Exodus 3 Study Notes

The wordplay with the verb makes it especially prominent and recalls the promise, as if to remind Moses, “The one who promises to be with you is the one who sends you.” Since Hebrew verbs gather much of their temporal meaning from their contexts, the same form can indicate present or future or both at once, depending on the situation. Here the promises in 3:12; 4:12,15 are oriented to the future; so though “will” is appropriate in English, it does not exclude God’s presence with Moses at the time they were speaking. Nor does the English present tense “am” in 3:14 exclude the future.

The four letters spelling God’s name, in paleo-Hebrew, old Aramaic, and biblical Hebrew. It is referred to as the tetragrammaton, usually pronounced Yahweh.

God told Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” Moses was to tell Israel, “I AM has sent me to you” (Ex 3:14). Then God replaced I AM with “Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob . . . This is my name forever” (Ex 3:15). Yahweh is probably a third person singular equivalent of I AM. Its pronunciation was almost lost because Jews considered it so holy that they replaced its vowels with those of other divine names. Yahweh communicates God’s commitment to deliver Israel in ways that reveal his character. God did not reveal this name to the patriarchs (Ex 6:3), but Yahweh occurs in Genesis dialogue (Gn 14:22). Either the meaning was previously unknown, its significance had not been fully appreciated, or Genesis reflects later language. Moses’s mother Jochebed might have a shortened form of Yahweh in her name (Jo-) if the name follows later practice.

3:16 When the present translation uses the word Lord (with large and small capital letters), it is representing the Hebrew name that can also be transliterated “Yahweh.” The name Yahweh is connected etymologically with the Hebrew verb “to be” that appears so prominently in vv. 12 and 14. Yahweh was no stranger. He was the God of their fathers: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Four hundred years in Egypt had not annulled the promises made to them and their offspring (2:24). He now sent Moses to their descendants, the Israelites. If the Israelites wanted to know who he was, they needed to look at what he had done.

3:17 God repeats his promise from 3:8.

3:18 A three-day trip . . . so that we may sacrifice was a reasonable request, since other slave groups in Egypt received permission for similar journeys to worship their gods. Something about Israelite sacrifices was abhorrent to the Egyptians (8:26); a three-day trip into the wilderness would get them well out of sight.

3:19-20 Here God showed his full knowledge of people’s character and thinking processes by predicting that Pharaoh would remain stubborn, thus also anticipating the “hardness of heart” theme that recurs in the plague stories (see 4:21-23 and note there). The two clauses when I stretch out my hand and he will let you go both use a form of the same Hebrew verb, making tight connection between cause and effect. When God’s hand goes to work, the Israelites will go out of Egypt. The contest would be between the strong hand of the Lord and the “power [lit “hand”] of the Egyptians” as personified by Pharaoh (v. 8).

3:21-22 Gifts of silver and gold would fulfill what the Lord had told Abram (Gn 15:14), repeating the pattern of Abram’s own departure from Egypt with wealth that had been handed to him (Gn 12:16,20; cp. Gn 20:14,16). The word translated plunder has a parallel use in 2Ch 20:25 to describe plundering corpses on a battlefield. Its use in Ex 3:22 and 12:36 may be an intentional overstatement. It contributes to showing the nature of the Lord’s victory over Egypt, which may be why 3:22 particularly mentions that Israelite women—noncombatants ordinarily—would do the asking. In 11:2 and 12:35 men also participate.