Exodus 3:5

When God met Moses, Moses was a shepherd. He had fled Egypt after killing an Egyptian (Exodus 2:11–15), and he had spent forty years in Midian, a region east of the Gulf of Aqaba where nomadic tribes lived. There he married Zipporah and kept the flock of her father Jethro. The man raised in Pharaoh’s court (Exodus 2) now worked at a trade the Egyptians counted lowly. The verb for “kept”, râʻâh, means to tend a flock and pasture it, and more broadly to rule or lead. The word for Moses’ daily work fits the work God was about to give him, leading Israel, God’s flock, through the wilderness.

Jethro is “the priest of Midian”, a spiritual leader among his people, and later in Exodus he gives Moses wise counsel. Moses leads Jethro’s flock to “the backside of the desert”. The word there, ʼachar, properly means the hind part, and it marks place, “behind”. Some translations give “the far side” or “the west side”. It is a remote, dry and often dangerous country, far from towns and common roads, where Moses is alone with the sheep.

There he comes to “the mountain of God, even to Horeb”. Har is the ordinary word for a mountain or a range of hills, and joined to ʼĕlôhîym, God, it names a mountain set apart for him. Horeb is the mountain also called Sinai, where God would come down to make his covenant with Israel (Exodus 19) and give the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20).

God chose the time and the place. Moses was doing what he did every day, and the path of that ordinary work brought him to the spot God had prepared. Scripture tells of God calling others from the same humble work. He chose David “and took him from the sheepfolds” to feed Jacob his people (Psalm 78:70–72), and Amos was a herdman when “the LORD took me as I followed the flock” (Amos 7:14–15). Paul says that God has chosen the foolish and weak things of the world, “That no flesh should glory in his presence” (1 Corinthians 1:27–29). Moses’ long years in the wilderness were part of God’s preparation. They stripped away the standing of a prince of Egypt and trained him in patience, endurance and dependence on God, the very things he would need to lead a large and often rebellious nation through this same desert.

“And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush.” Malʼâk means a messenger, one sent out as a deputy. The LORD is Yᵉhôvâh, God’s own personal name, often written Jehovah. It is connected with the verb hayah, “to be”, and speaks of him as the self-existent and eternal one, who keeps covenant with his people. The verb for “appeared” is râʼâh, the usual word for seeing, so this was something Moses saw with his own eyes.

Fire, ʼêsh, runs through Scripture as a sign of God’s presence, holiness and power. The bush, çᵉneh, is a common bramble of the wilderness, and God makes that humble plant the place where he shows himself.

Then Moses looked, “and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.” The word “behold”, hinnēh, calls attention to the wonder. “Burned” is bâʻar, to burn, kindle or consume, and “consumed” is ʼâkal, which means to eat, and figuratively to devour or consume. The fire burned as fire does, and still the bush stayed whole, uneaten by the flames. That is the miracle at the centre of the passage, a work of God beyond the order of nature, and it drew Moses to look.

The fire shows God’s holiness and power present within his creation, with the creation left whole. Moses would later tell Israel, “For the LORD thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God” (Deuteronomy 4:24), and Hebrews repeats it: “For our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). His fire falls in judgment on sin, as it did on Nadab and Abihu when they offered strange fire before the LORD (Leviticus 10:1–2). At the bush the same holy God burns in a bramble and keeps it, so his fire becomes a sign of a presence that sustains. He is the God who would dwell among his people in the tabernacle and the temple, holy and near at once.

The word for bush, çᵉneh, sounds much like Sînay, the name of the mountain, and the likeness may tie the bush to the mount where the Law would be given. A lowly bramble that burns and lives may also picture Israel in bondage, humble and afflicted and kept by God, though Exodus leaves that comparison unstated. Stephen retells the whole scene in his speech in Acts 7:30–35.

Moses answers the sight by going to look: “I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.” The verb çûwr means to turn off, to leave the road one is on, and Moses chooses to step away from his shepherding and draw near. He calls it a “great sight”. Gâdôwl is an adjective meaning great in size, age, standing or intensity, and marʼeh means a view, the thing seen, an appearance. Moses knows that this is real, something before his eyes, and that it is extraordinary.

His question is “why”, maddûwaʻ. What held him was a bush that burned and stayed whole, and he wanted to know the reason. His turning aside matters to the story, because the next verse says that God called him “when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see”. Moses was attentive and willing to leave his task for a while, and God met that willingness by speaking to him.

The verb râʼâh ties these verses together. The angel “appeared”, Moses “looked” and went to “see”, and now “the LORD saw that he turned aside to see”. God had been watching Moses, and he speaks once Moses has come. The verse moves from the LORD, Yᵉhôvâh, who sees, to God, ʼĕlôhîym, who calls from the midst of the bush, and both names belong to the one God who appeared in the fire.

“Called” is qârâʼ, to call out to someone or to address him by name, and God calls Moses by his own name, twice: “Moses, Moses.” The name Môsheh means drawing out, from a verb meaning to draw out, as Exodus 2:10 explains, because Pharaoh’s daughter drew him out of the water. It is the name of a rescued child, and the God who rescued him now calls him.

