Exodus 3

Exodus 3 is among the most theologically load-bearing chapters in the Hebrew Bible. The LORD discloses His personal covenant name; the chapter establishes the language by which Israel will know God for the rest of the OT; and the New Testament’s central Christological claim — Jesus’ “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58↗) — explicitly invokes this chapter’s divine self-naming. The chapter is also the canonical OT pattern of prophetic call: theophany, commission, objection, divine answer.

The chapter opens with a small geographic transit. Moses is keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, priest of Midian, and he leads the flock “to the backside of the desert” and comes to Horeb חֹרֵב horeb Hebrew ‘Horeb’ — the chapter's name for the mountain that will elsewhere be called Sinai (the two names are used interchangeably across the Pentateuch — Sinai dominates in Exodus 19-Numbers 10; Horeb dominates in Deuteronomy). The chapter calls it ‘the mountain of God’ (3:1) in advance of the covenant-making that will happen there in Exod 19-24. The geographic exactness has invited many proposed identifications (most commonly Jebel Musa in the southern Sinai peninsula), but the chapter is more interested in the theological identity (‘the mountain of God’) than the topographic. , “the mountain of God.” The chapter’s phrasing presupposes what the rest of Exodus will demonstrate: this mountain is the place where God reveals Himself. Moses arrives there without knowing it.

“And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.” The Hebrew word for the bush is sneh סְנֶה sneh Hebrew ‘Bush, thorn-bush’ — a rare Hebrew noun used only here (Exod 3:2-4) and in Moses' final blessing of Joseph in Deut 33:16 (‘the good will of him that dwelt in the bush’). The two-occurrence lexical hapax-pair confirms the same bush is in view both times; Deut 33:16 lets the bush become, in Moses' own valediction, a permanent locative epithet for the LORD. Some commentators connect sneh phonetically with Sinai, the mountain's other name — the wordplay would frame the whole mountain as the burning-bush-place. , a rare Hebrew word used only here and in Moses’ final blessing in Deuteronomy 33:16↗. The phenomenon is the chapter’s first sign — fire that does not consume the wood it burns in. Moses turns aside to see this great sight; the chapter records the turning with care: “I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.” Moses does not yet know what he is seeing; he is responding to the visible anomaly. The voice will come only after he turns.

“And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.” The double-name address (cf. Abraham at the Akedah in Genesis 22:11↗, Jacob at Beersheba in Genesis 46:2↗, Samuel in 1 Samuel 3:10↗) marks the moment as theologically weighty. The immediate command is the chapter’s first declaration of holy place: “Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground אַדְמַת־קֹדֶשׁ admat-qodesh Hebrew ‘Holy ground’ — admat (ground, soil) + qodesh (holy, set apart). This is the OT's first explicit use of qodesh for a place. Holiness as a category for places — not merely for the LORD Himself — enters the canonical text here. The same root qodesh will run through the whole Levitical-cultic vocabulary (qadosh ‘holy,’ qadesh ‘to consecrate,’ miqdash ‘sanctuary,’ qodesh ha-qodashim ‘the holy of holies’). The chapter is establishing the principle that the LORD's presence transforms place — what the tabernacle (Exod 25-31) and temple (1 Kgs 6-8) will institutionalize, the burning bush demonstrates ad hoc. .” The principle the tabernacle and temple will institutionalize — that the LORD’s presence makes place holy — enters the canonical text here for the first time.

The self-identification follows: “Moreover he said, I am the God of thy 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 upon God.” The covenant-name formula is exact, and centuries later Jesus will quote this verse to the Sadducees (Mark 12:26–27↗ and parallels at Matthew 22:32↗, Luke 20:37–38↗) to argue the resurrection: “He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living” (Mark 12:27).

Then the chapter’s central divine speech of commission (3:7-10). The LORD names what He has seen and heard: “I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows.” The verbs are exactly the four verbs of Exodus 2:24–25↗ — saw, heard, known — now spoken by the LORD Himself. “And I am come down ( come down יָרַד yarad Hebrew ‘Come down.’ The LORD's verb in 3:8: ‘I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land.’ The yarad / alah (go down / go up) pattern that ran through the Joseph cycle — Israel went down to Egypt (Gen 46), Joseph's bones to be brought up at the Exodus (Gen 50:24-25) — now becomes the LORD's own action. He came down to bring them up. The verb-pair structures the whole Exodus narrative: the LORD descends in the cloud (Exod 19:18, ‘the LORD descended upon it in fire’), and the people ascend out of Egypt (Exod 12:38, ‘a mixed multitude went up also with them’). ) to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.” The yarad / alah pattern of the Joseph cycle (Genesis 46:4↗, Genesis 50:24↗) now becomes the LORD’s own action: He descends to bring them up. Then the commission, with the pronoun emphasized: “Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.”

