Isaiah 43:10 You are My witnesses, says Jehovah; and My servant whom I have elected; that you may know and believe Me, and understand that I am He. -- Green's Literal.
Many have pointed to the expression “I am He” in Isaiah 43:10 and then noted that several New Testament translations render Jesus’ words with the same expression (John 4:26; 8:18; 8:24; 8:28; 9:9; 13:19; 18:5). From this, they construct a comparison intended to prove that Jesus is Jehovah.
Some go even further, asserting that only God can speak this expression, and that in Scripture only God ever uses it of Himself.
In Isaiah 43:10, the expression Jehovah uses consists of just two Hebrew words—*ani hu*. Literally, “I—he.” Biblical Hebrew lacks a copulative verb “to be,” so translators supply it, producing the familiar “I am he.” In the Christianized Septuagint, *ani hu* is rendered with the Greek *ego eimi*, literally “I am,” with the implied “he” understood from context. It is this LXX rendering that many trinitarians (and some others) connect to Jesus’ use of *ego eimi* in various New Testament passages, as though the shared wording establishes an identity claim. Yet in Isaiah 43:10, Jehovah is clearly affirming that He alone is Jehovah, the God of Israel—existing before the false gods of the nations and continuing after they vanish.
While it may be true that no one else uses the exact Hebrew phrase in the precise form found in Isaiah 43:10, David does use the same two Hebrew words of himself in 1 Chronicles 21:17, though separated by several intervening words. This alone shows that the claim “only Jehovah ever uses this phrase” is overstated. In reality, it is simply a phrase that would rarely be used by anyone.
The same is true of the Greek *ego eimi* when used without an explicit object. Such a construction naturally appears infrequently in Scripture because it requires an unusual kind of first‑person self‑reference. Some claim that in the New Testament only Jesus uses *ego eimi*, and therefore it must identify Him as Jehovah. But this is demonstrably false. In John 9:9, the formerly blind man uses *ego eimi* of himself—not to claim deity, but simply to say, “I am the one.” Beyond this, the same two Greek words appear on the lips of many others: Matthew 8:9; 26:22; 26:25; Luke 1:18–19; 7:8; John 1:20; 1:27; 3:28; 18:35; Acts 21:39; 22:3; 23:6; 24:29; Romans 7:14; 11:1; 11:13; 1 Corinthians 1:12; 3:4; 15:9; 1 Timothy 1:15, and likely more.
Returning to Isaiah 43:10, what did Jehovah mean when He said, “I am he”? The surrounding context makes it unmistakably clear. He is declaring that:
- He created Jacob and formed Israel as a people (Isaiah 43:1, 7).
- He will be with them through overwhelming waters and consuming fire (Isaiah 43:2).
- He is Israel’s Savior (Isaiah 43:3, 10).
- Israel is precious to Him (Isaiah 43:4).
- He will gather their offspring from every direction (Isaiah 43:5–6).
- He—not the idols of the nations—is the One who foretells and accomplishes these things (Isaiah 43:8–13).
Nothing in the passage suggests that Jehovah was coining a special identifying formula that would later mark the Messiah as being Jehovah Himself (Isaiah 61:1; John 17:1,3).
Thus, the argument requires an assumption: that because Jehovah used a certain Hebrew expression about Himself in Isaiah 43:10, and because Jesus used a similar Greek expression in entirely different contexts, this somehow proves that Jesus is Jehovah. The conclusion is not supported by the linguistic facts, the usage patterns, or the contextual meaning in either Testament.
Thanks for all your effort, Ronald Day, to rebuke the trinity imaginations.
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