Burning Man (Bush) - Exodus 3:1-3

3:1-3 - Chapter 3 is only 22 verses, and the IM has a couple of paragraphs explaining some aspects of it, but TB insists that chapter 3 is VERY important to everything going forward, and really, looking at everything that is covered in such a short period of time, it seems like he’s right. We’ve covered the time that Moses is married to Zipporah and has his first son to now, which my guess has covered at least a decade, but probably longer. We see that Moses is a shepherd who “kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian.” TB contrasts this to Jacob’s arrangement with Laban where Jacob got to keep some of the flocks that he cared for, building his wealth, thus indicating that Moses was not a wealth man, and was basically an employee.

Moses takes the sheep “to the backside of the desert… even to Horeb.” TB goes on for several minutes, spanning two lectures, about the actual location of Mount Horeb being on the Arabian Peninsula as opposed to the Sinai peninsula. He cites multiple reasons for this and they are interesting, because apparently the Christian tradition is that Horeb is in Sinai, and I don’t know why that’s important, but he insists that it’s not. The IM contests, “Horeb is the same as Mount Sinai, where Moses received the law from the Lord. Elijah also later sought refuge at Horeb.” TB and the Church seem to be on opposite sides of the issue, I personally don’t care that much because if the place where Moses stood was holy ground, then I think that that same holiness can be found on another mountain if God so chose, so the actual physical geography doesn’t really matter much to me, so I’m not going to spent too much time on it.

While Moses was tending the flock of sheep, “and 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.” There is a JST for the phrase “angel of the Lord” which translates it to “presence of the Lord,” meaning that it wasn’t an angel but God’s presence, which makes sense because we know at this point Christ hasn’t been born into a physical body yet, meaning he’d only have the “body of his spirit.” We can also contrast this with Jesus’ appearance to the brother of Jared in Ether 3:6-16 where Jesus confirms “this body, which ye now behold, is the body of my spirit… and even as I appear unto thee in the spirit will I appear unto my people in the flesh.” So it’s not surprising to Book of Mormon enthusiasts that God would appear in an ethereal manner, because we have multiple accounts of it happening.

It always struck me as interesting that God gets Moses attention with a fire because as far as I know, Moses is currently living in a desert which can have fires, but a random bush on fire in the middle of no where is pretty suspicious. Maybe lightning would strike that area frequently and cause fires sometimes, I don’t know. I guess my disconnect is that Moses sees a random bush on fire but he’s not alarmed about that until he sees that the bush isn’t being consumed by the flames. Was a random bush fire common enough for Moses to think, “oh yeah just one of those pesky fires again?” It just always struck me as weird that the bush not burning was the first unexpected part of that account.

One reason that the bush could appear to be on fire but not consumed is suggested by the IM which says “a manifestation was given to Moses by a messenger of light, causing a bush to appear to burn; it was really not afire and was not consumed.” We know that the glory and spirit of God that accompanies any physical sight of a message is brighter than the sun, so it probably wasn’t flaming like I imagined, but instead just incredibly bright in a way that could only be created by fire and so that’s what Moses attributed it to. There’s a bush that is so bright I’ve only ever seen that color before in the sun and super-hot fire, so the bush must be on fire, but it’s not being burned up, so I’m going to go check it out.

As we know from the JST that it wasn’t an angel appearing to Moses, but God’s own presence, just like what happened to the brother of Jared. Interestingly, this perspective shift is confirmed by TB when he points out that the word used to describe the messenger is malach, and the IM also cites this original word as well. However, TB expounds on this saying that while malach can mean anyone bringing any message to anyone, human or otherwise, when describing a heavenly messenger, the Hebrew says either malach Adonai which Adonai means lord or master and “is a rather generic term. It is only withinthe context of its use that one can determine whether the Bible is referring to a heavenly ‘lord’ or simply an earthly authority figure that is being shown respect. ´ So an “angel of God” would be referred to as malach Adonai or a message coming from someone important either in person or through an appointee. The third way that malach can be used is less common and that is with malach Yehoveh which “seems to mean a manifestation of God Almighty, Himself. This was not a run-of-the-mill angel in the burning bush, bringing a message FROM God… It was God Himself that was about to speak to Moses; of that there is no scriptural doubt.”

The last significance that I want to bring up before we get into the actual words spoken was the importance of this moment, not just for Moses, but also for God. We have seen that even though the Hebrews were only enslaved around 400 years at this point, they had very limited ideas of who the God of their fathers is and all of what that means as far as the Abrahamic covenant, and that is coming from Jacob as the last patriarch and we know how very little even he understood about his father’s God. All this is to say that Moses was meeting God, and he was to take God’s message to the people, not just expand or anything simple like that but to actually restore God’s word to those to whom it belonged.

This is exactly why the First Vision is significant when it comes to Joseph Smith. Everyone always wants to focus on Joseph being called by God at 14, but it wasn’t about him, it was about God making an appearance and basically telling Joseph the exact same thing that He’s telling Moses here. Interestingly, I have never seen this event described by modern people as focusing on Moses and his importance to everything, but instead the focus is on God’s appearance after a long “absence” and a renewed drive to get people to the gospel. I wonder if in a few more generations, the focus of the First Vision will be off of Joseph Smith’s call and instead focus on God’s return after a long “absence” and His call of all people to return to Him.