Friday, October 2, 2026 · Week of Pentecost 18
Exodus 3:1–17
1 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 Mount 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 spacious land, to 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 Now go, I am sending 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 serve 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.
16 “Go and assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has appeared to me, saying: I have given heed to you and to what has been done to you in Egypt. 17 I declare that I will bring you up out of the misery of Egypt, to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.’
Notes
Today's reading runs seventeen verses. Yesterday's ran seven. I have no idea why the daily readings swing so much in length from one day to the next, but I'm not complaining about getting the whole burning bush in one sitting.
You can see the seams of how the Bible was put together in this chapter. In 2:18, Moses's father-in-law is named Reuel. Here in 3:1 he's Jethro. (Judges 4:11 gives him a third name, Hobab.) The mountain here is Horeb; in other places it's Sinai, and when Stephen retells this scene in Acts 7:30, he sets it "in the wilderness of Mount Sinai." Even verse 4 switches names for God in the middle of a sentence: "When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush." The first is the divine name, YHWH, and the second is the more generic Elohim. Source critics have long read seams like these as older traditions woven together by later editors, each with its own names for people, places, and God. There's also some disagreement over who's in the bush. Verse 2 says "the angel of the Lord" appeared in the flame. By verse 4, God is speaking from the bush directly. The messenger may be a bit of scribal piety, a way of keeping God Godself from being seen, even semi-directly.
Verses 1–5. Turning aside. There are so many things to say about the burning bush. Start with where Moses is when it happens: at work. He's tending somebody else's sheep, his father-in-law's, and he has led them "beyond the wilderness." The rabbis told a story to go with this verse (Exodus Rabbah 2:2). A young goat runs off from the flock, and Moses chases it until it stops at a pool to drink. He tells the little goat he didn't know it had run away because it was thirsty, lifts it onto his shoulder, and carries it. God says that anyone that tender with a mortal's flock will shepherd God's flock, Israel. An errant, wandering animal turns out to be the path to the holy. The text makes a similar point with its timing. God doesn't call out until "the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see" (3:4). The holy ground was holy before Moses knew it, out in the middle of nowhere, on an ordinary workday.
Even the bush is ordinary. The Hebrew is סְנֶה (seneh), a thornbush or bramble, and it's probably a pun on סִינַי (Sinai), the mountain where this same God will meet the whole people. God tells Moses as much in verse 12: when he brings the people out, they'll serve God on this mountain. The word seneh shows up in only one other place in the Hebrew Bible, where Moses blesses Joseph and the Hebrew speaks of "the one who dwells in the bush" (Deuteronomy 33:16).
Verse 6. Hiding his face. Robert Alter notes how far we've come from Genesis. Abraham served God a meal under the oaks of Mamre (Genesis 18). Jacob wrestled all night and limped away saying, "I have seen God face to face" (Genesis 32:30). Moses gets God in a flame of fire, and even then "Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God." That's where he starts, anyway. Thirty chapters later, God speaks with Moses face to face, the way a person speaks with a friend (Exodus 33:11). And Paul says the same nearness is open to all of us, who now see "with unveiled faces" (2 Corinthians 3:18).
Verses 13–15. The name. Moses asks for God's name, and God answers, אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה (ehyeh asher ehyeh), "I am who I am." The scholarship on this line is immense, and believe it or not, I'm not trying to make these posts infinitely long. So, briefly. Robert Alter considers "I Will Be Who I Will Be" the most plausible rendering. But Hebrew verb tenses don't line up with English ones, so Alter allows "I Am He Who Endures" as well, and mentions a third possibility, "He Who Brings Things into Being." As Alter puts it, "to God alone belongs unlimited, unconditional being."
In verse 15 the name itself appears, which the NRSVue prints as "the Lord" in small capitals. Behind it are four Hebrew letters, יהוה (YHWH), which most scholars connect to the same verb as ehyeh, "to be." Scholars broadly agree the name was most likely pronounced Yahweh, and you can hear the short form in hallelu-jah, "praise Yah." But we don't know for sure, and the reason is reverence. Hebrew was first written in consonants alone. When the medieval scribes known as the Masoretes added vowel marks to the whole text, they didn't give YHWH vowels of its own. They gave it the vowels of Adonai, "my Lord," a cue to say that word instead. (Read those consonants and vowels together literally and you get "Jehovah" with a hard J instead of soft Y.) So the name comes to us wrapped in circumlocutions: Adonai; HaShem, "the Name"; or, in English, G-d. God calls YHWH "my name forever," and the people who carried that name forward honored it by not saying it.
Questions for reflection
Moses asks, "Who am I?" and God answers, "I will be with you," before God ever gives a name. What do you make of a name that sounds more like a promise than a definition?
God only calls out after Moses turns aside to look. What would turning aside look like in your ordinary week, and what tends to keep you from it?
