Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. 3 Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” 4 When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6 He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
7 Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, 8 and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 9 The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. 10 So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” 11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 12 He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.”
13 But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I Am Who I Am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I Am has sent me to you.’ ” 15 God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:
This is my name forever,
and this my title for all generations.
Exodus 3:1-15 is a story of the call of Moses. My theme is God’s self-revelation through calling, deliverance, and covenant faithfulness. I will treat the divine call and human vocation, God calling ordinary people into extraordinary purpose. One discovers identity through the summons that come from beyond oneself. Since God is a liberator, human vocation will have a dimension of liberation. The divine name, Yahweh, reveals God as present, active, and faithful. God reveals divine identity through faithful action in history—calling people, delivering the oppressed, and remaining present with covenant promises that shape human identity and hope.
Introduction
As present in the canonical text, Bible scholars consider that the “E” and “J” document are present, with the E document at Exodus 3:1, 4b, 6, 9-15, and 4:17. This passage is central for the identification of J and E documents within the Pentateuch. They represent different traditions regarding the origin of Israel among the Patriarchs and the deliverance from Egypt. J has used Yahweh throughout to refer to the divine. It has its origin in the solidifying of the sacral kingship under David and Solomon, as the scholars of the court sought to tell the story of the Patriarchs and Moses in a way that led to the formation of the royal family. In contrast, E has used Elohim to refer to the divine. It arose in the north, after the split between Israel and Judah, and had a close connection to the prophetic tradition. Thus, the introduction of Yahweh into the E narrative is a dramatic moment in the history of revelation of the identity of the divine.[1]
The call of Moses will point us to two important aspects of the Old Testament story. Moses will be the ideal deliverer, of which we learn more in Joshua and Judges. Moses will become the pattern of the human-divine encounter that leads to a calling of the prophet. Moses is the hero, to whom others can turn out of their ambiguous situation in life and gain assurance that the presence, reality and calling of God are real. We cannot all be a hero of the faith, but we can recognize such heroes when we are in their presence, “clap” for them in our own way, and realize that we get to share in our much smaller way in their encounter with God.[2]
Application
God will come to Moses unexpectedly. Moses is not searching for God. Rather, he is engaged in his everyday activity of tending the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. He is on Horeb, the mountain of God. God calls to him out of the bush and names him, and Moses responds, “Here I am.” Joseph Campbell wrote that the privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. Moses will discover who he really is as God calls him to fulfill his mission or purpose in life. God will call him first into a relationship. This relationship will become decisive for the rest of his life. He will live out of his response to the summons from God and the service of that mission. We should think of I Samuel 3:4ff, Isaiah 6:1-8 and Jeremiah 1:4-10 as parallels at this point.
A proper application to the life we live today, however, might suggest that we need to ponder upon this in a personal way. God observes, hears, and knows a situation to which God will call and send us. That would truly mean discovering who you are.
We find two questions of identity here.
One is who Moses is. The fact that Moses must turn his face to avoid looking at God means that for a moment, Moses saw God face to face. It emphasizes the unique relationship Moses will have with this God. Intimacy with God is a prerequisite for a significant revelation. In Moses, we find such familiarity with God a theme in his story.[3] This divine-human encounter is simple and direct. It will be the turning point for Moses and the Hebrew people. Moses will have the mission of transforming their slavery into freedom. Yet, as is typical of the prophets, Moses objects. In Jeremiah 1:6, the prophet is too young. In Isaiah 6:5, the prophet is unworthy. Chapter 4 will give several objections. He does not think he is not the right person for the task. Thus, who is Moses? The response from God is simple and direct. God will be with Moses, with the clear implication that this should be enough to overcome any objection and guarantee a successful fulfillment of the mission. An essential element of the call of a prophet is a sign, and in this case, the sign is that God will bring Moses and the people back to the mountain of God so that they may worship God on the mountain.
The other matter of identity is who God is. God self-identifies as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In a pattern that will be prominent in the story of the judges, God hears the cry of the Israelites and sees the oppression Egypt has caused. However, when we read the entirety of the story, the account of the exodus from Egypt and the commissioning of its leader is not just the first in a lengthy list of deliverances. It becomes central to the identity of the God of Israel. The divine response to the plight of Israel is to send Moses and bring Israel out of Egypt. God acts through a human agent who will be a servant and messenger of the divine will.
