Exodus 3 Footnotes

3:2 Who appeared to Moses at the burning bush—the angel of the Lord, or the Lord himself (v. 4)? Both terms are used in this passage. Elsewhere in the OT the two terms could be used in close proximity in ways that draw no clear distinction between them (Gn 16:7-13; Jdg 6:11-14). Since the Hebrew mal’ach means “messenger,” one does not have to think of the “angel” here as falling into some unscriptural stereotype. Perhaps both expressions are simply different ways of referring to the one God. The intimate relationship between the Lord and the angel of the Lord hints at the relationship demonstrated in the NT between God the Father and God the Son (see Jn 10:30).

3:6 If God cannot be seen, why was Moses afraid to look upon him? The Bible states that God is invisible (1Tm 1:17; 6:16) and that no one has ever seen him (Jn 1:18; 1Jn 4:12,20). But biblical narrative also makes it clear that God personally visited human beings at various times and did so in awesome and mysterious ways. The divine disclosure might take the form of a phenomenon of nature—a storm (Jb 38:1), a fire (Dt 4:12), a fiery cloud (Ex 13:21), or a burning bush (3:2-4), or the revelation could be human in appearance (Gn 18:1-33). But the Bible suggests that these self-expressions of God were mediated and partial, not the direct appearance of God in his fullness. The Israelites saw the fire of God, but they did not see him. They heard God’s voice, but they never saw his mouth speaking (Dt 4:12). Moses saw God’s form (Nm 12:8), but never saw his face (Ex 33:20-23). When Moses became aware that the bush was burning because God’s presence was within it, he showed reverent submission by practicing the timeless Asiatic custom of avoiding eye contact with a superior. To have gazed directly upon God would have been to show contemptuous pride and risk destruction.

3:8 Which people groups did Israel actually conquer? The Bible’s lists of nations that inhabited the land of Canaan differ from one another. Among the seven lists of nations provided in the Torah, only three agree completely (vv. 8,17; Dt 20:17). The first list (Gn 15:19-21) is the longest, containing the names of ten people groups. One contains seven names (Dt 7:1), while the others contain only six (Ex 3:8,17; Dt 20:17). There are at least two explanations for these differences. First, some of the groups may have been exterminated from the land before the time of Moses. The Kadmonites, Kenizzites, and Rephaim are mentioned only in the list given to Abraham, who lived hundreds of years earlier. According to Dt 2:20-22, the Ammonites destroyed the Rephaim. Perhaps the Kadmonites and Kenizzites were also eliminated before the time of the exodus. Second, the remaining lists may not have been intended as an exhaustive cataloging of all the cultural groups present in the land; they merely listed the major people groups with which Israel would have to deal.