 LXX, where the speaker is the mysterious figure who has existed from the beginning and has been sent by the Lord and his spirit.
• 48 E.g., Matt. 2:11; 4:9; 18:26, 29; Rev. 5:14; 19:4; 22:8; 17:6; 26:39; Luke 5:12; 17:16; John 11:32.
• 49 Richard Bauckham, 'Monotheism and Christology in the Gospel of John', 155.
• 50 The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 343-44.
• 51 'Monotheism and Christology in the Gospel of John', 159.
• 52 'When examined carefully, the Johannine ‘I am’ sayings do not appear to represent a direct assertion that Jesus is none other than the God of the Jewish Scriptures, so much as an allusive indication that he bears the divine name. Similar claims had been made for other figures in at least some Jewish circles, although nothing in the extant parallels is quite as extravagant as what we find in John. Nevertheless, when one considers the statement by the angel in Apoc. Abr. 10:8, ‘I am Yaoel’, in light of the application of the very same name to God in Apoc. Abr. 17:13, one can see how easily the statement of the angel could have been regarded by some as blasphemous, and misconstrued as a claim to be God himself. But this use of the divine name by the angel does not represent a claim to be the God of the Old Testament, but to be the special, unique agent of God. The figure who bears the name of God does so as part of his empowering and commissioning as God’s principal agent, and, as we have already seen, agency bestowed an equality of authority to, coupled with a complete submission to, the sender... [Thus it appears likely that] the Johannine "I am" represents something rather subtler and more carefully nuanced than this: it portrays Jesus as the bearer of the divine name, the agent upon whom God has bestowed his name.' (John's Apologetic Christology: Legitimation and Development in Johannine Christology [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004], 105-106.)
• 53 For instance, if we consider the message of the angel Yaoel to Abraham in Apocalypse of Abraham 10 (the text cited by McGrath in support of the kind of agency he sees in Jesus' 'I am' sayings), the message is primarily about God and not Yaoel.
• 54 Probably the key Isaianic text on this point, as already discussed, is 48:16 LXX, where the pre-existent speaker describes himself as sent by the Lord and his spirit.
• 55 David M. Ball, 'I Am' in John's Gospel: Literary Function, Background and Theological Implications (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996), 279.

'Believe that I Am': Encountering John's Christ in the Light of Isaiah (Part 2)

100-Word Summary

Jesus' words in John 8:12-30 are saturated with allusions to Isaiah (especially chapter 43). This article ties together these and other allusions to Isaiah in John, which collectively show that Jesus in John self-identifies as Isaiah's Servant figure but also makes for himself the divine claims that God makes for himself in deutero-Isaiah. Of particular note is the observation that Jesus' mysterious expression 'I am' (egō eimi) in John 8:24-28 is drawn from Isaiah LXX and must therefore be interpreted in light of its meaning in Isaiah—a task that will be left to the next article.

1. Introduction
2. John 8:12-20: The One Who Has Two Witnesses  
3. John 8:24: 'If you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins'
4. John 8:25: The One Who Speaks at/from the Beginning
5. John 8:28: The One Who is Lifted Up  
6. Conclusion  

1. Introduction

In the first article in this series, we discussed some background issues about the Book of Isaiah and the Gospel of John and then looked briefly at the influence of the former on the latter. With this background out of the way, we are ready for the good stuff: identifying some fascinating allusions to Isaiah in the Gospel of John that help to illuminate the evangelist's Christology. Our primary focus in this article will be on two particular passages from the Septuagint (LXX) version of Isaiah and one particular passage from John, though we will bring in other passages as needed.¹ These passages are Isaiah 43:1-28,² Isaiah 52:13-53:12,³ and John 8:12-30.⁴ (You can read translations by clicking the links or mousing over the ellipsis [...] graphic after each one.)⁵ It will be argued that John 8:12-30, above all vv. 24-28, contain several striking allusions to Isaiah 43 LXX, which inform the meaning of Jesus' claims.⁶

2. John 8:12-20: The One who has Two Witnesses

John 8:12-20 records a disagreement between Jesus and the Pharisees over his claim to be 'the light of the world.' Light/darkness imagery is prominent in deutero-Isaiah. Jesus' saying in John 8:12⁷ most likely alludes to Isaiah 9:2⁸ and 50:10.⁹ Jesus will take up the 'light of the world' designation again in John 9:5, as he is about to heal a blind man.¹⁰ This, and the ensuing condemnation of the Pharisees for spiritual blindness,¹¹ evoke language from Isaiah 42 about God's Servant being 'a light to the nations, to open the eyes of the blind' and the ensuing discussion of spiritual blindness there.¹² Notice that Jesus in John 9:41 equates blindness with sin, just as Isaiah 44:22 likens sin to darkness.¹³ (On healing of blindness, see also Isa. 35:5¹⁴; on spiritual blindness, see Isa. 6:10 [quoted in John 12:40].¹⁵) Thus, we have every reason to situate Jesus' claim in John 8:12—and thus also the ensuing controversy—in the context of Isaiah. 

