Before anything else there is one question, and the scriptures answer it in the same voice each time. Who is He?
He tells Moses His own name
At the bush, Moses asks what he should say when the people ask who sent him. The answer is not a description. It is a being.
God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM," and he said, "You shall tell the children of Israel this: 'I AM has sent me to you.'"
He is not one of many. The Lord God revealed it in the Torah as a command to listen, and the prophet Isaiah says it again with nothing left over.
Hear, Israel: The Lord God is our God. The Lord God is one.
Isaiah puts it in the Lord God's own speech: there is no one else, and besides Him there is no God (Isaiah 45:5). Light and darkness are both His making (Isaiah 45:7). Nothing is set beside Him, not even as a rival.
He was there before the world
The Psalms look further back than anything we can count. Before the mountains, before the Earth was shaped, He was (Psalm 90:2). The same book says He knows one small person completely: when we sit down, when we get up, the word before it is spoken (Psalm 139:1–4). He formed us in secret, and none of it was hidden from Him (Psalm 139:13–16).
So He is not far off and He is not vague. He is older than the world and closer than our own thoughts.
The Messiah is asked, and answers from the Torah
A scribe asks Jesus the Messiah which command is first of all. He does not reach for anything new. He recites what the Children of Israel had already been given.
Jesus answered, "The greatest is, 'Hear, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one:
In his prayer he says the same thing another way: that knowing "the only true God" is life (John 17:3). He uses those words of Him, and he is speaking to Him.
In four short signs of the Recitation
A whole chapter of the Recitation is given to this one answer. It is four signs long.
Say, "He is The God, One,
The God, the Eternal Refuge.
He neither begets nor is born,
Nor is there to Him any equal."
In the longest sign of the Recitation the Lord God revealed to us that He is the Ever-Living, that no sleep takes Him, that everything in the Heavens and the Earth is His, and that He knows what is before and what is after (The Recitation 2:255).
Near the end of another chapter He is named: Knower of the unseen, the Entirely Merciful, the Sovereign, the Pure, the Creator, the Fashioner, to whom belong the best names (The Recitation 59:22–24).
What all four say together
Put the Torah, the Prophets, the Psalms, the Gospel and the Recitation side by side on this question and they do not argue.
- He is one. Not one of a set, and not one made of parts (Deuteronomy 6:4, Mark 12:29, The Recitation 112:1).
- He made everything, and He was there first (Psalm 90:2, The Recitation 59:24).
- He is merciful, and mercy is the first thing said of Him (The Recitation 59:22).
- He is near. He hears a person who calls (The Recitation 2:186, Psalm 139:1–4).
- He has no equal, no partner, and no child (The Recitation 112:3–4, Isaiah 45:5).
That last line is not a small point. Isaiah has Him say there is no one besides Him. The Lord God revealed to us in the Recitation that He neither begets nor is born. Held together, they say He is unique in a way nothing else is unique: not the greatest of a kind, but of no kind at all.
Where to go next
Read Psalm 139 slowly. Then read chapter 112 of the Recitation, which takes about ten seconds. Then read Isaiah 45:5–7. They are three different tongues and three different centuries, and they are describing the same One.
Questions people might ask
What name did He give Moses?
He said, "I AM WHO I AM", and told Moses to say that I AM had sent him (Exodus 3:14). Everywhere the Hebrew carries the Name, this site writes The Lord God.
Do the Torah, the Gospel and the Recitation describe the same God?
Yes. Each says He is one, that He made everything, that He is merciful, and that He has no equal. In chapter 112 of the Recitation the Lord God revealed it in four short signs.
Does He have a son?
The Lord God revealed to us in the Recitation that He neither begets nor is born (The Recitation 112:3). Isaiah has Him say there is no one besides Him (The Recitation 45:5). Where the scriptures call people sons of God — Israel, Solomon, the king in the Psalms — the phrase says who someone belongs to, not who begot them: what is a son of God?