Theological reflection
Moses says that the Israelites will ask the name of the one who has called and sent him. The response from God has been the source of much pondering by biblical scholars, theologians, and philosophers. The Hebrew sentence ehyeh asher ehyeh can mean either "I am who I am," or "I will be who I will be." Some scholars, with whom I disagree, suggest a causative form of the word, “to be.” If so, it would suggest, “He causes things to be.” “I am” is the name of the one who sent him. Ezekiel 20:5 and Isaiah 42:8, both from the exile, have the phrase “I am the Lord.” Elohim (God) is YHWH (the Lord) which has a close connection to the verb “to be.” It may suggest something like, “I am really there.” It may suggest the efficacious presence of the Lord, as “I am there for you.” The name is the revelation of a promise to a people in a helpless situation. It suggests the nearness of divine help. The revelation of the name Yahweh offers updated content to the identity of God that remains connected to the God of the Patriarchs. Yahweh intends to affect the history of Israel. History is the arena in which this self-revelation will take place. Thus, we are not to think in terms of added information about God, but an invitation to trust in the new self-disclosure of God as a promise of a future hope. It will be the basis for the affirmation of Yahweh as the sole name of the divine in Israel, rejecting any appeal to other gods. It will be the basis for rejection of a physical form, whether animal or nature, that represents Yahweh. Scholars need to exercise some caution in the implications drawn from this revelation. The point is not deriving some philosophical notion of Being (Eusebius) or the unchangeable essence of God (Augustine). We need to resist the temptation of developing a philosophy of history based upon the promise of deliverance. Thus, having answered the question of the identity of this God, we can now answer the question Moses had of his identity. Who is Moses? He is the one whom the Lord has called into close relationship and whom the Lord has sent as the human agent of the divine message and the divine deliverance.
Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c is part of Psalm 105-Psalm 106, an historical hymn. The history of Israel is evidence that God keeps promises. The theme of the text is God’s covenant faithfulness revealed through Israel’s history. It opens with an emphasis upon remembrance as worship, giving thanks for the acts of God. Remembrance of such acts is a spiritual practice that reorients people away from self and toward God. it shows that divine providence is such that even hardship and injustice can be part of the larger saving purpose of God. The history of Israel highlights the mercy of God more than human failure. I emphasize the covenant with Abraham that shows itself in the promise of descendants and land, giving hope to later generations. God remains faithful to the covenant and guides history with mercy, power, and purpose, calling God’s people to remember, trust, and praise.
Introduction
Psalm 105 was originally the first half of a longer psalm, of which Psalm 106 is the continuation. I Chronicles 16:8-22 quotes 105:1-15 at a festival. Psalm 105 presents Israel’s history as a testimony to God’s faithful covenant, mighty acts, and providential care, calling the people to remember, trust, and praise the Lord.
Psalm 78 is like this psalm in its focus upon the mighty deeds and miracles of the Lord. Strangely, it has no mention of anything associated with Sinai. It invokes selected authoritative Torah tradition alone with exegetical comments on them in praise of the Lord.
Psalm 105 celebrates how God remains faithful to the covenant made with Abraham and his descendants. The historical events in the psalm—especially the stories of the patriarchs and Joseph—are not just history, but evidence of God’s ongoing guidance, protection, and fulfillment of divine promises. The primary theme is the covenant with Abraham to him the Promised Land. This theme is popular in post-exilic times. This covenant was eternal and unconditional. It was still in effect despite the exile and the fact that Jews within and outside the land lived under Persian rule. It provides encouragement and assurance to the post-exilic audience that they are entitled to the land of Israel by divine right.
While both psalms present a theological interpretation of the history of Israel, that interpretation includes a confession of the sins of Israel that led to judgment and punishment. This view of Israel's history - that faithfulness leads to blessing and prosperity, while unfaithfulness leads to punishment and suffering - is the dominant theological view of the OT. Only rarely does anyone question it. Most famously, this questioning occurs in the Book of Job. However, even an acknowledgment of Israel’s sins cannot squelch the spirit of thankfulness that characterizes Psalm 105.
