I am using the Everett Fox translation into English because it is the most faithful to the original Hebrew. While every Hebrew word can have many meanings this English translation has been adapted well to the essence of the meaning in Hebrew. This is a very powerful weekly reading of the beginning of the next book: Exodus. While we are highlighting only a mere fraction of the entire reading I strongly encourage you to read the entire portion as it contains such a rich diet of insight and understanding.
“In point of fact, all these media-fire, water and desert-suggest change as a major concern of the book of Exodus. Our text chronicles the start of Israel’s journey as a nation, a transformative journey which takes vastly changed circumstances, a whole generation in time, and indeed several books of recounting to complete. Exodus is very concerned with topography-not for the purposes of historical recollection (as Genesis was, apparently) but as an account of an inner journey….That goal, the Promised Land, will not be realized in Exodus, because in this book we stand only at the beginning of the journey. Change does not come quickly, and the true molding of a people, like that of an individual, requires formative experiences over time. In Exodus, then, the people of Israel begins in adolescence, as it were. It has survived infancy in Genesis, a period marked by constant threats of physical extinction, and must now begin the tortuous process of learning to cope with adulthood-that is to say, people-hood-in a hostile world.”
‘The historically minded reader may ask: Why would the ruler of a society that is(literally) built on slavery destroy his own workforce? Two answers are possible. First, the story is tied to Chap. 2, the survival of Moshe, and thus must be told tot hat end ( a threat to males). Second, the Story does not describe a rational fear, but paranoia-paralleling the situation in Nazi Germany of the 1930s and 1940s, where Jews were blamed for various economic and political catastrophes not of their own making and were eliminated from a society that could have used their resources and manpower.”
The Shepherd, now in the service of his father-in-law, the “priest”, comes upon the “mountain of God,” “behind the wilderness.” The result are those of an unintended or half-intended journey. Moshe, who had fled previously, finds himself at the utmost reaches of the wilderness, almost like Jonah in the bowels of the boat or the great fish. The sight that Moshe is granted is of unclear nature, but it involves fire, with all its pregnant associations: passion, purity, light, mystery(Greenberg 1969) and here, inextinguishability.
(The Five Books of Moses. The Schocken Bible:Volume I, commentary and notes by Everett Fox Pgs.256-258, 268.)
Now Moshe was shepherding the flock of Yitro his father-in-law,
priest of Midyan.
He led the flock behind the wilderness-
and he came to the mountain of God, to Horev.
And YHWH’s messenger was seen by him
in the flame of a fire out of the midst of a bush.
He saw:
here, the bush is burning with fire,
and the bush is not consumed!
Moshe said:
Now let me turn aside
that I may see this great sight-
why the bush dies nit burn up!
When YHWH saw that he had turned aside to see,
God called to him out of the midst of the bush,
he said:
Here I am.
He said:
Do not come near here,
put off your sandal from your foot,
for the place on which you stand-it is holy ground!
and he said:
I am the God of your father,
the Gos of Avraham,
the God of Yitzchok,
and the God of Yaakov.
Moshe concealed his face,
for he was afraid to gaze upon God.
(Exodus 3:1-6)(The Five Books of Moses. The Schocken Bible:Volume I, commentary and notes by Everett Fox)
The quote from the Torah/bible refers to the illustration appearing on Israelseen courtesy of international artist Phillip Ratner ratnermuseum.com