Moses’ first objection: “Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?” The answer is the canonical OT answer to the prophetic-call self-doubt: “Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.” The token, the chapter notes without comment, is given retrospectively — the proof that the LORD sent Moses will be that Moses ends up where the LORD said he would, doing what the LORD said he would. Faith is asked to act before the sign appears.

Moses’ second objection is the chapter’s hinge. “Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?” Moses is asking for a divine name to bring back to the elders.

The answer is the OT’s most theologically dense disclosure: “And God said unto Moses, ehyeh asher ehyeh אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה ehyeh-asher-ehyeh Hebrew ‘I AM THAT I AM’ (KJV) / ‘I AM WHO I AM’ (most modern) / ‘I will be what I will be’ (some). The Hebrew is the imperfect (incomplete-aspect) form of the verb hayah (‘to be, become, happen’). The construction is genuinely multivalent and has been read across the tradition in three main ways: (1) absolute being/existence — the LXX renders ego eimi ho on (‘I am the one who is’), which becomes the Greek-philosophical reception's ontological reading of God as Being itself; (2) covenantal presence — ‘I will be who I will be’ or ‘I will be with [you] as I will be with [you],’ emphasizing the LORD's relational fidelity (Exod 3:12 has just used the same ehyeh in ‘I will be with thee,’ which supports this reading); (3) the active or causative — ‘I will cause to be what I will cause to be,’ emphasizing creative deliverance-action. All three are textually defensible; the chapter does not narrow. The reception across two thousand years has held all three simultaneously. : and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Ehyeh hath sent me unto you.” The two clauses give Moses two forms of the name: the long form (ehyeh asher ehyeh) and the short form (ehyeh, “I AM”). Then the verse that anchors the rest of the OT: “And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, YHWH יְהוָה YHWH Hebrew ‘YHWH’ — the tetragrammaton, the proper personal name of the God of Israel. Traditionally Jewish practice does not vocalize the name; reading aloud substitutes adonai (‘my Lord’) or ha-shem (‘the Name’). The KJV's small-caps LORD renders YHWH throughout the OT. ‘Jehovah’ (the 16th-century combination of YHWH consonants with adonai vowels) and ‘Yahweh’ (the modern scholarly reconstructed pronunciation) are the two common English vocalizations. The name is grammatically related to the same hayah (‘to be’) root as ehyeh in 3:14 — YHWH may itself be read as a third-person form (‘He IS / He CAUSES TO BE’) of the same verb. The chapter is presenting the personal name and its meaning together: I AM (first person) = YHWH (third person) = the One whose very name is being-and-presence. God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.” The personal covenant name is now disclosed; the chapter binds it directly to the ehyeh self-naming.

The remainder of the chapter is the practical commission. Moses is to gather the elders, tell them the LORD has visited, give them the message, and go in with the elders to the king of Egypt to ask permission for a three-day journey into the wilderness to sacrifice. The LORD predicts Pharaoh’s refusal, the plagues that will follow, and the eventual spoiling of the Egyptians (“ye shall not go empty”). The chapter ends on the LORD’s promise of provision; the next chapter will pick up Moses’ remaining objections.

For the New Testament, the chapter is structurally foundational. Jesus’ “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58↗) uses the absolute Greek ego eimi — the LXX translation of ehyeh — as a divine self-naming. The Jewish hearers’ immediate response (taking up stones to stone Him) confirms they understood the claim. The seven “I am” predicates of John’s Gospel — bread of life (John 6:35↗), light of the world (John 8:12↗), the door (John 10:7, 9↗), the good shepherd (John 10:11, 14↗), the resurrection and the life (John 11:25↗), the way the truth and the life (John 14:6↗), the true vine (John 15:1↗) — extend the same divine-name claim into a constellation of identifications. Jesus’ use of Exodus 3:6↗‘s “God of Abraham” in Matthew 22:32↗ to argue the resurrection treats the chapter’s identity-formula as having implications its first hearers had not drawn.

For the Latter-day Saint tradition, the chapter’s divine name is identified with the pre-mortal Jesus Christ. The Bible Dictionary entry “Jehovah” is unambiguous: “Jehovah is the premortal Jesus Christ.” doctrine-and-covenants110:4 records Christ’s words at His appearance in the Kirtland Temple to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery — “I am the first and the last; I am he who liveth, I am he who was slain; I am your advocate with the Father” — four I am clauses in one verse, the same divine-name language as Exod 3:14. The LDS reading harmonizes the chapter with John 8:58↗ by reading the angel of the LORD as Christ Himself appearing to Moses.