Exodus 3 and 4 · Doctrine · Featured Study
The Burning Bush: the Name Revealed
Exodus 3 and 4 record the call of Moses at Horeb and his five objections to being sent.
God gave Moses His Name from a fire that did not consume the bush it burned in.
- First taught
- Exodus 3:14 “God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I…”
- Fullest statement
- Exodus 3:1 to 15 “…Why is the bush not burning up?” When…”
Domenichino, Landscape with Moses and the Burning Bush, 1610 to 1616. CC0.
Summary
Moses was keeping Jethro's flock at Horeb, the mountain of God, when the angel of the LORD appeared to him in the flame and God called to him by name.
- God sends Moses to Pharaoh to bring the Israelites out of Egypt (Exodus 3:10).
- When Moses asks His name, God answers I AM WHO I AM, and the next verse gives the Name the LORD as His name forever.
- Moses raises five objections in Exodus 3:11 to 4:13, and the fifth, Please, Lord, send someone else, is the one that draws the anger of the LORD.
- Jesus argues the resurrection from this passage in Mark 12:26, and Stephen retells it in Acts 7:30 to 35.
The Sign at the Bush
At the bush God first shows Moses His presence and then tells him how to stand before it.
There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from within a bush. Moses saw the bush ablaze with fire, but it was not consumed. So Moses thought, “I must go over and see this marvelous sight. Why is the bush not burning up?”Moses goes over to look before God says a word to him, so the sign brings him to the voice.
“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”The first command God gives Moses is about how to stand before Him, and it comes before any word of his mission.
Every fire Moses had seen consumed what it burned, so the bush showed him a presence that burns without destroying. The book that follows asks how the holy God can live among His people without destroying them, and the tabernacle of its last chapters is its answer.
The place had no holiness of its own the day before. John Wesley, in his Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, puts the rule in one sentence: the holiness of places depends on the peculiar presence of God there.
The God of the fathers, Exodus 3:6 to 82 passages
Then He said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.God names Himself by the fathers before He gives any new name.
The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the affliction of My people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their oppressors, and I am aware of their sufferings. I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.The verbs move from what God has seen, heard and is aware of to what He has come down to do.
Matthew Henry, in his Commentary on the Whole Bible, notes that the covenant was first made with Abraham and often renewed with Isaac and Jacob. After the long years in Egypt God speaks again as their God.
Albert Barnes, in his Notes on Exodus 3:7, reads God's knowing of their sufferings as personal feeling, tenderness and compassion.
The Name Revealed, Step by Step
Five texts carry the Name from the bush at Horeb to the words of Jesus in John 8.
God gives His Name at the bush, proclaims it at Sinai, and Jesus speaks it of Himself.
- Who speaks, to whom, and where
- God to Moses, from the bush on Horeb
- Text
- Exodus 3:14
- Who speaks, to whom, and where
- God to Moses, as the words he is to say to the Israelites
- Text
- Exodus 3:15
- Who speaks, to whom, and where
- God to Moses in Egypt, after Pharaoh has said he does not know the LORD
- Text
- Exodus 6:3
- Who speaks, to whom, and where
- The LORD, as He passes in front of Moses on Mount Sinai
- Text
- Exodus 34:6
- Who speaks, to whom, and where
- Jesus to the Jews who question Him in the temple courts
- Text
- John 8:58
The Name stands as I AM at the first step and as the LORD at the second, third and fourth.
Five Objections and Five Answers
The call closes at Exodus 4:17, when God gives Moses the staff to perform the signs.
The fifth objection asks God to send someone else, and it draws the anger of the LORD.
| Moses objects | God answers |
|---|---|
| Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh? (Exodus 3:11) | I will surely be with you, and the sign is that you will worship God on this mountain (Exodus 3:12). |
| What is His name? What should I tell them? (Exodus 3:13) | I AM WHO I AM, and the LORD, the God of your fathers: This is My name forever (Exodus 3:14 to 15). |
| What if they do not believe me or listen to my voice? (Exodus 4:1) | Three signs: the staff that becomes a snake, the hand made leprous and restored, and Nile water that becomes blood on the ground (Exodus 4:2 to 9). |
| I have never been eloquent; I am slow of speech and tongue (Exodus 4:10) | Who gave man his mouth? Now go! I will help you as you speak (Exodus 4:11 to 12). |
| Please, Lord, send someone else (Exodus 4:13) | The anger of the LORD burned against Moses, and Aaron is given to speak to the people for him (Exodus 4:14 to 16). |
The promise of Exodus 3:12 comes with a proof Moses can test only after he has obeyed. Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible, reads the promise as God's own counsel and power, which will bring all these mighty things to pass.