The Pharisees declare that Jesus' testimony cannot be verified because he testifies on his own behalf. Jesus alludes to the law that twofold testimony is reliable, and then declares, 'I testify on my behalf and so does the Father who sent me' (John 8:18). Here we have our first allusion to the above-quoted passage from Isaiah 43 LXX. There, God implores Israel to 'Be my witnesses.' The text continues, '"I too am a witness," says the Lord God, "and the servant whom I have chosen"' (Isa. 43:10). Observe that this text mentions two witnesses, God and the Servant. Since we know that John understands the Servant to be Christ, this statement provides a scriptural basis for Jesus' claim to have two witnesses: himself (the Servant) and the Father (God).¹⁶

3. John 8:24: 'If you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins'

In John 8:24 we have an unmistakable allusion to Isaiah 43:10 LXX that will play an important function in the argument of this study. Here, Jesus declares, 'That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins.' Compare Isaiah 43:10 LXX:

10 Be my witnesses; I too am a witness, says the Lord God, and the servant whom I have chosen so that you may know and believe and understand that I am. Before me there was no other god, nor shall there be any after me... 24 ...in your sins and iniquities I have stood before you. 25 I am, I am the one [or: I am 'I am,' the one]¹⁷ who blots out your acts of lawlessness, and I will not remember them at all. 26 But as for you, do remember, and let us be judged; you state your acts of lawlessness first so that you may be justified.

Both key phrases in John 8:24, 'in your sins' and 'believe that I am,' are drawn from Isaiah 43 LXX. 'In your sins' (Greek: en tais hamartiais humōn) occurs twice in John 8:24. Nearly the exact same Greek expression occurs in Isa. 43:24: en tais hamartiais sou. The only difference is that the second-person pronoun in John 8:24 is plural, while in Isa. 43:24 it is singular (but refers to Israel collectively). This phrase 'in your sins' might seem fairly ordinary, but in fact it occurs only once more in the entire Septuagint.¹⁸

Then we have the expression, 'for if you do not believe that I am' (gar mē pisteusēte hoti egō eimi). This very closely follows Isaiah 43:10 LXX: 'that you may know and believe and understand that I am' (hina gnōste kai pisteusēte kai sunēte hoti egō eimi). The words 'believe...that I am' (pisteusēte hoti egō eimi) occur in both texts. Isaiah has two additional verbs, 'know' and 'understand'; John 8:28 uses a similar expression with 'know' instead of 'believe': 'then you will know that I am' (tote gnōsesthe hoti egō eimi), and John 13:19 repeats nearly the same formula as 8:24/Isa. 43:10 LXX: 'From now on I am telling you before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe that I am' (hina pisteusēte...hoti egō eimi). The formula 'believe that I am' occurs in the Septuagint only in Isa. 43:10. We are left with two possible conclusions: either John 8:24 has brought together two distinctive phrases from Isaiah 43 LXX by coincidence, or John 8:24 is borrowing the language of Isaiah 43 LXX. The chances of this occurring by coincidence are infinitesimal (especially given the other parallel between Isa. 43:10 and John 8:18). Surely, then, we cannot fail to see that John 8:24 is drawing on Isaiah 43 LXX. The Christological implication of this finding is simple but profound: we must interpret the expression 'I am' (egō eimi) in John through the lens of its meaning in deutero-Isaiah. Hence, Jesus' egō eimi sayings in John cannot be reduced to the ordinary, mundane sense of this expression, viz., 'I am he' or 'it is I' (though the ordinary meaning may also be present).¹⁹

More can be said about the formula found in Isa. 43:10 LXX and borrowed in John 8:24, 28 and 13:19. It is a special case of a more general formula, used almost 90 times in the Old Testament, that goes something like, 'you/they will/may know that I am the Lord [your God].' What makes Isa. 43:10 unique is that the formula ends with 'I am' rather than adding a predicate like 'the Lord.'²⁰ The referent of the general formula in the Jewish Scriptures is always God, yet John applies the formula of Isa. 43:10 to Christ. In fact, John uses the general formula numerous other times (with predicates other than 'I am,') and where the object of belief/knowledge is named explicitly, it is always Jesus or Jesus and his Father.²¹ See John 1:7,²² 9:36,²³ 10:38,²⁴ 11:42,²⁵ 14:20,²⁶ 14:29,²⁷ 17:21,²⁸ 17:23,²⁹ 19:4,³⁰ 19:35,³¹ and 20:31.³² This is a powerful circumstantial argument for the deity of Christ in John.