Verse by verse study
Psalm 105: 1-6 are an introduction to the hymn. I would point first to the call to give thanks and to call upon the Lord. The focus of worship is to re-direct our attention from our natural inclination to focus upon ourselves and to direct our attention to the Lord. Such re-centering, recognizing the center of our lives is outside us, is vital to our spiritual growth. 1 O give thanks to the Lord, call on his name, make known his deeds among the peoples. Such deeds are those recorded in the Torah, which the psalm goes on to recite and reinterpret. The poet knew some form of the Torah traditions, which had already become authoritative. 2 Sing to him, sing praises to him; tell of all his wonderful works. Yet, a second point centers on the “Magalia Dei” that constitutes large sections of the Old Testament, especially the Torah. The deeds, wonderful works, miracles of the Lord are a summary way of referring to the history of the dealings of the Lord with creation, the Patriarchs, the formation of the Hebrew people or Israel under Moses and the judges, and the continuation of the nation under the kings. Classical rabbinic Judaism never placed much emphasis upon this aspect of the exhortations we find in the Old Testament. All of this is to bring the minds and hearts of the people to a focus upon the Lord. 3 Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. 4 Seek the Lord in the temple and his strength; seek his presence continually in the temple. 5 Remember the wonderful works he has done, his miracles, recalling the deliverance from Egypt, and the judgments he has uttered in the giving of the Law at Sinai, 6 O offspring (seed) of his servant Abraham, thereby making them the fulfillment of the promise of the Lord to give Abraham many offspring in Genesis 15:3-6, children of Jacob, his chosen ones, emphasizing the continuity between the patriarchs and the present generation, choosing this people gathered for worship is among the judgments of the Lord. The psalm affirms that the promises of the Lord had small beginnings in that they begin with blessing a family. At the same time, those now gathered for worship are just has chosen as are the patriarchs. The people in the sanctuary assemble as the inheritors of the promises to Abraham and the patriarchs.[4] Even the Patriarchs received the benefit of election or choice of a people.[5] Theological and biblical remembering involves being reconnected and re-placed in the event in a way that its original power is once again re-created. When we do all the things the psalmist asks us to do, we are enabled to better step into the salvific events he described and, thus, better able to appreciate and to praise what God has done for us.
In Psalm 105: 23-26, we have a poetic account of the oppression in Egypt and the sending of Moses. It presupposes a narrative form that many would have known. It refers to the hatred of Pharaoh toward the Hebrew people. As is typical of the Lord in the Bible, the Lord responds to the situation by sending people, Moses and Aaron to deal with the situation. 23 Then Israel came to Egypt; Jacob lived as an alien in the land of Ham. Having arrived in Egypt, the clan grows into a people while in Egypt. 24 And the Lord made his people very fruitful, and made them stronger than their foes, 25 whose hearts he then turned to hate his people, to deal craftily with his servants. The growth into a people causes resentment among the ruling class and brings persecution. 26 He sent, sending someone in response to a need is the typical way the Lord responds to a prayer, his servant Moses, and Aaron whom he had chosen.
45bPraise the Lord!
Verse by verse study
1Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. Most scholars think Horeb is in the Sinai, but some think in northwest Arabia near Midian. It is the preferred name for Sinai in E and Deuteronomy. It may already have been a sacred place, given the Egyptian inscription from the 1300s that refer to an area in this region as “land of the nomads who worship Yahwe.” As is often the case in human encounters with the divine, Moses comes into the presence of God unexpectedly while he is engaged in an everyday activity tending the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro, identified here as a priest of Midian.
4bGod called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Compare this with I Samuel 3:4ff. This first exchange between God and Moses marks the initial movement of what is the classic prophetic call narrative (compare Isaiah 6:1-8 and Jeremiah 1:4-10). Simple and direct, the interaction is a turning point for both Moses and the people of Israel. Moses now serves God’s purpose, although that purpose is yet to be defined and objections and problems lie ahead. The slavery of Israel is about to be transformed into freedom, though it will be an often dangerous and challenging freedom. 6 He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Here is the way God is referred to in the ‘Amidah prayer in the Jewish tradition. And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. This assumes that God has a physical form, but suggests that seeing God would be too awesome for humans to survive. God had direct discourse with Moses, as the text indicates, face to face. This human form of revelation emphasizes the unique relationship Moses had with Yahweh. At this point, it becomes clear that among the many forms Yahweh revealed intentions, one of them was decidedly not an animal form. As a notion of revelation, intimacy with God is a prerequisite, and Moses has such familiarity preeminently. Yet, Moses had to receive a call to that intimacy.[6] Simple and direct, the interaction is a turning point for both Moses and the people of Israel. Moses now serves the purpose of God. God is about to transform the slavery of Israel into freedom. 9 The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them.
Judges 3:9 (NRSV)
9 But when the Israelites cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the Israelites, who delivered them, Othniel son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother.
Judges 3:15 (NRSV)
15 But when the Israelites cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up for them a deliverer, Ehud son of Gera, the Benjaminite, a left-handed man. The Israelites sent tribute by him to King Eglon of Moab.
Judges 4:3 (NRSV)
3 Then the Israelites cried out to the Lord for help; for he had nine hundred chariots of iron, and had oppressed the Israelites cruelly twenty years.