Clarke renders the Hebrew of Exodus 4:13 as Send now by the hand You will send, a plea for a person more fit for the work, and he cites the Septuagint, Elect another powerful person. He reads the anger of Exodus 4:14 as the sign that the plea was more than modesty.
What the third sign and the gift of Aaron look ahead to1 paragraph
The third sign, Nile water poured on the dry ground that becomes blood, looks ahead to the first plague in Exodus 7:17 to 20. Aaron, given here to speak for Moses, is the man who later makes the molten calf at the foot of the mountain (Exodus 32:4).
Three later calls: Gideon, Jeremiah and Isaiah3 passages
Gideon and Jeremiah plead their weakness, and Isaiah's call runs the other way.
“Please, my Lord,” Gideon replied, “how can I save Israel? Indeed, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my father’s house.” “Surely I will be with you,” the LORD replied, “and you will strike down all the Midianites as one man.”The LORD's answer to Gideon is the answer Moses was given in Exodus 3:12.
“Ah, Lord GOD,” I said, “I surely do not know how to speak, for I am only a child!” But the LORD told me: “Do not say, ‘I am only a child.’ For to everyone I send you, you must go, and all that I command you, you must speak. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you,” declares the LORD.Jeremiah's plea that he does not know how to speak is the objection of Exodus 4:10, and it is answered with the presence of the LORD.
Then I said: “Woe is me, for I am ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips dwelling among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of Hosts.” Then one of the seraphim flew to me, and in his hand was a glowing coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And with it he touched my mouth and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your iniquity is removed and your sin is atoned for.” Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying: “Whom shall I send? Who will go for Us?” And I said: “Here am I. Send me!”Isaiah is cleansed before he is sent and offers himself, where Moses asked for someone else to be sent.
The Angel in the Flame
The narrator passes from one name to the next without a word of explanation.
The one the narrator calls the angel of the LORD speaks in the first person as God.
- The narratorthe angel of the LORDExodus 3:2
- The narratorthe LORD, then GodExodus 3:4
- The voice from the bushthe God of your father, speaking of HimselfExodus 3:6
The angel's title belongs to Exodus 3:2 alone within the call, which runs to Exodus 4:17.
Twenty chapters later the pattern returns, when God sends an angel before Israel and says of him, My Name is in him (Exodus 23:20 to 21).
Stephen's retelling, Acts 7:30 to 352 passages
After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. When Moses saw it, he marveled at the sight. As he approached to look more closely, the voice of the Lord came to him: ‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look.Stephen tells the scene as an angel in the flames and the voice of the Lord, the same two names Exodus 3 uses.
This Moses, whom they had rejected with the words, ‘Who made you ruler and judge?’ is the one whom God sent to be their ruler and redeemer through the angel who appeared to him in the bush.Stephen sets the call at the bush against Israel's first refusal of Moses, and his speech turns the same pattern toward Jesus in Acts 7:52.
Horeb, the Mountain of God
The bush burned on the mountain where the covenant would later be made.
John Wesley notes in his Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament that Horeb and Sinai were two tops of the same mountain.
Moses in Midian, and the mountain in Exodus 3:1 and 19:12 passages
Moses had fled Egypt after he killed an Egyptian, when a Hebrew asked him, in the words of Exodus 2:14, Who made you ruler and judge over us? Stephen counts forty years in Midian before the bush (Acts 7:30), and Exodus 7:7 gives Moses' age as eighty when he spoke to Pharaoh.
Meanwhile, Moses was shepherding the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.The verse already calls Horeb the mountain of God before Israel has come to it.
In the third month, on the same day of the month that the Israelites had left the land of Egypt, they came to the Wilderness of Sinai.Israel's arrival at Sinai keeps the sign God gave Moses in Exodus 3:12.
What the Text Leaves Unsaid
Two questions about the call stay open after the fire and the voice.
The first is the form of the one who spoke from the flame, since the narrative records the voice Moses heard.
The second is why the Name was made known in Moses' day, and in this way (Exodus 6:3).
The Name, Exodus 3:13 to 15
God answers Moses' question with a Name built on the Hebrew verb to be.
Then Moses asked God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ What should I tell them?”Moses expects the elders of Israel to test his mission by asking the name of the God who sent him.
God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God also told Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers—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 is how I am to be remembered in every generation.The second answer gives the Name that Israel will use in worship from this day on.
In the Hebrew, God's answer in Exodus 3:12 is ki ehyeh immak, and the Name of verse 14 is ehyeh asher ehyeh. The word that answers Who am I? is the same word that answers What is His name?
