Start here · day 6 of 14 · Out of slavery
אֶהְיֶה
A voice from a burning bush
Exodus 3
First, read it
Exodus 3
Read it before the notes below. They are worth more once you have your own impression of it.
Open Exodus 3Then, the idea
Four hundred years later the family is a nation, and the nation is enslaved. A shepherd called Moses turns aside to look at a bush that is burning and not burning up.
Before he is sent anywhere, he is told why: I have seen the affliction of my people, and heard their cry, and I know their sorrows. Seen, heard, known. Then, and only then, sent.
Moses asks what he should say God's name is. The answer is strange and hard to translate: I will be what I will be. It is a verb, not a noun. Not a definition — a promise to be there.
One word of Hebrew
אֶהְיֶה
ehyeh — I will be
Future tense. The name refuses to be a fixed thing you can hold. The closest English is something like: you will find out who I am by what happens next.
And one question
Moses gives five reasons why he is the wrong person. Why do you think the Bible keeps his excuses in the story?
Nobody is marking this. Sit with it on the way to work.