Judges 6:6-8 (NRSV)
6 Thus Israel was greatly impoverished because of Midian; and the Israelites cried out to the Lord for help.
7 When the Israelites cried to the Lord on account of the Midianites, 8 the Lord sent a prophet to the Israelites; and he said to them, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I led you up from Egypt, and brought you out of the house of slavery;
Judges 10:10-13 (NRSV)
10 So the Israelites cried to the Lord, saying, “We have sinned against you, because we have abandoned our God and have worshiped the Baals.” 11 And the Lord said to the Israelites, “Did I not deliver you from the Egyptians and from the Amorites, from the Ammonites and from the Philistines? 12 The Sidonians also, and the Amalekites, and the Maonites, oppressed you; and you cried to me, and I delivered you out of their hand. 13 Yet you have abandoned me and worshiped other gods; therefore I will deliver you no more.
1 Samuel 7:8-9 (NRSV)
8 The people of Israel said to Samuel, “Do not cease to cry out to the Lord our God for us, and pray that he may save us from the hand of the Philistines.” 9 So Samuel took a sucking lamb and offered it as a whole burnt offering to the Lord; Samuel cried out to the Lord for Israel, and the Lord answered him.
1 Samuel 12:8 (NRSV)
8 When Jacob went into Egypt and the Egyptians oppressed them, then your ancestors cried to the Lordand the Lord sent Moses and Aaron, who brought forth your ancestors out of Egypt, and settled them in this place.
10 So come, I will send (he will serve as an emissary of God, sending being typical of the selection of a prophet) you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” God will act first through a human agent, The call of an individual as servant and messenger of divine will. In this act of divine commissioning of Moses, God will act first through a human agent. In heeding the cry of the people, we find a precursor to the theme of the Deuteronomic History, especially in Judges and I Samuel. The commissioning of a leader is far more elaborate in Judges 6 of Gideon and Saul in I Samuel 9-10. The connections with the prophetic call narrative, such as in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, is a difficult one. 11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” We see the second movement of the classic prophetic call narrative, the protest of the one who is called. The reasons given in other prophetic protests vary from age (Jeremiah 1:6) to unworthiness (Isaiah 6:5). Here in Exodus 3 and later in chapter 4 we see Moses protesting in stages. First, here in 3:11 is a general demur, “Who am I ....” Later in 4:1, the protest becomes, “But suppose they do not believe me.” And finally, in 4:10, the plea is lack of ability, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent ... but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue” (NRSV). Like a child trying to avoid an unpleasant task, Moses falls back upon one excuse after another. The objection is also part of the prophetic call narrative. However, one wonders if we might not have here an answer to the dominant question of philosophical anthropology: Who am I? The answer of the prophetic call narratives is that the answer arises out of a divine mission, charge, and appointment that transcends the bounds of the humanly possible. Self-knowledge comes about when confronted by the mission and call of God, which demand impossibilities of humanity. It is knowledge of self, humanity, guilt, and the impossibility of one’s own existence when confronted with the possibilities demand by the divine mission. One attains knowledge of oneself by discovering the discrepancy between the divine mission and one’s own being, by learning what one is and what one is to be, yet what one cannot be in one’s own strength. The call becomes the prospect of a new ability to be. One learns who one is not from within oneself but from the future to which the divine mission leads one. We learn who we are only by the history to which the missionary hope leads one. In this history of missionary possibilities, one recognizes that we are open to the future and therefore hope for new possibilities of being. This means our future is hidden from his in the present and will be revealed to us in the projects that open to us as we fulfill the mission.[7] 12 He said, “I will be (‘ehyeh, anticipating the etymology of the divine name in verse 14) with you. In response to Moses’ first argument that he is a “nobody,” God’s answer is again simple and straightforward, “I will be with you.” The clear implication is that God’s presence is enough to overcome objection and to guarantee success. The point is that the presence of God is enough to overcome objection and guarantee success. And this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you, another important aspect of the prophetic call: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.” God follows with a “sign.” The sign could be that God is with him, or that God has sent him, or that hat after their liberation, the people of Israel will come with Moses to worship on this very mountain. Like Judges 6, Jeremiah 11 but in contrast with I Kings 22 and Isaiah 6. Childs believes the sign is the burning bush, which prefigures devouring fire at Sinai. However, since this deliverance in Exodus is not just one of several such occasions in the past, but also the most central to the faith, the author includes in it all the familiar language from this tradition having to do with the deliverance from Egypt and the conquest of the Promised Land. The commissioning of a leader to rescue the people from their distress is presented in a more elaborate fashion in the Deuteronomic History, in Judges 6 (Gideon) and I Samuel 9-10 (Saul). The call of Moses becomes a prophetic call narrative. This suggests some influence form the prophetic call tradition, especially that of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. This text follows the Deuteronomic pattern of the commissioning of the deliverer. It also transforms the deliverer into a prophet, particularly that of Jeremiah.