The three readings render I AM WHO I AM as being, as presence, and as cause.
| Reading and rendering | What it stresses | Held by |
|---|---|---|
| Existence, I am who I am | God's being is underived, and every creature borrows its existence from Him. | Jerome, Letter 15; John Calvin on Exodus 3:14 |
| Presence, I will be what I will be | The Name is a promise that God will be with His people in what comes. | Rashi on Exodus 3:14 |
| Causative, He who causes to be | God is the source of all that exists. | Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (1973) |
The three readings, with their sources5 paragraphs
Albert Barnes, in his Notes on Exodus 3:15, takes the words I am and Jehovah as equivalent, so the four-letter Name YHWH of verse 15 carries the meaning of verse 14.
Jerome holds the existence reading in his fifteenth letter. Adam Clarke gives the ancient versions of the words: the Vulgate renders them I am who am, the Septuagint I am he who exists, and the Arabic The Eternal, who passes not away.
John Calvin, in his Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses, notes that the Hebrew verb stands in the future tense, I will be what I will be, with the force of the present. He reads the Name as God claiming for Himself an existence that is His alone and eternal.
Rashi, in his commentary on Exodus, reads the Name as God's promise to be with Israel in this sorrow and in the sorrows to come. The verb stands in the imperfect, and on this reading the Name looks forward to what God will be for His people.
Frank Moore Cross reads YHWH as a causative form of the verb to be, he who causes to be. The reading has fewer holders, and the verb of Exodus 3:14, ehyeh, stands in the simple stem, the stem of plain being.
Exodus 6:3, the Name made known1 passage
God also told Moses, “I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by My name the LORD I did not make Myself known to them.God says the fathers knew Him as God Almighty and not by His name the LORD, though Genesis uses the Name from Genesis 2:4 on.
John Wesley, in his Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, writes that the patriarchs knew this name but did not know God by that which the name signifies. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the verse as a question, by My name Jehovah was I not known to them? Adam Clarke calls the passage a crux criticorum, a puzzle of the critics, that has been variously explained.
Teachers on the Bush
Six teachers, from Clement of Alexandria to Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, speak to the bush, the Name and the call.
died 215 · Clement of Alexandria
The Instructor Book 2
The quotation1 quotation
“When the almighty Lord of the universe began to legislate through the Word and decided to make his power visible to Moses, he sent Moses a divine vision with the appearance of light, in the burning bush. Now a bramble bush is full of thorns. So too when the Word was concluding his legislation and his stay among men as their Lord, again he permitted himself to be crowned with thorns as a mystic symbol.”
Clement of Alexandria · The Instructor Book 2 · on Exodus 3:2Patristic
died 395 · Gregory of Nyssa
LIFE OF MOSES 2.19-22
The quotation1 quotation
“It is upon us who continue in this quiet and peaceful course of life that the truth will shine, illuminating the eyes of our soul with its own rays. This truth, which was then manifested by the ineffable and mysterious illumination that came to Moses, is God. And if the flame by which the soul of the prophet was illuminated was kindled from a thorny bush, even this fact will not be useless for our inquiry.”
Gregory of Nyssa · Life of Moses 2.19-22 · on Acts 7:33Patristic
died 420 · Jerome
LETTER 15.4
The quotation1 quotation
“There is one nature of God and one only; and this, and this alone, truly is. For absolute being is derived from no other source but is all its own. All things besides, that is, all things created, although they appear to be, soon are not. For there was a time when they were not, and that which once was not may again cease to be. God alone who is eternal, that is to say, who has no beginning, really deserves to be called an essence. Therefore also he says of him, ‘I am has sent me.’”
Jerome · LETTER 15.4 · on Exodus 3:14Patristic
1662 to 1714 · Matthew Henry
Commentary on the Whole Bible
The quotation1 quotation
“This deliverance was typical of our redemption by Christ, in which the eternal Word did indeed come down from heaven to deliver us: it was his errand into the world.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on Exodus 3:8Puritan
1703 to 1791 · John Wesley
Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament
The quotation1 quotation
“He thinks he wants courage, and therefore cannot go to Pharaoh: he thinks he wants conduct, and therefore cannot bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt; they are unarmed, undisciplined, quite dispirited, utterly unable to help themselves, Moses was incomparably the fittest of any man living for this work, eminent for learning, wisdom, experience, valour, faith, holiness, and yet Who am I?”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament · on Exodus 3:11Evangelical
1802 to 1910 · Jamieson, Fausset & Brown
Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
The quotation1 quotation
“A fire, therefore, being in the midst of such a desert bush was a ‘great sight.’ It is generally supposed to have been emblematic of the Israelites' condition in Egypt--oppressed by a grinding servitude and a bloody persecution, and yet, in spite of the cruel policy that was bent on annihilating them, they continued as numerous and thriving as ever.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible · on Exodus 3:2Reformed
Jerome, Matthew Henry, John Wesley, Jamieson, Fausset & Brown
Three Readings of the Angel of the LORD
The angel in the flame has been read as the Son before His incarnation, as a created angel, and as an envoy who bears God's authority.