4. John 8:25: The One Who Speaks at/from the Beginning

The Pharisees miss the double meaning in Jesus' statement egō eimi in John 8:24; they fail to detect that this expression conveys the ultimate truth about Jesus' identity. (Jesus' opponents will finally grasp his meaning in 8:58, prompting them to attempt to stone him.) The Pharisees take egō eimi in its ordinary sense of pointing out oneself, like 'I am he' or 'it is I' or 'that's me.' Accordingly they ask, 'Who are you?' Jesus' response is one of the most grammatically difficult clauses in the New Testament. In Greek, it reads tēn archēn ho ti kai lalō humin. Students of John have puzzled over the meaning of this phrase since antiquity, and the enduring lack of consensus can be appreciated simply by looking up the verse in a whole host of English translations. Perhaps the most common solution is to follow something like the NET's rendering, 'What I have told you from the beginning.' The NRSV, however, differs starkly: 'Why do I speak to you at all?' A reading attested in the Vetus Latina (the ancient Latin version of the New Testament that preceded the Vulgate) implies that Jesus identifies himself as 'the Beginning.' However, the main issue here is not text-critical, i.e. a dispute over the original Greek wording, but over the meaning of what is a very strangely constructed sentence.³³ Much hinges on the function of the words tēn archēn ('the beginning'), and here we need to get a bit technical (if you're not up for it, skip down a few lines!) tēn archēn is accusative in case, which ordinarily would indicate that this noun is the sentence's direct object. But the direct object has no subject or verb! If we take 'I am' as the implied subject and verb, we have 'I am the beginning' (like the Vetus Latina reading). The problem is that a linking verb like eimi ('am') takes a predicate nominative, so we should have hē archē (nominative) rather than tēn archēn (accusative). This basically rules out the Vetus Latina interpretation (assuming that our Greek text is correct). The NET and many other translations have 'from the beginning.' This is equally problematic, because there is a perfectly clear way to express 'from the beginning' in Greek, and this isn't it. One would precede archē with a preposition meaning 'from' (apo or ex). Indeed, both of these constructions occur frequently in Scripture, including in John,³⁴ suggesting John is deliberately conveying something different here.  The NRSV's 'Why do I speak to you at all?' is an attempt at an idiomatic rendering, but is not at all obvious from the syntax, and suggests exasperation, whereas Jesus goes on speaking through v. 30.

Scholars like Hanson have observed that tēn archēn as an absolute phrase can mean 'at the beginning.'³⁵ This is exemplified in several Septuagint passages.³⁶ With this insight in hand, a suitable translation would be something like the Young's Literal Translations, 'Even what I did speak of to you at the beginning,' or Hanson's proposal, '[I am] at the beginning what I am now saying to you.'37 Now, the obvious question that presents itself is, what 'beginning' is Jesus talking about? The beginning of his public ministry? Perhaps; this mundane sense of 'beginning' does occur, for instance, in John 2:11, 15:27, and 16:4. However, it could also be the primeval beginning mentioned in the Gospel's opening words (John 1:1-2) and again within the present discourse (8:44). Isaiah 43:9-13 LXX is helpful in deciding between these two options:

Who will declare these things? Or who will declare to you the things that were from the beginning? ... I too am a witness, says the Lord God. Even from the beginning there is also no one who rescues from my hands³⁸

This 'beginning' is, if not the beginning of creation, certainly the beginning of Israel (i.e. the patriarchs). Although the question in Isaiah is rhetorical, Jesus' statement can be seen as an answer: I am the one who spoke to you at the beginning. 'Jesus is ambiguously claiming to be he who from the beginning has declared the course of salvation history and who was indeed there at the beginning when God created the world.'³⁹ Why would Jesus say 'at the beginning' and not 'from the beginning' (ex archēs) as Isaiah has it? Perhaps to emphasise his pre-existence, and in this way to anticipate the bold and climactic remark of 8:58: 'Before Abraham was, I am!'

This is but one possible interpretation of what is admittedly a very difficult text, a text that may be intentionally ambiguous.⁴⁰ Yet however one construes Jesus' exact meaning, it is very likely that he is alluding somehow to the question of Isaiah 43:9. This is likely because of the several other allusions to this Isaianic passage within this section of John 8, but also because of wider conceptual parallels between Isaiah and John. Numerous passages of deutero-Isaiah declare God's uniqueness on the grounds of his having existed and spoken 'from the beginning.'⁴¹ God declares that he has 'not spoken in secret nor in a dark place of the earth' (Isa. 45:19), and also repeatedly emphasises that he alone foretells events before they occur.⁴² Of special interest is a passage in Isaiah 48 LXX. The speaker throughout the oracle seems to be God. In v. 5, for instance, 'I declared to you the things of old; before they came upon you I made them to be heard by you.' In v. 12, 'I am the first, and I am forever. And my hand laid the foundation of the earth'. Then, in v. 16, without any obvious transition, we have one referring to 'the Lord' in the third person:

Draw near to me, and hear these things! From the beginning I have not spoken in secret; when it happened I was there, and now the Lord has sent me and his spirit.

The speaker seems to be God: he has been around since the beginning, and has not spoken in secret (echoing God's words in 45:19-21). However, he declares himself to have been sent by the Lord and his Spirit. He is, as it were, God, and yet with God.⁴³ Certainly this language, read through early Christian eyes, is conducive to the development of 'high Christology.' What I really want to emphasise is how similar all of these statements in deutero-Isaiah are to things Jesus says about himself in John.

