25
Moses assumed his fellow Israelites would realize that God had sent him to rescue them, but they didn’t.
26
“The next day he visited them again and saw two men of Israel fighting. He tried to be a peacemaker. ‘Men,’ he said, ‘you are brothers. Why are you fighting each other?’
27
“But the man in the wrong pushed Moses aside. ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us?’ he asked.
28
‘Are you going to kill me as you killed that Egyptian yesterday?’
29
When Moses heard that, he fled the country and lived as a foreigner in the land of Midian. There his two sons were born.
30
“Forty years later, in the desert near Mount Sinai, an angel appeared to Moses in the flame of a burning bush.
31
When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight. As he went to take a closer look, the voice of the LORD called out to him,
32
‘I am the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ Moses shook with terror and did not dare to look.
33
“Then the LORD said to him, ‘Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground.
34
I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groans and have come down to rescue them. Now go, for I am sending you back to Egypt.’
35
“So God sent back the same man his people had previously rejected when they demanded, ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us?’ Through the angel who appeared to him in the burning bush, God sent Moses to be their ruler and savior.