The Son before His incarnation4 paragraphs
On this reading the angel who speaks as God, is called God, and carries the Name is the Son of God before He took flesh. Justin Martyr held it in his Dialogue with Trypho, chapters 56 to 60, and Tertullian in Against Praxeas, chapters 14 to 16.
Its holders add that the Son is the Person of the Godhead who is seen, since no one has ever seen God (John 1:18).
Adam Clarke calls the angel of Exodus 3:2 the Messenger of the covenant of Malachi 3:1 and asks who this was but Jesus.
Augustine answers it from the three men at Mamre, who he writes were angels, although some think that one of them was Christ.
A created angel who speaks for God3 paragraphs
On this reading the angel is a created messenger who speaks in the first person for the God who sent him. Augustine held it in The City of God, book 16, chapter 29.
Henry sets this reading beside the first and holds that Moses saw the work of an angel and heard God speak in it.
Adam Clarke answers that the angel is called the LORD in Exodus 3:4 and is the messenger in whom was the name of God. Exodus 23:21 says the same of the angel who will not forgive rebellion.
The envoy who bears the sender's authority2 paragraphs
On this reading the sent one carries the authority of the sender so completely that the text can move between them without comment. Augustine's same chapter supports it, since he writes that God was in the angels as He was wont to be in the prophets.
John Wesley answers in his note on Acts 7:35 that the angel called himself Jehovah, a name which cannot, without the highest presumption, be assumed by any created angel.
Jude 1:5 and 1 Corinthians 10:9, the exodus and the wilderness in the New Testament2 verses, 1 paragraph
Each verse names the one who delivered Israel out of Egypt or whom Israel tested in the wilderness, and the English versions divide on the name in each.
Although you are fully aware of this, I want to remind you that after Jesus had delivered His people out of the land of Egypt, He destroyed those who did not believe.The Berean text reads Jesus here, where the King James and the American Standard Version read the Lord.
We should not test Christ, as some of them did, and were killed by snakes.The Berean and the King James read Christ here, where the American Standard Version reads the Lord.
Books to Read Next
Four works from the fourth century to the nineteenth read the bush and the Name closely.
Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses
John Calvin · 1563
Calvin reads the call of Moses verse by verse, and the CCEL edition gives his notes on Exodus 3:10 to 14.
Read Exodus 3:10 to 14 at CCELThe Life of Moses
Gregory of Nyssa · 395
Gregory's Life of Moses reads the events of Moses' life, the bush among them, for what each teaches about knowing God.
Commentary on the Whole Bible
Matthew Henry · 1710
Henry's notes on Exodus 3 and 4 run from the angel in the flame and the God of the fathers to the river turned to blood.
Commentary on the Bible
Adam Clarke · 1832
Clarke notes that the Hebrew of Exodus 3:6 reads the God of your father in the singular, where Stephen in Acts 7:32 reads the plural.
The God of the Living
The words spoken at the bush return in the teaching of Jesus.
Jesus gives His disciples the promise of His presence in the words surely I am with you always (Matthew 28:20).
But concerning the dead rising, have you not read about the burning bush in the Book of Moses, how God told him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!”Jesus argues from the passage about the bush that God is the God of the living, since He calls Himself the God of Abraham long after Abraham died.
John 8:58, I am, and the Name of the bush1 passage
“Truly, truly, I tell you,” Jesus declared, “before Abraham was born, I am!”At these words the crowd picks up stones to throw at Him (John 8:59).
John Wesley's note prints the words as I AM and reads them as from everlasting to everlasting. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read them as a claim to eternal existence and do not join them to Exodus 3:14.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- The King James Version and the American Standard Version.
- The Hebrew text of Exodus 3:12 to 14, Miqra according to the Masorah.
- John Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses, translated by Charles William Bingham.
- Rashi on Exodus 3:14, in the Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary of M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann (1929 to 1934)
- Jerome, Letter 15.
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710)
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765) and upon the New Testament (1755)
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible.
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments.
- Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)
- Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses 2.19 to 22.
- Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor, book 2.
- Augustine, The City of God, book 16, chapter 29, translated by Marcus Dods.
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