In Isaiah, God says he declares things before they happen? So does Jesus, in John.⁴⁴ In Isaiah, God (and the mysterious figure of 48:16) have not spoken in secret? Neither has Jesus, in John.⁴⁵ We could go further: in Isaiah, God knows from the beginning who will reject him,⁴⁶ just as Jesus does in John.⁴⁷ Thus, the claim that John 8:25 alludes to Isa. 43:9 is not some hand-waving based on vague verbal correspondences, but is based on a consistent framework whereby claims made by God in deutero-Isaiah precisely to highlight his unique deity are made by Jesus in John about himself.

5. John 8:28: The One Who is Lifted Up

We have already discussed one clause of John 8:28, 'then you will realise that I am.' However, one of John's richest allusions to Isaiah occurs in the preceding clause, 'When you lift up the Son of Man.' The Greek verb hupsoō ('lift up') occurs three other times in the Gospel. In John 3:14, Jesus tells Nicodemus that the Son of Man must be 'lifted up' like Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness.⁴⁸ The allusion is to Num. 21:6-9, but the LXX of this text does not use the word hupsoō and thus does not explain John's choice of verb. In John 12:31-34, Jesus makes another reference to his 'lifting up' that John explicitly tells us refers to his manner of death.⁴⁹ Now, the verb hupsoō can also mean 'lift up' in the sense of 'exalt,' and is used frequently with that meaning in Isaiah LXX. Often, the object of exaltation is God,⁵⁰ Isaiah also once describes God as exalting Israel.⁵¹ Most strikingly, however, the opening verse of deutero-Isaiah's fourth Servant Song (a passage that John unquestionably understood Messianically)⁵² states, 'See, my servant shall understand, and he shall be exalted and glorified exceedingly' (Isa. 52:13). With this text in mind, we can perceive that John uses the verb hupsoō with a double meaning: Jesus' death by crucifixion is precisely the moment of his exaltation, because by it he saves the world.

The claim that this double meaning is intended by John is bolstered by his similar use of the verb doxazō ('glorify'). This verb often occurs alongside hupsoō in Isaiah LXX, including in 52:13. In John, Jesus' death is his ultimate moment of 'glorification,' just as it is his moment of 'lifting up/exaltation.' For instance, just prior to Jesus' climactic 'lifting up' saying in John 12:31-32, he declares, 'The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified' (12:22), a remark he explains with a metaphor about a grain of wheat dying in order to bear fruit.⁵³ 

Now, given that John understood the Servant's 'lifting up' in Isa. 52:13 LXX to be a prophecy of the manner of Jesus' glorious death, is it possible that John might also have seen a reference to Jesus' death in certain Isaianic references that describe God as 'lifted up'? Given the close identification between the Servant figure and God elsewhere in deutero-Isaiah (e.g. chapter 48), it may be worth considering. There is indeed some evidence to support this view. First and foremost, the enthroned figure in the vision of Isaiah 6 is described as 'lifted up' or 'lofty' (hupsēlos, from the same root as hupsoō) and filling the temple with his 'glory.' The figure is clearly divine, and we might never suspect it to be Christ were it not that the Evangelist tells us it is. In John 12:41, immediately after quoting from Isa. 6:9-10, the narrator remarks, 'Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke about him.'⁵⁴ Moreover, John weaves together a quotation from Isa. 53:1 with his quotation from Isa. 6:9-10. He is probably using the ancient Jewish hermeneutical technique called gezerah shavah, in which two scriptural texts are connected based on a shared word or phrase. Since 'lifting up' and 'glory' are key words throughout John 12:20-43, these are probably the words by which John connected Isaiah 6 with the fourth Servant Song (Isaiah 52:13-53:12).

There is more. God's 'lifting up' in Isa. 5:16 and 30:18 is linked to judgment and mercy, just as Jesus' 'lifting up' in John 12:31-32 are linked to judgment ('Now is the time of judgment on this world') and mercy ('And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself'). Moreover, there is a close verbal parallel between John 13:31 ('Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him') and Isa. 33:10 ('Now I will be glorified, now I will be lifted up').

6. Conclusion

In this article, we have identified some fascinating allusions to Isaiah in John that shed light on the Gospel's rich Christology. At the heart of the argument was the observation that Jesus' words in John 8:24-25 are rooted in God's words in Isaiah 43 LXX. As we spread our net wider in John and in Isaiah (especially deutero-Isaiah, chapters 40-55), we found more and more allusions and connections. Among the most striking are allusions to Isa. 52:13 LXX in John's description of Jesus' death as his 'lifting up' and 'glorification,' and allusions to Isaiah 48 in John's description of Jesus declaring events before they happen and not speaking in secret. We have certainly not exhausted John's allusions to Isaiah,⁵⁵ but we have compiled enough evidence to show that John's Christology cannot be understood without recourse to Isaiah. In particular, our analysis of John 8:24, 28 has shown that the mysterious expression 'I am' (egō eimi) has a layer of meaning that is drawn from deutero-Isaiah LXX. Thus, to correctly understand this phrase in John, we must first understand it in Isaiah. This will be the purpose of the third and final article in this series.

