The Burning Bush

According to the Bible, Moses was out with the flocks one day when he came across a burning bush. The bush wasn’t being consumed, it was just burning. There are a lot of interpretations of the significance of this burning bush and none of them are about an actual bush in flames¹. If you’re interested it’s pretty easy to look up.

Regardless, this is when ‘an angel of the Lord’ appeared to Moses and told him to go back to Egypt and free his people. This is the beginning of the whole Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt which is hugely significant in the Jewish experience.

This ‘angel of the Lord’ phrase is pretty significant also because, as we’ve seen before, this, more than likely, is just some guy delivering a message.

But Moses didn’t want to go back to Egypt. He was hugely conflicted and made up every excuse he could think of to get out of it. One of his arguments was, when he got back to Egypt, he’d have to have some credibility. Under whose authority was he acting? Why would anybody listen to him if they didn’t know who’d sent him?

And from the burning bush God said, “I Am That I Am. Tell them ‘I Am’ sent you.” This is a pretty famous saying and deserves more scrutiny than it usually gets.

The actual Hebrew interpretation is Ehyeh asher ehyeh. Ehyeh has several meanings ². One is “I am,” another is “I will be,” another is “I will cause to be,” and yet another is “I create.” And asher can mean “that,” or “who,” or even “what.” So this phrase is interpreted in many ways; “I am that I am,” “I am who I am,” “I cause to be what I cause to be,” or “I create what I create.”

If we were to take a metaphysical approach it wouldn’t be a stretch to interpret this phrase as, “I Am what I create”. Just that one phrase has huge ramifications. But let’s not get into that right now, let’s stick with Moses.

Anyway, Moses kept arguing with this angel, who he now calls Lord, trying to get out of it, but the Lord wouldn’t go for it. This Lord worked a little magic but Moses still wasn’t comfortable about the whole thing. Apparently Moses had a stutter and couldn’t speak well so he tried to use that as an excuse. But the Lord came back with, “Hey, take your brother Aaron with you and let him do the talking.”

Whoa! Wait a second! Where did this Aaron come from and since when did Moses have a brother? Was Moses leading two secret lives – one as grandson of Pharaoh and one as a poor Hebrew boy? And, by the way, Moses should have been the only Hebrew boy his age because all the other male babies had been thrown in the Nile, remember? Again, there’s no explanation so I guess we’re just supposed to accept it.

Eventually Moses gave in and headed for Egypt.

On the way back he stopped at a lodging and ‘the Lord’ tried to kill him. Just who was this ‘Lord’ anyway? Was it the same Lord that just spent all that time getting him to go to save his people or was it some other ‘Lord’ who wanted to stop him? We’re never told but Moses’ wife circumcised his son, Gershom, and somehow that saved the day.

This is just one more instance where interpretations of words get a little wonky. As we’ve seen before and we will again, words like ‘Lord’ and ‘angel’ are often used interchangeably and do not necessarily refer to the Deity or his heavenly host. They often refer to human beings who may or may not be doing God’s work, depending on who’s doing the talking.