(Exodus 2:23-4:19)
After some time had passed, the Egyptian Pharaoh died. But, for the Israelites, the harsh conditions of their bondage continued. They complained bitterly of them, and their protests reached the ears of Jehovah, who was reminded of the bargain he had made with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. Jehovah saw how the Israelites were suffering, and, moved to pity, he resolved to help them.
Moses was in charge of tending the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. Having driven the flocks deep into the desert he came upon Horeb, known as the mountain of God. There, Moses sighted an extraterrestrial being standing amid a flame radiating from a bush. He observed that the bush seemed to be on fire, yet it remained unburnt by the flame. Moses declared, "I'll go up there and take a look at this miraculous sight and find out why the bush doesn't burn."
When he noticed that Moses was coming to investigate the bush, Jehovah called to him from out of the it, "Moses, Moses!"
And Moses replied, "I am here."
"Do not approach or come any nearer. Remove your sandals, for the place on which you stand is holy ground," he told him and said as well, "I am the god of your father, the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."
Moses covered his face in reverence, for he was fearful of gazing upon the divine.
But Jehovah spoke to him, "Indeed I am aware of the sufferings of your people and have heard their cries of protest because of their forced labor and their cruel taskmasters. I understand their troubles and I have come back down to earth to deliver them from the hands of Egyptians, to lead them out of that country and bring them to a fertile and expansive land, a land rich with milk and honey, where now live the Canaanites, the Hethites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. I have listened to the complaints of the Israelites and have witnessed the hardships they have endured due to the oppressions of the Egyptians. --- But go now, Moses. I am sending you to the Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt."
Moses replied, "Who am I that I should go to the Pharaoh, that I should bring my people out of Egypt?"
"I will be with you. As proof that it was I who sent you, after you lead my people out of Egypt, you will come back here to this mountain to worship me.”
"Very well," answered Moses. “But if I go to the Israelites and tell them, 'The god of your fathers has sent me to you,' they will ask me, 'What’s his name?’. What should I tell them?"
Jehovah told Moses, "I am Jehovah. You should tell the Israelites that it is Jehovah who has sent you."
Eventually, he added, "Tell the Israelites that you are sent by the god of their fathers, the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jehovah! This is my eternal name, the name by which I will be remembered for all time. Go and assemble all the elders of the Israelite people and tell them, 'Jehovah, the god of your fathers, the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has appeared to me and has seen how you have been treated in Egypt. He will deliver you from your hardships and bring you back to the land of the Canaanites, the Hethites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land rich with milk and honey. They will pay attention to your words, and they will follow you. You and the Israelite elders will approach the Pharaoh of Egypt and tell him that Jehovah, the god of the Hebrews, has spoken to us and demands that we go three-days' journey into the desert in order to make a sacrifice to him. But I know the Pharaoh will only let you go under considerable duress. However, I will use my power to inflict upon Egypt miraculous calamities all across the land. After that, he will turn you free. The Egyptians will then respect your people. And when it happens that you leave there, it will not be empty handed. All your women will cadge from their neighbors and from those who board in their house any jewels of gold and silver and any fancy raiment they might have. You will bedeck your sons and daughters in them and thoroughly despoil the Egyptians."
Moses answered, "But, look, they won't believe me or follow me, for they'll say, 'Jehovah didn't really appear to you!'"
Jehovah asked him, "What's in your hand?"
"A shepherd’s staff,” he answered.
"Throw it down!" Jehovah bid him. Moses did so. The staff was turned into a snake and Moses ran away from it. “Reach out your hand and pick it up by the tail." Moses grabbed it by the tail and, lo and behold, it turned back into a shepherd’s staff. "This will make them believe that the god of their fathers, the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has indeed appeared to you. Now, put your hand inside your cloak." He did so, and when Moses withdrew it, the hand was scaly and white as snow. "Put your hand back inside your cloak," and when Moses did so and brought it out again, the skin on his hand was normal again like the rest of his flesh.
"If they won't believe you or remain unconvinced by the first miracle, they will believe the second," Jehovah assured him. "But if they remain unconvinced by these two miracles and refuse to believe you, then draw some water from the river and pour it out on the ground. Wherever you pour it, the water will turn to blood."
"I appeal to you, Master," Moses said, "I have never been a good speaker, and since you have contacted me, your servant is even more tongue-tied and slow of speech."
Jehovah told him, "Who has given man a voice or made him dumb? Or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Was it not I? Therefore, I will be your voice and teach you what to say."
"I appeal to you, Master, please choose someone else to send!”
Jehovah became very angry with Moses. "Aaron the Levite is your brother. I know that he is a well-spoken man. He is coming to meet you and when he arrives, he will be overjoyed to see you. Confide in him and reveal to him my words. I will help both of you to speak my words and teach you what you both what to do. He will speak to the people in your stead and be to you your spokesman. And you will be to him God's spokesman."
"Take your shepherd’s staff with you. With it you will work miracles.”
Moses departed and returned to his father-in-law Jethro. He told him, "I must go back to my own people in Egypt to see if they are still living."
"Go in peace," Jethro bid him.
(While he was still in Midian, Jehovah told Moses, "Go, return to Egypt, for all who sought to kill you are dead now.”)