• 1 Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from John herein are taken from the New American Bible (Revised Edition) and quotations from Isaiah are taken from the New English Translation of the Septuagint.
• 2 1 But now thus says the Lord God, he who made you, O Iakob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are mine. 2 And if you should pass through water, I am with you, and rivers shall not overwhelm you, and if you should go through fire, you shall by no means be burned; the flame shall not consume you, 3 because I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, who saves you... 8 And I have brought forth a blind people, and their eyes are likewise blind, and they are deaf, though they have ears! 9 All the nations have gathered together, and rulers will be gathered from among them. Who will declare these things? Or who will declare to you the things that were from the beginning? Let them bring their witnesses, and let them be justified and speak truths. 10 Be my witnesses; I too am a witness, says the Lord God, and the servant whom I have chosen so that you may know and believe and understand that I am. Before me there was no other god, nor shall there be any after me. 11 I am God, and besides me there is none who saves. 12 I declared and saved; I reproached, and there was no stranger among you. You are my witnesses; I too am a witness, says the Lord God. 13 Even from the beginning there is also no one who rescues from my hands; I will do it, and who will turn it back? 14 Thus says the Lord God, the one who redeems you, the Holy One of Israel: For your sake I will send to Babylon and stir up all who are fleeing, and the Chaldeans will be bound in ships. 15 I am the Lord God, your Holy One, the one who exhibited Israel as your king. Thus says the Lord, who provides a way in the sea, a path in the mighty water, who has brought out chariots and horse and a mighty throng together; they have lain down and will not rise; they have been quenched like a wick that is quenched: 18 Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. 19 Look, I am doing new things that will now spring forth, and you will know them, and I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the dry land... 23 There are no sheep for me from your whole burnt offering, nor have you glorified me with your sacrifices, nor have I made you tired with frankincense, 24 nor have you bought me incense with silver, nor did I desire the fat of your sacrifices, but in your sins and iniquities I have stood before you. 25 I am, I am the one [or: I am 'I am,' the one] who blots out your acts of lawlessness, and I will not remember them at all. 26 But as for you, do remember, and let us be judged; you state your acts of lawlessness first so that you may be justified. 27 Your fathers first, also their rulers, acted lawlessly against me. 28 And the rulers defiled my holy things, and I gave Iakob to destroy him, and Israel for a reproach.
• 3 13 See, my servant shall understand, and he shall be exalted [or: lifted up] and glorified exceedingly. 14 Just as many shall be astonished at you—so shall your appearance be without glory from men, and your glory be absent from the men—15 so shall many nations be astonished at him, and kings shall shut their mouth, because those who were not informed about him shall see and those who did not hear shall understand. 53:1 Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? 2 He grew up before him like a child, like a root in a thirsty land; he has no form or glory, and we saw him, and he had no form or beauty. 3 But his form was without honor, failing beyond all men, a man being in calamity and knowing how to bear sickness; because his face is turned away, he was dishonored and not esteemed. 4 This one bears our sins and suffers pain for us, and we accounted him to be in trouble and calamity and ill-treatment. 5 But he was wounded because of our acts of lawlessness and has been weakened because of our sins; upon him was the discipline of our peace; by his bruise we were healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; a man has strayed in his own way, and the Lord gave him over to our sins. 7 And he, because he has been ill-treated, does not open his mouth; like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb is silent before the one sheering it, so he does not open his mouth. 8 In his humiliation his judgment was taken away. Who will describe his generation? Because his life is being taken from the earth, he was led to death on account of the acts of lawlessness of my people. 9 And I will give the wicked for his burial and the rich for his death, because he committed no lawlessness, nor was deceit found in his mouth. 10 And the Lord desires to cleanse him from his blow. If you give an offering for sin, your soul shall see a long-lived offspring. And the Lord wishes to take away 11 from the pain of his soul, to show him light and fill him with understanding, to justify a righteous one who is well subject to many, and he himself shall bear their sins. 12 Therefore he shall inherit many, and he shall divide the spoils of the strong, because his soul was given over to death, and he was reckoned among the lawless, and he bore the sins of many, and because of their sins he was given over.