13 But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” In the canonical context, the Hebrews already knew God as Yahweh. If we accept the E document and the P document as reflecting history, then the call of Moses is pivotal in identifying the generalized notion of divinity among the patriarchs with the revelation of who God is on Mt. Horeb. 14 God said to Moses, “I Am Who I Am.” The four-letter name of God YHWH, known as the Tetragrammaton ("the four letters"). Instead, God responds with the Hebrew sentence ehyeh asher ehyeh, which can mean either "I am who I am," or "I will be who I will be." It suggests that the nature of the Lord will become evident n the actions of the Lord. The relationship between this enigmatic sentence and the name YHWH which only appears later in the passage (v. 15) is that the name is based on the root of the verb "to be." scholars hypothesize that the first vowel in the name would have been "a," thus the common spelling "Yahweh." If the name is really to be vocalized this way, then it is meant to be a causative form of the verb "to be," meaning something like "He causes existence," or "He causes things to be." This would be a title for Israel's God that identifies God as creator, the originator of all that exists. He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I Am (’Ehyeh, a shorter form of the explanation) has sent me to you.’ A passage much reflected upon by biblical scholars”
Ezekiel 20:5-6 (NRSV)
5 and say to them: Thus says the Lord God: On the day when I chose Israel, I swore to the offspring of the house of Jacob—making myself known to them in the land of Egypt—I swore to them, saying, I am the Lord your God. 6 On that day I swore to them that I would bring them out of the land of Egypt into a land that I had searched out for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, the most glorious of all lands.
Isaiah 42:8 (NRSV)
8 I am the Lord, that is my name;
my glory I give to no other,
nor my praise to idols.]
15 God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.
Theological reflection
The name of the deity revealed in 3:13-15 is worthy of reflection. It communicates what was new in the revelation of Yahweh in terms of information about the divine name. It also shows how this new revelation was very linked with the history of the patriarchs. What happened with the revelation of the name of Yahweh was important for Israel, but it was not the beginning of revelation. Yahweh is identical with the God of the ancestors. The point is not a philosophical abstraction or to introduce a philosophy of history. Rather, the point is that self-revelation from God gives knowledge of God. Moses did not discover God, but God discovered Moses. The point is not divine indefiniteness, but divine actuality, as if to say, “I am there, really there.” This God is ready to call, to commission, and to deliver a people. This God is the same God of the ancestors, but also, is ready to do a new thing in bringing deliverance for a people. The identity of Israel's God as the singular unrivaled deity of ancient Israel is the central tenet of Old Testament faith. The fact that Israel had a monolatrous religion, mandating the worship of only one God when all its neighbors had pantheons of dizzying proportions, is a theological distinction of the most incredible kind. God told Moses that the Lord, the God of his ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has sent him. This is the name of God forever. Interestingly, two exilic texts contain a reflection of this emphasis on the name of God. In Ezekiel 20:5-6, the Lord God refers to the day when the Lord chose Israel and swore to the children of Jacob, making God known to them in the land of Egypt, that “I am the Lord your God.” On that day, the Lord God swore to them that the Lord would bring them out of the land of Egypt and into a land that the Lord has prepared for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, the most glorious of all lands. Isaiah 42:8 says that “I am” the Lord, that is my name, and divine glory or praise the Lord gives to no other god, which would be an idol.The medieval period focused on ontology, attempting to turn the Bible into Greek philosophical reflection. Eusebius said Plato borrowed his doctrine of being from Moses. Augustine used it to substantiate the view of God as unchangeable essence. For the medieval school, God, s name was "being,,, describing rod I a essence. In Calvin and Zwingli, the focus shifts from God's being to God’s being in ruling, governing, and redeeming the world. Recent discussion focuses on revelation as history. We need to exercise caution at this point. Yahweh is not a definition of the nature of God in the sense of a philosophical statement about the being of God, as a suggestion of absoluteness, aseity, and so on. There is no division between God's being and God's activity. The whole narrative context leads to the expectation that Yahweh intends to impart something but focusing on what Yahweh will show himself to be to Israel. However, while affirming that history is the arena in which the self-revelation of God takes place, we do not need to take the step of an overall philosophy of history rooted in those events. We might suggest that the name means something being present or being there in the sense of relative and efficacious, being there for you. This is a promise to people in a hopeless situation, and this promise employs the rhetorical device of playing freely with the derivation of a name, a thing well known to storytellers. The acts of God's self-disclosure is joined with the call for commitment. Revelation is not information about God, but an invitation to trust in the self-disclosure of God as a promise of future hope.