Notes
1. Apparently, Jehovah has been absent from the scene for many generations, during which time he had no direct communion with his Chosen People. Being a national god of the Hebrews seems at best a part-time job for him, a hobby, even, that only occasionally arouses his interest. His behavior and the long lapses of time between his appearances fit well with the explanation that Jehovah is an extraterrestrial human visitor and not some omniscient spirit being. Moreover, there is no evidence, that the Jehovah of Moses is the Jehovah of Abraham, that they are the same person. It is likely that the title of Hebrew god could have been passed down from one individual to another or merely claimed by any Jehovan being who wished to aid and receive worship from this particular group of people. (It should be remembered that national gods were expected to make personal appearances once in a while and there were probably no believers of ancient gods who were not aware of accounts, legends at least, of direct human contact with those gods. There were, in fact, credible and well authenticated sightings of many other gods besides Jehovah.)
2. It is recounted that Jehovah is aware of the Israelites' suffering as if it is a surprise that he would be so and not a matter of course (for an all-knowing god).
3. The location of Mount Horeb, where Moses encountered the burning bush has long been a matter of conjecture. It is generally believed to be the same place as the Biblical Mount Sinai. Most place it in the Sinai, but there are varied opinions as to which mountain it might be. By the time of Jesus any definite knowledge of its location had been lost. Mount Catherine and Jebel Musa, thought to be the most likely candidates, are situated near the southern tip of Sinai, very far away from the route from Egypt to Canaan. But other scholars place it even farther afield, in the Hijaz (northwestern Arabia). --- It seems more likely to me that it should be placed in the northern Sinai.
4. The burning bush (or brambles) remains a mystery in many aspects. It is too unusual to be a creation of dramatic license, something the chroniclers concocted. But why would Jehovah chose to speak to Moses in this manner when he spoke face to face with Abraham as one man to another? As a means of communicating with Moses, it may have been an object, a device that resembled a bush. (Burning might mean glowing, radiating, or sparking with electricity, who knows?) Perhaps Jehovah was not actually on the earth, but used the burning bush as a means of communicating to Moses while he was somewhere else -- in space? However, the burning bush may have had a different purpose altogether, that it was not there merely for Moses' benefit, for the impression is given that Moses discovered it by accident. Jehovah reacts only when Moses approaches it. Yet, he immediately chooses him as the man who will liberate the Hebrew people, leading one to believe that Moses was intentionally called to that particular place to meet Jehovah and that the "accident" was planned. As for the burning bush, there is also a distinct possibility that it is only the result of a muddled text, considering that the account is known to be a pastiche from several sources. Bush -- seneh in Hebrew -- might be a “typo” for another word. That something besides a bush might have been meant is suggested by the fact that when Moses initially sees it -- from afar since he will decide to go nearer to investigate -- the bush has an extraterrestrial being, presumably man-sized, standing within it. Therefore, it must have been something much larger than a bramble and must have been open enough in its interior for someone to fit inside it. Perhaps seneh was the only word available to the authors to describe something for which they had no vocabulary.
5. Jehovah asks that Moses remove his sandals when he approaches the burning bush because it is holy ground. Removing one's foot gear when in a place of worship is not an unusual custom; it is, of course, a well known feature of Islamic belief. There may be some other reason for Jehovah's request, though, but what it might be does not spring readily to mind. (Moses also covers his face, although Jehovah does not ask him to do so.)
6. Moses asks who it is that is sending him to his people, what god. Jehovah replies simply, “I am Jehovah.” Most translations have the cryptic and supposedly profound “I am that I am”. This mistranslation results from the fact that this sentence is a confusing play on Hebrew words: the word for “Jehovah” (YHWH) is similar (sort of) to the word for “I am” (EHHEH-YEH). The word play probably implies that Jehovah exists and is a living god.
7. Jehovah decides to send Moses to demand that the Pharaoh free the Hebrew people and, that failing, to impress and intimidate the Pharaoh with some magic tricks he has taught Moses. (Jehovah knows these efforts will fail and that he will have to do much more, apply a lot more pressure on the stubborn Pharaoh, yet he sends Moses on this futile mission.) These stunts are also necessary for Moses to convince his own people of his legitimacy as a spokesman for Jehovah. Feats of magic become, in a religious context, miracles and have always been an essential part of religion, a component necessary to promote belief. So far Jehovah is working miracles on a pretty petty scale, turning sticks into snakes.
8. The magical feats, turning a stick into a snake, a healthy hand into a scaly one could easily have been produced by hypnotic suggestion, which would explain how Jehovah could do them for Moses. How Moses might be able to perform these feats is another, unexplained matter. (There is a strong temptation to dismiss any aspects of the story that cannot be explained rationally as being fictional embellishments.)
9. Moses is either carrying a shepherd’s rod, probably in his belt, if it were a small one, say, two feet length, or he may have been using it as a walking stick, if it were longer. A rod was simply a stout stick used to protect sheep from predators. It is distinct from the shepherd’s staff, which was the familiar crook, often with something like a small shovel on the other end. The text is frustratingly ambiguous about whether Moses is carrying a rod or a staff, and most translators seem unaware that there is any difference between the two and use the words imprecisely and interchangeably. It seems likely that if a shepherd were carrying only one of these items, he would carry the staff and use it as a walking stick. I have, therefore, concluded the stick Moses carried was probably a staff and not a rod. (The staff is much like the Egyptian crook, a Pharaonic symbol of authority).
10. Jehovah promises Moses that when his people are liberated they can, with divine sanction, loot the country on their way out. We see more of the morality that dictates, “get back at your enemy, do to him what he has done to you”.
11. Jehovah, in deference to the recalcitrant Moses, agrees to let his brother Aaron act as his smooth-talking front man. Although he boasts that he is the one who has created man and his voice, Jehovah is incapable or unwilling to impart eloquence to the thick-tongued Moses.
12. The self doubt and skepticism of Moses, as well as his curiosity, are refreshingly human traits and makes him seem more of a modern man than his forbears.
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