• 4 12 Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” 13 So the Pharisees said to him, “You testify on your own behalf, so your testimony cannot be verified.” 14 Jesus answered and said to them, “Even if I do testify on my own behalf, my testimony can be verified, because I know where I came from and where I am going. But you do not know where I come from or where I am going. 15 You judge by appearances, but I do not judge anyone.h 16 And even if I should judge, my judgment is valid, because I am not alone, but it is I and the Father who sent me. 17 Even in your law it is written that the testimony of two men can be verified. 18 I testify on my behalf and so does the Father who sent me.” 19 So they said to him, “Where is your father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” 20 He spoke these words while teaching in the treasury in the temple area. But no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come. 21 He said to them again, “I am going away and you will look for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going you cannot come.” 22 So the Jews said, “He is not going to kill himself, is he, because he said, ‘Where I am going you cannot come’?” 23 He said to them, “You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world. 24 That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.” 25 So they said to him, “Who are you?” Jesus said to them, “What I told you from the beginning. [or: at the beginning that which I tell/told you.] 26 I have much to say about you in condemnation. But the one who sent me is true, and what I heard from him I tell the world.” 27 They did not realize that he was speaking to them of the Father. 28 So Jesus said [to them], “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me. 29 The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him.” 30 Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.
• 5 The provided translation of Isaiah 43:1-28 contains a couple of ellipses due to length. I have put certain key clauses in bold for emphasis.
• 6 This is by no means a novel idea: 'Most commentators agree that the Johannine presentation of egō eimi as the object of belief (John 8:24; 13:19) and knowledge (8:28) finds its closest parallel in Isaiah 43:10, where Yahweh calls on Israel to act as witnesses "so that you may know and believe and understand that I am" (LXX egō eimi; MT ʿanî hû)' (Catrin H. Williams, '"I Am" or "I Am He"? Self-Declaratory Pronouncements in the Fourth Gospel and Rabbinic Tradition', in Jesus in Johannine Tradition [ed. Robert T. Fortna and Tom Thatcher; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001], 347. 'But undoubtedly the scripture passage of greatest importance in connection with the whole section John 8.11-30 occurs in Isaiah 43. This is because there is not just one link, as is the case with all the other texts, but a whole series of connections." (Anthony Tyrrell Hanson, The Prophetic Gospel: Study of John and the Old Testament [London: T&T Clark, 1991], 119).
• 7 'Jesus spoke to them again, saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."'
• 8 'O you people who walk in darkness, see a great light! O you who live in the country and in the shadow of death, light will shine on you!'
• 9 'Who among you is the one who fears the Lord? Let him hear the voice of his servant. Those who walk in darkness—they have no light; trust in the name of the Lord, and lean upon God.'
• 10 'While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.'
• 11 39 'Then Jesus said, "I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind." 40 Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and said to him, "Surely we are not also blind, are we?" 41 Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains"' (John 9:39-41).
• 12 '6 I, the Lord God, have called you in righteousness, and I will take hold of your hand and strengthen you; I have given you as a covenant to a race, as a light to nations, 7 to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out from bonds those who are bound and from the prison house those who sit in darkness... 18 Hear, you that are deaf, and you that are blind, look up to see! 19 And who is blind but my servants, and deaf but they who lord it over them? Even God's slaves have become blind. 20 You have often seen but not observed; your ears are open, but you have not heard.'
• 13 'For see, I have blotted out your acts of lawlessness like a cloud and your sins like darkness.'
• 14 'Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hear'
• 15 'For this people's heart has grown fat, and with their ears they have heard heavily, and they have shut their eyes so that they might not see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn—and I would heal them.'
• 16 I want to make a further, albeit conjectural, suggestion. The most natural reading, in context, of Isa. 43:10 LXX is, 'I too am a witness...and [so is] the servant whom I have chosen.' However, it is also grammatically possible to read the Greek as, 'I too am a witness...and [I am] the servant whom I have chosen.' On this reading, God becomes Incarnate as the Servant in order to bear witness to the truth before His people—precisely what Jesus claimed was his purpose in coming into the world (John 18:37). In view of other already given that John understands the Servant to be divine, I think it is plausible that John could have read Isa. 43:10 LXX in this way, as identifying God and the Servant as 'one' (cf. John 10:30).
• 17 Regarding the repetition of egō eimi in Isaiah 43:25 LXX, Williams writes, 'This distinctive doubling of egō eimi may well have prompted [the Fourth Evangelist] to interpret its second occurrence as a divine name: 'I am "I Am".' It would lead, moreover, to further reflection on other egō eimi passages from Isaiah that convey Yahweh's uncontested claim to be the only true God' ('"I Am" or "I Am He"?', 347).
• 18 In Ezek. 16:52. Equivalent third-person or first-person expressions (i.e., 'in our/his/their sins') are found in 3 Kgdms 14:22, 15:3, 15:26, 15:34, 16:19, 16:26, 16:31, 22:53, 4 Kgdms 1:18, 14:6, Sir. 12:14, Ezek. 3:20, 18:24, and Dan. 9:16 OG (not Θ). The exact term from John 8:24 is also used once by Paul, in 1 Cor. 15:17.