According to ancient ideas, a name had a close and essential relationship between it and is subject. The subject is in the name, and because of the name carries with it a statement about the nature of its subject or at least about the power appertaining to it. People in antiquity had no doubt that human life was mysteriously surrounded and determined by divine powers. However, this conviction was not a comforting one. People did not know their names, invoking the name, and gaining divine interest in what interested the individual. Deity had to reveal the name and cause the name to mind in people. Yahweh had given himself way in revealing the name, and Yahweh committed this name in trust to this newly formed people. In this name, they found the guarantee of Yahweh's nearness and readiness to help. Through it, they always had the assurance of being able to reach the heart of Yahweh. They looked upon the name as holy. To hallow the name was to acknowledge the uniqueness and exclusiveness of the worship of this people. Wherever they opened their doors to another deity, they profaned the name of Yahweh. One hallowed the name by obedience to the commandments. While other gods had many names, Yahweh had one. Yahweh was in fact one. Even the highest terms of praise are always reserved for this one name. The people could not properly objectify and dispose of this name. The name never became an elevated mystery, but it was understood only in historical experience.
This God is jealous, which accounts for the passionate striving for the dominion of Yahweh throughout the community. The nature gods are in sharp contrast to this personal God that acts in the history of this newly formed people. The temptation, however, was to make God into a projection of human characteristics. This newly formed people assumed the existence of other gods for other people. The passion of Moses was that these people devote themselves to Yahweh. It would take time before this affirmation went to the level of monotheism. Yahweh never had a female consort. The core experience here is that Moses ruled out all rival deities, that this belief became the responsibility of all persons, and that all periods of the history of Israel contain the shattering force of this core experience and belief.
Moses will become the primary pattern for two crucial elements of Old Testament history. He will be the ideal pattern for the deliverer, of which we will read in Judges and I Samuel. Moses is the supreme example of the response of the Lord to the plight of Israel. The people experience trouble or oppression. They cry out to the Lord; the Lord hears their cry, and the Lord sends a deliverer. The people receive deliverance. Eventually, and true to the human condition, often because of their own sin, they fall into trouble again and the cycle repeats itself. In addition, Moses will become the pattern of the human-divine encounter and prophetic call. The Holy One draws near and calls an individual as servant and messenger of the divine will. The Lord gets his attention. The ground itself becomes holy because the Lord has showed up in this place. It has become a holy place.
Application
Many of us have become skeptical of such a summons or call upon a human life. The Lord has not stopped observing, hearing, and knowing the human condition. The Lord has not stopped creating holy moments and holy places. We may need to recover a sense of the potential holiness of a moment or place in our lives. A few lines from a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning recall the burning bush story and indicate the possibility of failing to notice that one is on holy ground:
Earth's crammed with heaven
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes -
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.
If you fail to recognize that you are now in the presence of God, it will inhibit you from experiencing the power of a mission or purpose in life. The Lord reveals the nature of divine action in that the Lord has observed, heard, and known, the misery and suffering of the Hebrew people and therefore comes down to deliver them and bring them to a good, broad land that flows with milk and honey. Yet, with a sense of the trouble and challenge to come, that land already has inhabitants. The Lord will intervene into the history of this people.
Verse by verse study
2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. The God of the promise that the tribes experienced in the wilderness disclosed the divine self in places that became holy for them. The land of oriental culture is full to the brim of such appearances through which places are holy and become part of the worship life of a people. Stones, waters, trees, groves, mountains, and so on, can become bearers of hierophanies. Legends provided the aetiology of such sacred places and rituals that bestow divine hallowing on the land around about and on those who dwell on it and cultivate it. Such places are gateways through which the gods hallowed the land and the people who dwell upon it experience the sanctifying of their cultivation of the land. Such people live as close as possible to the gods. They secure themselves against chaos by this anchoring in the original sacred event.[8] 3 Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” 4a When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, … 5 Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”… We have a close encounter with the holy. For example, the Golden Temple in India, a holy place for Hinduism but especially for Sikhs, is a popular tourist attraction. However, all persons are to remove their shoes and wrap a turban around their heads, the act of binding symbolizing a spiritual condition. For Moses, the presence of God has turned the very ground of the mountain into a holy place. 7 Then the Lord said, [in a revelation of divine action, (Yahweh) declares Himself in a cascade of verbs (“I have observed,” “I have heard,” “I know,” “I have come down,” “to deliver”). “I have observed, the Lord taking note, the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry, the Lord pays attention, on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, 8 and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The Lord intervenes into history to remedy human oppression and suffering. The promise the Lord made of land and home will find fulfillment partially in the judges period, but completed in the early monarchy. The identity of the Holy One who draws near and sees humanity. The call of an individual as servant and messenger of divine will.