God doubles a name at other great moments too. The angel of the LORD called “Abraham, Abraham” out of heaven as Abraham was about to offer Isaac (Genesis 22:11), and the LORD called “Samuel, Samuel” in the night (1 Samuel 3:10). The doubled name claims the hearer’s full attention, carries urgency, and makes the call personal. God knows this man by name and has a purpose for him.

Moses answers, “Here am I.” The Hebrew, hinnēnî, is one short word, and with it Moses tells God that he is present and ready, the reply of a servant who will listen and obey. Abraham answered God the same way when God first called him in that chapter (Genesis 22:1), and Isaiah offered himself with the same words: “Here am I; send me” (Isaiah 6:8).

As Moses comes near, God stops him: “Draw not nigh hither.” God has drawn Moses to himself, and he also sets a boundary, because the one who speaks is holy and a man may come only as far as God allows. Then comes the command, “put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.”

Taking off the shoes was a recognized sign of respect, humility and submission, used when entering a holy place or coming before a king. Shoes carry the dust and dirt of the road, and removing them before what is holy acknowledged God’s majesty and Moses’ own lowliness. It may also have meant that Moses claimed no rights over ground that belonged to another, here to God. Joshua later received the same command from the captain of the LORD’s host: “Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy” (Joshua 5:15).

The word for holy, qôdesh, means set apart, consecrated to God and kept distinct from what is common. ʼădâmâh is the ordinary word for ground, soil or land, and it is related to ʼâdâm, man. Mâqôwm means a place or spot, from a root meaning to stand or rise. The holiness of this patch of desert soil came from God, who was present there, and his presence set this one spot apart.

After the death of Nadab and Abihu the LORD said, “I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified” (Leviticus 10:3), and the seraphim in Isaiah’s vision cry, “Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3). This first meeting at Horeb sets the pattern for Israel’s worship, with its tabernacle, its priests and its careful laws for drawing near. It also looks ahead to the day when God would call the whole people at this mountain to be “a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation” (Exodus 19:6).

Then God names himself: “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” ʼĕlôhîym is plural in form, and when it names the true God it is a plural of majesty, with its verbs usually singular. “Father” is ʼâb, the common word for a father or forefather. “Thy father” most likely means Moses’ own father, Amram (Exodus 6:20), while it also joins Moses to the whole line of the patriarchs. Moses had grown up in Egypt, yet he knew he was an Israelite and knew of the promises God had made to these men.

The God speaking from the bush is the God who called Abraham and promised, “I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee” (Genesis 12:1–3), and who said he would establish his covenant “to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee” (Genesis 17:7). The threefold “the God of” names three generations and stresses that his covenant has held through each of them. Israel had been enslaved in Egypt for a long time, and those promises might have looked forgotten. Exodus has just told us that “God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob” (Exodus 2:24–25). Now he tells Moses who he is in the same words, and in the next verses he says that he has seen the affliction of his people and has come down to deliver them (Exodus 3:7–10). This name prepares for the one he gives in Exodus 3:14, I AM THAT I AM. God is faithful from generation to generation, and the passing of time leaves his promises standing.

God was present in the fire and the bush stayed whole, and in Christ “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9), and his name is Emmanuel, God with us (Matthew 1:23). He is the Word through whom all things were made (John 1:1–3), the Son through whom God has spoken to us in these last days (Hebrews 1:1–2), “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3).

Moses was called at the bush to bring Israel out of bondage, and he became the mediator of the covenant given at Sinai. He told Israel that God would raise up a Prophet like him (Deuteronomy 18:15). Christ is that Prophet, the mediator of the new testament (Hebrews 9:15) and of a better covenant, “established upon better promises” (Hebrews 8:6). Moses spent forty years in the wilderness before his call, and Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness, tempted, before his ministry began (Matthew 4:1–11). Moses kept Jethro’s sheep, and Jesus is the good shepherd who “giveth his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). Moses answered “Here am I”, and Christ did the Father’s will perfectly, as Hebrews says of him: “Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God” (Hebrews 10:7).

Moses had to keep his distance and hide his face. Through Christ we are told, “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16), because his blood has opened “a new and living way” into God’s presence (Hebrews 10:19–22), and he is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Hebrews sets the mount that burned with fire beside Mount Zion, the city of the living God, to which believers have come (Hebrews 12:18–24). Jesus spoke of the temple of his body (John 2:19–21), and believers, joined to him, are built up as “an holy priesthood” (1 Peter 2:5) and “an habitation of God through the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22). The reverence Moses learned at the bush belongs to that same God, whom we now approach through his Son.

At the bush God takes the first step. He comes to a man in exile, at his everyday work, in a far corner of the wilderness, and calls him by name. He shows himself as fire, the fire that judges sin, and the bush in that fire stays whole, a picture of a presence that sustains what it fills. He names himself by his promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so that Moses knows that the God who speaks is the God who has kept faith with his people all along. The heavens declare his glory day after day (Psalm 19:1–4), and at Horeb he speaks in words to one man, knowing who he is and what he will do through him.

He is the same God now, holy and near. His Son has promised, “lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20), and the God who spoke from the bush is the God of the living, whose call still meets the answer Moses gave: “Here am I.”