• 19 That John can use the expression with its ordinary meaning is clear from John 9:9, where the blind man identifies himself using this phrase. An identificatory sense of egō eimi is also clearly present in the sayings of Jesus in John 4:26, 6:20, 13:19, and 18:5-8, though we will argue in the next article that the theological sense drawn from Isaiah is present in those texts as well.
• 20 I count 88 instances of such a formula in the Septuagint, excluding Isa. 43:10 (Ex. 6:7; 7:5; 7:17; 8:22; 10:2; 14:4; 14:18; 16:12; 29:46; 31:13; Deut. 29:6; 32:39; 3 Kdgms 21:13, 28; Ps. 45:11(46:10); Isa. 49:23; 49:26; 60:16; Jer. 9:23(9:24); 24:7; Ezek. 6:7, 13, 14; 7:4, 9, 27; 11:10; 12:15, 16, 20; 13:9, 14, 21, 23; 14:8; 15:7; 16:62; 17:24; 20:12, 20, 38, 42, 44; 22:16; 23:49; 24:24, 27; 25:5, 7, 11, 17; 26:6; 28:22, 23, 24, 26; 29:6, 9, 16, 21; 30:8, 19, 25, 26; 32:15; 33:29; 34:15, 27, 30; 35:4, 9, 12, 15; 36:11, 23, 38; 37:6, 13, 14, 28; 38:23; 39:6, 7, 22, 28; Joel 2:27, 4:17(3:17); Bar. 2:31). Only in Isa. 43:10 and Deut. 32:39 does the formula end with 'I am'.
• 21 The only New Testament instance of the general formula outside John is in Rev. 2:23 (an allusion to Jer. 17:10), where the referent is also Christ.
• 22 '[John] came for testimony, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.'
• 23 'He answered and said, "Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?"' The speaker is the healed blind man and the referent is the Son of Man, in whom Jesus has invited him to believe.
• 24 'but if I perform them, even if you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may realize [and understand] that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.'
• 25 'I know that you always hear me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that you sent me.'
• 26 'On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.' The phrase 'in/on that day' also features in many of the Old Testament prophecies about God's eschatological self-revelation.
• 27 'And now I have told you this before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe.' The causal link between foretelling and belief here, as in John 13:19, reflects Isa. 43:9-13 LXX.
• 28 'so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.'
• 29 'I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.'
• 30 'Once more Pilate went out and said to them, "Look, I am bringing him out to you, so that you may know that I find no guilt in him."'
• 31 'An eyewitness has testified, and his testimony is true; he knows that he is speaking the truth, so that you also may come to believe.'
• 32 'But these are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.'
• 33 There is some text-critical debate, however. Some scholars have concluded precisely from the awkwardness of the sentence that the text must be corrupt. According to Hanson (The Prophetic Gospel, 120), the great German New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann gave up on trying to interpret the text, regarding it as hopelessly corrupt. However, apart from the Vetus Latina attesting a reading that is inconsistent with the Greek text as we have it, the manuscript evidence for the reading given here is pretty secure.
• 34 ex archēs occurs in John 6:64 and 16:4; ap' archēs occurs in 8:44 and 15:27.
• 35 Hanson, The Prophetic Gospel, 120.
• 36 '[Abram journeyed] to the place of the altar that he had made there at the beginning (tēn archēn)' (Gen. 13:4); 'And the seven scrawny and ugly cows ate up the first seven fair and choice cows... and their appearances were ugly as also at the beginning (tēn archēn)' (Gen. 41:21); 'We plead, lord; we came down at the beginning (tēn archēn) to purchase provisions' (Gen. 43:20, cf. v. 18); 'and while I was still speaking in my prayer, and lo, the man whom I had seen at the beginning in my sleep, Gabriel, being carried swiftly approached me at the time of the evening sacrifice' (Dan. 9:21 OG). I have followed the NETS apart from changing the translation of tēn archēn from 'at first' to the more literal 'at the beginning' in each case.
• 37 Hanson, The Prophetic Gospel, 122; this is a translation that reflects the saying's 'definite reference to Isaiah 43.9b.' Hanson follows the more detailed analysis of E. L. Miller, 'The Christology of John 8:25', Theologische Zeitschrift Basel 36 (1980): 257-65. The verb 'speak/say/tell' (lalō) is in the present tense, but could be a historical present.
• 38 As an aside, there may possibly be an allusion to this last clause in John 10:28-29, where Jesus says concerning his sheep, 'No one can take them out of my hand...No one can take them out of the Father's hand.' The Greek verb in John is harpazō, 'to seize,' 'to snatch.' The verb in Isa. 43:13 LXX is exaireō, which literally means 'take out.' It is frequently used (including in Isaiah LXX) in the sense of 'deliver,' and that is probably its meaning in Isa. 43:13: no one can deliver God's enemies from his hands. However, exaireō can also take on a negative sense analogous to harpazō, i.e. 'tear out' (see, e.g., Matt. 5:29). Given the references to God's 'saving' and 'redeeming' his people just prior and after this statement (vv. 12, 14), John may have read exaireō in the sense, 'there is no one who tears [my people] from my hands,' and thus found in it the basis for the saying in John 10:28-29. This is, of course, conjectural.
• 39 Hanson, The Prophetic Gospel, 122.
• 40 Hanson remarks, 'we must emphasise that John is deliberately being ambiguous here. He is dealing with Jesus' claim to be God, which is in the Fourth Gospel what the claim to be Messiah is in Mark's Gospel, a truth which is to some extent veiled and not openly proclaimed to the world' (The Prophetic Gospel, 121).