The Lord comes in strange, mysterious, and terrifying form to a man who unsuspectingly stumbles upon God, that is, upon the portent of the burning bush which is not consumed. This man is one who has already committed an abortive act of violence on behalf of his people oppressed and tortured in Egypt. He has been the adopted son of the daughter of the king. He is now the shepherd of his Midianite father-in-law and has no fixed program for the rest of his life. What does this encounter mean for him? Well, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has seen the suffering of the people and has come down to save them and led them into the land promised to their ancestors. The concern is for the people, and therefore for Moses in that plan. This next period of his life begins with the encounter here on the mountain of God, filled by the work of God as expressed in its fulfillment, pointing to both past and future. Moses has heard it, and now he must attest to it in the difficult circumstance to Pharaoh. God will speak with him personally, as a friend (Ex. 33:11). Can any human being ask for more?[9]
Application
Everyone thought he was dead .... Hector Mann had not been heard from in almost sixty years .... Few people seemed to know that he had ever existed. Those are opening sentences of the novel, The Book of Illusions, by Paul Auster. The story, set in 1988, is the tale of two men broken by the hard realities of life. College professor David Zimmer had his life upended by a plane crash that took the life his wife. Hector Mann was a silent film star who suddenly disappears due to a tragedy. Both retreat from life. The professor will get a second chance on life.[10]
After the trouble, challenge, and difficulties overwhelmed him, Moses retreated from the promise of his early life in order to herd sheep in Midian. The call of Moses is a reminder that life can give us many reasons to retreat. Life can knock you down and give you plenty of wounds. A certain amount of wound-licking is appropriate. The hospital is there for a reason. Yet, you do not want to spend the rest of your life focusing on those wounds. You need to get healthy and live your life.
The burning bush is the significant difference between Moses and Mann. Moses and Mann already had two acts in their lives — the first a period of success and rising, the second a period of obscurity and hiding. However, at the bush, God calls Moses to a third act, a period of engagement, working, and vocation. In the novel, Mann never reconsiders his withdrawal decision. He has buried his life, so Act II is the finale.
The Lord has not given up on Moses. He has a third act in the story that would be his life. What can we learn from the story of Moses about our calling as a people?[11]
Lesson One: We need to remove our skepticism of the holy. "Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground" (Exodus 3:5). Some of us would be uneasy with this. We live in a skeptical age. We might have found some reason to dismiss what we felt.
I could have missed it. I could have let the moment go past me. It was just a church service. I had been to many before. However, in the Sunday evening worship service in the college church at Miltonvale, Kansas, I responded. I sensed the presence of God, calling me to a different life than I had planned to that point. When I went to my first Walk to Emmaus, some 14 years later, I could have let the moment go past me. It was just another retreat. However, I felt a deeper sense of calling to spiritual discipline, spiritual life, and to ministry.
Do not miss the holy moments in your life.
Lesson Two: Sometimes God comes to us when and where we might least expect it. Moses was simply doing his daily task. He had been there many times before. Today, however, would be different.
Joe and Cindy Pfender had it made. They owned a beautiful, brand-new 2,200-square-foot home set on one-half acre outside Houston. Their home was in a lovely neighborhood brimming with Southern hospitality and seven community pools for those hot Texas summers. They were the proud parents of three children — Chelsea, 6, Shane, 2, and Quinn, the baby in the family. One day Chelsea came to her dad with a drawing and proudly announced, “Daddy, look what I did.” Joe pointed to each person in the picture and asked Chelsea to tell him about each one. Chelsea responded, “That’s Quinn. He’s crying. That’s Shane. He just hit Quinn. I am reading a book and Mommy is cooking dinner.” Chelsea then pointed to the one remaining figure, saying, “That’s you, Daddy.” “But why is my face all colored in?” Joe asked his daughter. “That’s not your face, Daddy, that’s the back of your head. You’re working on your computer.” Chelsea’s drawing was a stunning revelation to Joe.[12]
Lesson Three: Sometimes the Lord comes to, calls forth the curious among us, those who dare to enter dialogue with the divine. Moses had to have enough curiosity to come over to the bush and see what was happening. Some people are so clueless spiritually that they have lost their curiosity. You, obviously, have not lost your curiosity.
Lesson Four: Just as the Lord chose an ordinary bush in the desert as a means of self-revelation, so the Lord chooses ordinary, everyday objects and experiences in the world to confront, call, speak to us, show forth, say, "I am!" We may fail to notice that we are already standing on holy ground, for “every common bush is afire with God.” If you fail to recognize that you are now in the presence of God, it will block your spiritual journey.
Lesson Five: All of this has been at the Lord’s gracious initiative. This entire encounter was the Lord’s idea. This is not something that Moses sought. Moses did not have a plan, and then go to the Lord. In fact, Moses wanted to be left alone. The call, the choice of Moses, great messenger of God to Pharaoh, all of this was the Lord’s idea.
