And Israel said to Joseph, “Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.” And he said to him, “Here I am.”

Genesis 37:13

“Here I am” is hineni, a contraction of two words: hineh (here or behold) and ani (I). 

H2009

הִנֵּה

hinnêh

hin-nay'

Prolonged for H2005; lo!: - behold, lo, see.

Even though the word “Hineni” literally means behold me, or here I am, it’s so much more than a statement of location. It’s more a statement of spiritual and emotional presence. It’s the active posture of one who will sh’ma (listen and do) the voice of another. It means being fully attentive and open to another, being emotionally and physically available in the moment. I picture a nursing mother responding to her baby’s cries of hunger. It’s an attitude and response of complete availability.  

Abraham lived this word (Genesis 22 and the binding of Isaac); Moses proclaimed it at that set apart bush (Exodus 3:4); young Samuel responded to the voice of God (1 Samuel 3:4); Isaiah said “here I am, send me” to God’s request (Isaiah 6:8). And Joseph responded to his father, to seek the whereabouts of his brothers on that fateful journey which led him to Egypt. (Genesis 37:13)

In the Garden God asked Adam “where are you”? We know that wasn’t a physical question but an existential one. Where are you spiritually and emotionally right now? Why are you not alongside me where you belong? Don’t you love that the Creator of the Universe cares enough to ask that question of each of us? I love how Abraham Heschel puts it:

 “To the Biblical mind man is not only a creature who is constantly in search of himself but also a creature God is constantly in search of.  Man is a creature in search of meaning because there is a meaning in search of him, because there is God’s beseeching question, ‘Where art thou?’” 

The only proper answer to God’s call is hineni, but sometimes we, like Adam, need a lot of help to get us ‘there.’