• 41 'Will you not know? Will you not hear? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not known the foundations of the earth?' (40:21); 'Who has wrought and done these things? The one calling her from the beginning of generations has called her. I, God, am first, and for the things that are coming, I am' (41:4) 'For who shall declare the things that were from the beginning so that we might know them, and the former things, and we will say that they are true?' (41:26), 'As for the things that were from the beginning, see, they have come; also new things, which I myself will declare, and before they sprang forth they were made plain to you' (42:9), 'Do not cover yourselves; did you not give ear from the beginning, and I declared it to you? You are witnesses whether there is any god besides me' (44:8), 'I am, I am the Lord, speaking righteousness and declaring truth... let them draw near so that they may know together who made from the beginning these things that are to be heard' (45:21).
• 42 'Let them draw near and declare to you the things that will happen... Declare the things that are coming at the end, and we will know that you are gods' (41:22-23); 'Who is like me? Let him stand; let him call... let them declare to you the things that are coming before they come' (44:7); 'I am God, and there is no other besides me, declaring the last things first, before they happen, and at once they come to pass' (46:9)
• 43 I allude, of course, to John 1:1. Indeed, the verbal structure of the statement, hēnika egeneto, ekei ēmēn ('when it came into being [aorist], there I was [imperfect]' closely resembles that of John 1:1, en archē ēn ho logos... panta di' autou egeneto ('In the beginning was [imperfect] the Word... everything came into being [aorist] through him. One hardly needs to add that Jesus' having been sent by the Father is a frequently recurring idea in John.
• 44 'Therefore, when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they came to believe the scripture and the word Jesus had spoken' (2:22); 'From now on I am telling you before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe that I am' (13:19); 'And now I have told you this before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe' (14:29); 'I have told you this so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you' (16:4).
• 45 'Jesus answered him, "I have spoken publicly to the world. I have always taught in a synagogue or in the temple area where all the Jews gather, and in secret I have said nothing"' (18:20). The parallel in Greek is striking: en kruptō elalēsa ouden (Isa. 48:16); en kruphē elalēsa oude (John 18:20).
• 46 'You have neither known nor understood, nor did I open your ears from the beginning. For I knew that betraying you would betray, and that even from the womb you would be called a lawless one' (Isa. 48:8).
• 47 'Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him' (John 6:64).
• 48 'And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up'
• 49 '31 Now is the time of judgment on this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. 32 "And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself." 33 He said this indicating the kind of death he would die. 34 So the crowd answered him, "We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. Then how can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?"'
• 50 'A person shall be brought low, and a man shall be dishonored, and the eyes that are high shall be brought low. But the Lord Sabaoth shall be exalted in judgment, and the Holy God shall be glorified in righteousness' (Isaiah 5:15-16); 'Be glad, and rejoice, O you who dwell in Sion, because the Holy One of Israel has been exalted in your midst' (Isaiah 12:6); 'And again God will wait to have compassion on you; therefore he will be exalted to show mercy to you' (Isaiah 30:18); '"Now I will arise," says the Lord, "now I will be glorified; now I will be lifted up"' (Isaiah 33:10).
• 51 'But on that day God will gloriously shine on the earth with counsel, to uplift and glorify what remains of Israel' (Isa. 4:2). Language about God 'glorifying' his people or his servant can be found in Isa. 44:23; 45:25; 49:5; 55:5.
• 52 This is clear because (i) John quotes Isa. 53:1 in John 12:37-38 and interprets it as fulfilled by unbelief in Jesus; (ii) John the Baptist's identification of Jesus as 'the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world' (John 1:29) likely alludes to Isa. 53:6-12, about the lamb/sheep that goes to the slaughter and bears the sins of many; (iii) Jesus' statement in John 5:41 that he does not receive 'glory from men' likely alludes to Isa. 52:14 LXX, which states that the Servant's appearance is 'without glory from men'; (iv) Jesus' silence before Pilate in John 19:9 likely alludes to Isa. 53:7, which mentions the lamb's/sheep's silence; (v) John 19:38-39 (in which Jesus is buried by two rich men who follow him but were unwilling to do so openly) is seen by some as an allusion to Isa. 53:9 ('And I will give the wicked for his burial and the rich for his death').
• 53 '23 Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit."'
• 54 In context, 'his glory' can only mean 'Christ's glory.' For other uses of 'his glory' in reference to Christ in this Gospel, see John 1:14; 2:11.
• 55 Two more possible allusions that space did not allow us to discuss are the references to Jesus being struck and scourged (John 18:22-23; 19:1), which parallel Isaiah 50:6 LXX ('I have given my back to scourges and my cheeks to blows, but I did not turn away my face from the shame of spittings'), and Jesus' demand before the high priest, 'If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong' (John 18:23). This, together with his question, 'Can any of you charge me with sin?' (8:46) parallel God's demands for Israel to bear witness and judge in Isaiah 43:9-12, 26 and 44:8.