The book of Exodus begins with a brief history of how the Israelites became slaves in Egypt. The new Pharoah grew fearful of the “foreigners” living in his kingdom, forgetting the service the Israelites had done for them. Fearing a rebellion, he enslaved them and instituted a plan to slaughter all infant boys. Nonetheless, we are told that Moses is born and survives, growing up in the palace of Pharoah as his adopted grandson.

Moses never seems to have forgotten his family and ethnic origins, and one day he goes out to see the burdens of his brethren (Ex. 2:11). Witnessing a task master beat a slave, Moses looked around and, seeing no witnesses, murdered the task master. Despite his attempt to hide his crime, word gets out and he has to flee for his life.

Moses settles in Midian and becomes a shepherd for his father-in-law. While he is out tending the flock, Moses encounters God. He witnesses a bush that burns without being consumed and hears the voice of God, or an angel, telling him to return to Egypt and lead the Exodus. Moses complies, but is confronted with a cruel and recalcitrant Pharoah and a people who resent their worsening situation as Pharoah punishes their perceived laziness. Moses then complains to God that all his efforts have only made things worse, and God promises that his miracles will increase in awesomeness until their release.

The theophany at the Burning Bush is the central self-revelation of God in the Torah. In his conversation with Moses, God reveals God’s divine name, the name that expresses something about God’s nature, a name so important that it wasn’t even revealed to the patriarchs. This parsha tells us the patriarchs only knew God as El Shaddai (although there are texts in Genesis that show the patriarchs calling on God’s name). But what does this name reveal about God? And why did God choose Moses to reveal this name to and lead the Israelites from Egypt?

Maimonides argues in The Guide for the Perplexed that this name represented God’s nature as the eternal source of all being (Pt. I, Ch. 61). Indeed, other theologians have understood the name in this way. Undoubtedly, there is some element of this because the name is some derivative of the verb “to be.” But it doesn’t explain why Moses was chosen. After all, Abraham already knew God as the eternal Creator (Gen. R. 38:13, 39:1). Rashi sees the name as a promise that God will always be with Moses and the Jewish people.[1] Even in their suffering, when God seems hidden, the Israelites should know that God will be with them. The name reveals both God’s omnipresence and God’s loving care.

This latter explanation seems closer to the truth. Later in Exodus, we learn about God’s attributes connected with the divine name. “Adonai, Adonai, El rachum v’chanun…” (Exodus 34:6-7). The tetragrammaton represents God’s mercy, compassion, and love, while the name Elohim represents God’s justice. Chapter 3 of our parsha uses both names to hint at what God is about to do: pass judgment on the Egyptians and show mercy to the Israelites.[2] In this concise vignette, God is revealed as the eternal source, always present, who perfectly balances justice and mercy.

The rest of the Exodus story contrasts God with the cruelty of Pharoah. Pharoah also claimed to be a god, upholding the Egyptian understanding of divine justice. The Torah depicts the cruelty of Pharoah by the unreasonable demands he placed on the people, his flippant dismissal of Moses, and his disregard for human life. Because of the Pharoah’s pretensions, God humbles him with the plagues, each plague targeting the domain of a particular Egyptian deity. God’s mercy and justice are therefore proven to be more powerful than the gods of Egypt.

So, why did God choose Moses as God’s representative to both Pharoah and the Israelites? Because Moses exemplified the divine attributes in human life. He protected the weak from the strong. He had compassion for people’s suffering. He was a patient leader who carried out justice when needed, and he always sided with the Jewish people, advocating for them even when God would have abandoned or destroyed them. In his relationship with God, Moses exemplified the qualities of the divine for the people, knowing God face to face. In other words, Moses was the only man to become completely God-conscious.

It would be easy to point out some of Moses’s flaws, even Moses would have agreed that he was not a perfect vessel to carry out God’s will (Ex. 3:11, 4:1,10,13). Although Moses sinned at Meribah, for instance, his lapse was so minor that it has baffled scholars ever since (Num. 20:10-13). How could such a small slip have resulted in such heavy punishment? Because for one short moment, he forgot that he was not God, and God insists on the distinction between God and humanity. Pharoah’s hubris in claiming divinity led to his inhumane and cruel treatment of the Israelites. When individuals place themselves at the center of the universe, seeing themselves as all-important, evil is the inevitable result. The greatness of Moses, the spiritual heights he reached, was the reason his minor infraction was punished so severely. Our sages teach that the greater a person is, the higher the standard God will hold them to (BT Yevamot 121b). Even though Moses exemplified the divine attributes more than any other person, he was still only a man and all the more culpable for minor infractions because of his greatness. One lesson of this parsha is that only God is ultimate, and even the most enlightened God-conscious people cannot fully embody the divine. While God is the source of all being and present throughout the universe, God chooses to act through us. Our actions are the means of sanctifying the world. Just as Moses was an instrument of the divine in freeing the Israelites, we are called to align ourselves with God, increase our awareness of the divine within and around us, and to respond to God’s presence and call. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said in his essay “The Over-Soul,” “If [someone] has found his centre, the Deity will shine through him.” Moses was an exemplar of how to do that, and he taught the Israelites the path towards God-consciousness, which we call the Torah.

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[1] Accessed 1/11/26: https://www.sefaria.org/Exodus.3.12?lang=bi&aliyot=0&p2=Rashi_on_Exodus.3.14.1&lang2=bi&w2=all&lang3=en

[2] Footnote to Ex. 3:2-5 in ArtScroll Tanakh, Stone Edition, 1996.