Moses, of course, lived centuries ago, and Mann is a fictional character.
Elie Wiesel, at age 15, witnessed the horrors of the Nazi prison camp of Auschwitz. His mother and younger sister perished in the gas chambers. He lived in four different concentration camps. He vowed never to speak of his experiences. He wanted to move on with his life. Yet, out of the pain came his calling in life. He authored his novel, Night, and his vocation became clear. He was not just to write. He was to remind people of what happened back then, so that it would not happen again.
It is always a temptation when wounded by life to be so focused on our personal problems that we retreat from people and from the larger communities of which we are a part. Moses’ call is a challenge for any of us who want to retreat from life because of the wounds it gave us, and who are tempted to drop out and let the world deal with its problems without us.
Churches can go through a trauma so difficult that they can focus on the wounds. Many churches are going through this today. They have lost a sense of why they are here. The burning bush may be right there, in the community in which God has placed them. Will they see the holiness of this place, hear the call of God on their community, and be what God is calling them to be? The message for us is to choose to live. Not to begin, but to begin again!
[1] A significant objection to the documentary hypothesis came from Van Seters. For him, the call of Moses reflects very well the nature of the Yahwistic composition of the Pentateuch. As a writer of the exilic period, the Yahwist made extensive use of both the Deuteronomic History and a corpus of prophetic traditions to shape his presentation of Moses and the exodus. The call narrative is not the beginning of the prophetic call tradition, but the end of the process by which Moses becomes the greatest of all the prophets. He experiences a theophany like that of Isaiah and of Ezekiel, but in a way that typifies the divine presence forever afterward, as the menorah. He becomes the reluctant prophet who struggles with the unbelief of the people, like Jeremiah. He receives the dual task of proclaiming both salvation to this people and judgment on the rulers, in this case the heathen. As in II Isaiah, the God of the patriarchs is also the God of the exodus deliverance.
[2] "We can't all be heroes," said Will Rogers, "because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by."
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[10] One is the narrator, college professor David Zimmer, and the other is Hector Mann, a silent-film comedian who had disappeared without a trace in 1929 and whom many long considered dead. The death of his wife in a plane crash has upended Zimmer’s life. He spends his days in an alcoholic stupor, contemplating suicide, and essentially burying himself alive. One night he sees a clip of an old Hector Mann film on television, and it makes him laugh — for the first time since the death of his wife and children. Mainly to keep himself going, Zimmer decides to research the films of Hector Mann, and ends up writing a book about them. After his book is published, Zimmer receives a letter from a woman claiming to be Mann’s wife, stating that the actor is still alive, has read Zimmer’s book and would like to meet Zimmer. She invites Zimmer to fly out to their ranch in New Mexico. Although Zimmer is skeptical that anyone who has been off the radar for nearly 60 years could still be around, he eventually accepts the invitation and learns the story of Mann’s disappearance.
Back in 1929, Mann, who was a rising star in silent films, had been engaged to one woman while dallying with another. When his fiancée accidentally shoots his lover, Mann feels responsible. To protect his fiancée, he buries the body of his lover, and then, taking a false identity, he leaves town. Since no one makes the connection, Mann is never pursued. Nonetheless, as atonement for his guilt, he vows never to work in the public eye again. Instead, he labors at lowly jobs until he finally meets a woman who not only recognizes him, but also marries him. This woman has enough income to support them, and they settle in New Mexico, with Mann taking her last name and keeping his head down. After life throws another curve at them, she sees her husband sinking into despair, and so she proposes that he begin making movies again. Actually, Mann is desperate to get back into movie making. For years, he has been thinking of new movie ideas, but because of his vow, he feels he cannot follow through on them. What they finally settle on, however, is that he will make the movies, but never screen them for anyone — on the idea that if you make a movie that is never shown to an audience, the movie doesn’t really exist.
That is what they do. They build the sets and editing rooms on their ranch, and with the help of a couple of close friends who are sworn to secrecy, Hector makes more than a dozen movies over the next several years. To keep his promise, however, he stipulates that upon his death, all copies of the movies are to be burned without anyone seeing them.
There are more twists to the story, but Zimmer becomes a witness to all of this. He meets the old man, who dies the next day, and Zimmer sees Mann’s wife burn the films. Except for what Zimmer now knows, the last public knowledge of Mann is from the day in 1929 when he walked away from his life. In the end, Zimmer finds that what he has witnessed enables him to restart his life, and he goes on, traveling in new directions, but now siding with the living.
[11] The outline inspired by William Willimon, “The Call.”
[12] —Linda Breen Pierce, Choosing Simplicity.
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