And he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look at God.
At the burning bush God names Himself to Moses by three men long dead. Moses covers his face. Why that name, at that moment? And why did the sight of God frighten him?
God did not name Himself from Sinai and the law. He named Himself from the promises made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That choice shaped how near Moses could come.
Moses had to keep at a distance and remove his shoes, as a sign that the place was holy, and he was only a servant. There had to be distance. But it was far less marked than later, when God gave the law. This was doubtless because at the outset the Lord revealed Himself to him as "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." The God who set up the covenant of promise was not so awesome as when He gave the law from Sinai.
The name itself was old. What was new was that God was now about to act on it.
The name He gave Himself was not new — people had heard it before. But now He was about to act on its reality and present value. There was to be accomplishment up to a certain and evident point, and not promise only. So the stress falls on "the God of your fathers," explained as "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."
Before the three great names comes a smaller one: "the God of your father." That phrase reached Moses himself.
The words that Moses heard out of the middle of the fire in the bush must have awakened in his heart the memory of God's goodness towards the fathers. But they must also have shown him that he had a personal link with the God of Abraham. For God had said to him, "I am the God of your father."
The same meeting shows two things at once: grace and holiness.
If God's holiness is infinite, His grace is infinite also. The way He revealed Himself to Moses declared His holiness. The very fact that He revealed Himself at all showed His grace. He came down because He was gracious. But having come down, He would reveal Himself as holy… God's presence must always make nature hide itself. When we stand before God with bare feet and covered head — the attitude of soul which those acts so aptly and beautifully express — we are ready to listen to the sweet words of grace. When man takes his proper place, God can speak in the language of unmixed mercy.
Moses' fear marks where he stood — before the exodus, before God had redeemed His people.
Before redemption, even a saint trembled when brought into God's presence. His voice does declare Him the God of promise, the God of the fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Even so, "Moses trembled, and did not dare to look." Until redemption, peace is impossible.
Jesus used this sentence to prove that the dead live. His argument turns on what it would mean for God to name Himself after men who no longer exist.
If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had ceased to exist, could God still have taken their names, the names of nothing, to describe Himself to Israel? … God describes Himself by them. He is not ashamed to be called their God… He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. But this truth went further. Abraham was dead, his soul separated from his body. He was living for God, yet he was not what God meant him to be as his God… He was to be complete, and so raised from the dead.
Everything turns on one small word — the tense of the verb.
Our Lord stresses His point in that God said, "I AM." The strength of His argument lies in the present tense of the verb "to be." So exact is verbal inspiration.
Moses could not look. Believers now can. The difference is how God has since made Himself known.
This is a great sight for us to turn aside and see. It is greater than what Moses saw, as the substance is greater than the shadow. In Jesus, God is made known to us and brought near. In His presence our souls can stay without a fear, unlike Moses, who "hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God" — for "GOD IS LOVE."
- Name — God names Himself by the fathers and the covenant of promise, not by the law. The distance is real, but gentler than Sinai's.
- Personal — "the God of your father" gave Moses his own link to that promise, not just an inherited story.
- Holy — He came down because He is gracious. Having come down, He shows Himself holy, and human nature hides.
- Living — God still names Himself their God. "I AM" is present tense, so Abraham, Isaac and Jacob live to Him and must rise.
- Near — The bush was the shadow. The substance is God made known in Jesus. There the soul that once hid its face can stay without fear.
And Jehovah said, I have seen assuredly the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and their cry have I heard on account of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows.
God speaks to Moses from the burning bush and tells him what He has noticed: a nation of slaves, their cry, and their pain. Two questions grow out of this one sentence: why did God wait so long, and what finally moved Him to act?
(The ESV reads "I know their sufferings." The quotes below use an older translation: "I know their sorrows.")
The decisive word in the verse is the small one: God calls these slaves His own. That claim, not their condition, decides the outcome.
These words reveal a great basic principle in the ways of God. It is on the ground of what He is that He always acts. "I AM" secures everything for "MY PEOPLE." He was never going to leave His people among the brick kilns of Egypt, under the whip of Pharaoh's taskmasters. They were His people, and He would act toward them in a way worthy of Himself. To be His people settled everything. They were the favoured objects of Jehovah's electing love, the subjects of His unconditional promise. He had come down to deliver them. The combined power of earth and hell could not hold them captive one hour beyond His appointed time.
That title starts here, and it becomes the demand God makes of Pharaoh.
The first time we read of God calling Israel "My people" was when He spoke to Moses from the burning bush (Exodus 3:7). Following this, the first demand to Pharaoh (Exodus 5:1) was "Let My people go."
The verse stacks three statements together. They answer years that looked like silence.
He declared three things. First, His attention to the cry of His people and His sympathetic concern for their sorrows. For a century or two it must have seemed as though He was indifferent. But it was not so. God is never in a hurry and He intervenes in His own time, which is the right time. The three statements in verse 7 are very touching: He had seen; He had heard; He knew their sorrows. So it always is with all His people, with us among the rest.
God says He heard their cry — but not that they cried to Him. Several writers press this distinction.
But He does not add that the cry was to Him. We may say then, as a prophet did later, that they groaned; but they did not groan to God. It was only a selfish sense of suffering. They groaned only because of their wretchedness; but there was no looking out to God — no counting on His mercy.
If the cry was not aimed at God, then the reason God moved has to lie somewhere else.
This lesson gives the soul great strength: God always finds His motive within Himself. It is on the ground of what He is, and not on the ground of what we are… There is not a word to show that the children of Israel had cried to the Lord. But their misery had touched His heart. He "knew their sorrows, and had come down to deliver them." So "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)
Knowing here is not distant information. It is love that goes into detail.
