Exodus3chapter 3

Exodus 3:1

Moses is keeping another man's sheep in Midian, and Acts 7:30 counts forty years passing there before this day. The text calls Horeb the mountain of God before anything has happened on it. Israel reaches the same mountain at 19:1, where it is called Sinai, and 17:6 puts the rock that gives water at Horeb as well, so one place carries the bush, the water and the law.

Exodus 3:2-3

The speaker is called the angel of the LORD here and God in verse 4, and in verse 6 he says I am the God of thy father. Older writers including Matthew Henry and John Gill read the appearance as the Son before his incarnation, while other readers take the angel as a created messenger carrying God's own words. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown record the common reading of the bush as Israel in Egypt, burning under a persecution meant to finish it and standing unconsumed.

Exodus 3:4

God speaks once Moses turns aside, so the sight comes first and the voice follows it. The name is doubled, Moses, Moses, as it is at Genesis 22:11 to Abraham, at Genesis 46:2 to Jacob, at 1 Samuel 3:10 to Samuel and at Acts 9:4 to Saul, and each of those doublings opens a commission or a rescue. His answer, Here am I, is the word Abraham gives at Genesis 22:1 and 22:11.

Exodus 3:5

The word holy occurs here for the first time in Scripture, and it lands on a patch of desert ground. That ground was pasture the day before, and what marks it now is the presence speaking out of the bush. Joshua receives the same order at Joshua 5:15, loose thy shoe from off thy foot, for the place whereon thou standest is holy. Chuck Missler taught the law of first mention as a way of reading, and the first holy thing in Scripture being dirt under a shepherd's feet is one of its plainest cases.

Exodus 3:6

God names himself by three men he made promises to, and all three have been dead for centuries. Jesus quotes this verse at Matthew 22:32 and argues the resurrection from its tense, since God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Moses hides his face here, and at 33:20 he is told that no man sees God's face and lives.

Exodus 3:7-8

Three verbs answer the close of chapter 2, where God heard the groaning, remembered his covenant, looked upon the people and had respect unto them. Seen, heard and know stand here against taskmasters, cry and sorrows, so the rescue begins as an answer to something God has been listening to. I am come down repeats the movement of Genesis 11:5 at Babel, and the good land described in verse 8 is the land promised to Abram at Genesis 15:18 to 15:21, where a longer list of the same peoples is given.

Exodus 3:9-10

God says I am come down to deliver in verse 8 and I will send thee in verse 10, and the two sentences describe one rescue. The deliverance is his and the errand belongs to a man, which is the arrangement the rest of the book runs on. John Calvin reads the sending as God's ordinary way of working, using men as instruments while the power stays his own.

Exodus 3:11-12

This is the first of five objections Moses raises, at 3:11, 3:13, 4:1, 4:10 and 4:13, and the answer given here speaks about God rather than about Moses. Certainly I will be with thee moves the question off the man and onto the one sending him. The token offered can be checked only after the errand is finished, since the token is that the people will serve God on this mountain, which happens at 19:1 and 19:2. The word serve is the Hebrew abad, the root Exodus 1:13 and 1:14 use five times over for the bondage, so what is asked of Pharaoh is a change of master.

Exodus 3:13-14

Moses asks for a name and receives a sentence, I AM THAT I AM, built on the Hebrew verb to be. The same verb stands in verse 12, where God said I will be with thee, so the name and the promise are made of one word. Keil and Delitzsch read it as the God who is, absolutely and unchangeably, and who therefore keeps what he swore to the fathers. Jesus takes the words to himself at John 8:58, before Abraham was, I am, and his hearers took up stones.

Exodus 3:15

The word memorial occurs here for the first time in Scripture and it is applied to the name. The name is tied in the same breath to the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, so it arrives attached to a history rather than as a bare title. Exodus 6:3 later says the fathers knew God as God Almighty and that by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them, while Genesis uses the name from 2:4 onward and Abram speaks it at 15:2. The older commentators read known there as known in the character the name declares, and the documentary reading takes the verse as evidence of separate sources.

Exodus 3:16-17

Israel has elders while it is still in slavery, and that body is the first Moses is sent to. The message he carries, I have surely visited you, picks up the last words of Genesis, where Joseph told his brothers God will surely visit you at 50:24 and took an oath about his bones at 50:25. The elders are handed the sentence their fathers were left holding, and the land named in verse 17 is the land Joseph named.

Exodus 3:18-19

The request Moses is told to put to Pharaoh is worship, three days out into the wilderness to sacrifice, and the contest of chapters 5 to 12 turns on that one word. Pharaoh's later offers each try to keep a piece of it, sacrifice inside the land at 8:25, only the men at 10:11, and the flocks and herds left behind at 10:24, and Moses refuses every one. God tells Moses in advance that the king of Egypt will refuse, so the failure of chapter 5 arrives already announced.

Exodus 3:20-22

The word wonders occurs here for the first time in Scripture, and the stretched out hand returns at 6:6 and 7:5 as the way God describes what he is about to do. The spoiling of Egypt in verse 22 discharges Genesis 15:14, where Abram was told his seed would come out with great substance, and it happens at 12:35 and 12:36. Adam Clarke argues that the verb rendered borrow is the ordinary Hebrew word for asking, and the transfer is described from Egypt's own side as a thing given. The same gold builds the calf in chapter 32 and the tabernacle in chapter 35.