It was formerly used as a noun in our language, and as such may be found in Exodus 3:  13, 14.  “And Moses said unto God, Behold when I come unto the children of Israel and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?  And God said unto Moses, I =am= the I AM; and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.”  Chap. 6:  3.—­“I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty; but by my name =Jehovah= (I AM) was I not known unto them.”  The word Jehovah is the same as am.  It is the name of the self-existent, self-sustaining =Being=, who has not only power to uphold all things, but to perform the still more sublime action of upholding or sustaining himself.  This is the highest possible degree of action.  Let this fail, and all creation will be a wreck.  He is the ever-living, uncontrolled, unfailing, unassisted, and never-changing God, the Creator, Preserver, Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and End of all things.  He is the First Cause of all causes, the Agent, original moving Power, and guiding Wisdom, which set in motion the wheels of universal nature, and guides and governs them without “variableness or the shadow of turning.”

    “I AM the first, and I, the last,
      Thro endless years the same;
    I AM is my memorial still,
      And my eternal name.”
                              Watts’ Hymn.

Ask the Jews the meaning of this neuter verb in their language.  They hold it in the most profound and superstitious reverence.  After the captivity of their nation they never dared pronounce the name except once a year when the high priest went into the Holy of Holies, and hence the true pronunciation of it was lost.  Unto this day they dare not attempt to utter it.  In all their writings it remains in characters untranslated.  When their Messiah comes they expect he will restore the pronunciation, and by it they shall be able to accomplish all things.[15]

According to Plutarch the Greeks had the letters EI, =thou art=, engraven on the temple of Apollo at Delphi, which is the second person of =Eimi=, I am.[16]

This motto was doubtless borrowed from the Jews, to whom it was given as the name of the God of Jacob.  The same name you may see engraven on monuments, on pictures of the bible, on masonic implements, and in various places, untranslated.

Who can suppose that this word “expresses no action,” when the very person incapable of it can not utter it, and no one else can speak it for him?  It denotes the highest conceivable action applied to Deity or to man, and it is questionable philosophy which dares contradict this fact.  The action expressed by it, is not changed, because it does not terminate on a foreign object.  It remains the same.  It is self-action.