Exodus 3:14 had traditionally been taken as God's self-identification as ‘being-itself’, and hence as a source for the doctrine of divine simplicity. I begin this essay by arguing that the appropriateness of this interpretation of Exodus 3:14 should be evaluated by attention to the judgements about God made within scripture rather than merely the semantic range of a few words. There are three questions elicited by Exodus 3:1–14, concerning God's incomparability, intimacy and ineffability, that are relevant to the significance of verse 14 for divine simplicity. Consideration of the kind of judgements these questions elicit about God allows a case to be made for the aptness of divine simplicity to hold the judgements together, thereby allowing for a more sympathetic retrieval of premodern uses of Exodus 3:14.

出埃及记3：14在传统上被视为上帝的“自我存在”，因而成为神圣朴素学说的来源。在本文开始时，我认为对出埃及记3：14的这种解释的适当性应该通过关注经文中关于上帝的判断而不是仅仅几个单词的语义范围来评估。出埃及记3：1-14提出了三个有关上帝的不可比，亲密和不可言喻的问题，这些问题与第14节对神的简单意义有关。考虑到这些有关上帝的问题，人们就可以断定上帝的简单性将这些判断结合在一起，从而可以更富有同情心地检索出埃及记3:14的现代用法。