He began to show more than His grace in giving His promises to the seed, which faith could lay hold of. He showed His own considerate love in caring for the need and sorrows of His people… He took notice of every circumstance of their trouble and sorrow.
Darby reads the "I" of these words as God stepping out of His own glory into a place strange to Him.
Is not this "I" the Lord placing Himself as coming down into Egypt? He came out of all that was natural to Himself and His glory. He placed Himself in the middle of what was strange to Him, to deliver them. "I have seen, I have seen the affliction of my people, and I have come down to deliver them." He speaks as identifying Himself with His people.
Writers read Israel's slavery as a picture of a condition shared by everyone, and their rescue as a picture of salvation.
Read Exodus 2:23 and 3:1-10. There we see the condition of the people in cruel bondage and slavery. It is an exact picture of our condition under the cruel bondage of sin and Satan. Their cries and groans came up to God… Such is the condition by nature of every man, whether he knows it or not. And note, the source of their deliverance was not in themselves. The source of our salvation is the love of God. God is love. He came down to deliver.
- Seen — God watched the affliction through long years that looked like indifference. He acts in His own time, and that is the right time.
- Heard — the cry reached Him, though it was not addressed to Him. Their misery alone moved Him, not their merit.
- Known — He noticed every circumstance of their trouble, not the general fact of it.
- Owned — "My people" is the word that settles the outcome; God acts on the ground of what He is, not what they are.
- Come down — He identifies Himself with them and steps into Egypt to deliver. The same love later sent Christ for sinners.
And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good and spacious land, unto a land flowing with milk and honey, unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
God speaks to Moses from the burning bush. He tells him what He has already decided to do: come down, rescue a nation of slaves, and settle them in a land where six other peoples live. The verse is short. Yet commentators find in it the whole shape of redemption — where God starts, why He acts, and where He means to finish.
Nothing in the verse suggests Israel asked for this. One writer asks where God's motive comes from, and shows how little the people contributed:
God always finds His motive within Himself. He acts on the ground of what He is, not on the ground of what we are. The occasion of His action was the condition of His people. "The LORD said, 'I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings'" (v. 7). What infinite tenderness! There is not a word to show that the children of Israel had cried to the Lord. They had sighed and cried because of their bondage, but it does not appear that their hearts had turned to the Lord. But their misery had touched His heart. He "knew their sorrows, and had come down to deliver them." So "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8).
God does not rescue Israel and then leave them to themselves. One writer notices that God calls these slaves His own before He does anything to improve them:
Who but God would have spoken so openly of a poor set of slaves as "My people"? Others would have delivered and dressed them up first. It is the same God who, as a father, falls on the neck of the returning prodigal son in his rags and kisses him. That comes before the honours poured on him later. But whether we look at the picture or at the reality behind it, one thing is vital to grasp. Redemption is the work of God, present in some sense, and delivering — not only from the enemy, but for Himself.
The verse contains two promises, not one, and they organise everything that follows:
The eighth verse points out the two parts of Exodus. The Lord announced two things He would do for His people. 1. I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians. 2. And to bring them up out of that land to a good land flowing with milk and honey. Exodus has two great parts which match these two statements.
God gave Moses both halves of that errand, and he managed only the first. Another writer sees the verse pointing past Moses to Christ:
God sent Moses to lead them out, and to bring them in (Exodus 3:8, 10, 12). He failed, but Christ does both. Meanwhile, as High Priest, Christ has gone in to keep us now joined to our true place of blessing, and in all the value of the blood, as God values it, until He puts us into actual possession at His coming again.
Between Egypt and Canaan lie forty years — and they are not mentioned here. Several writers make much of that silence:
If you look at Exodus 3, you will see that the wilderness formed no part of God's purpose... In Exodus 6 you find the same, and in Exodus 15, where faith celebrates redemption, you have the same thing. "You have guided them by your strength to your holy abode." This leaps right over the wilderness. He did bring them through the wilderness, but it was no part of His purpose for them.
The destination is described by what it produces without being forced. That contrast with Egypt is the point:
Not a word is said of the wilderness, and its forty years of endurance and toil. His plan was to test them there, which He did. But His purpose was to bring them to the place where He could dwell, to a land that "drinks water by the rain from heaven, a land that the LORD your God cares for" (Deut. 11).
after_note: DELETE He would bring us into a place where His own heart can be satisfied, and where He may dwell with and enjoy His people. How different from the land of slavery where nothing is to be had for nothing, where no man gives!
The promised land already has occupants, and God names them. One writer reads the names as a picture of what stands between a believer and enjoying what God has given:
The names here, as everywhere, are certainly significant. They stand for the powers of evil that hold the ground and would keep us from enjoying the inheritance God has given us in Christ. The Hittite, "child of terror" — how spiritual dread makes cowards of us all! The Amorite, "the talker," rather than the doer of the Word. The Canaanite, "the trafficker," companion to the talker, who turns the very truth of God into merchandise... while the Jebusite, "the treader down," never rests until it treads every divine thing underfoot. All these must be cast out.
- Down — God moves first; the people's misery, not their prayers, is what draws Him down.
- For Himself — He comes not only to break Egypt's grip but to take a people as His own, in their rags.
- Out — the first promise is rescue from Egypt, and it fills the first half of the book.
- In — the second promise is a land, and it is the goal; the desert was where He tested them, never His purpose for them.
- Kept — God sent Moses to bring them out and bring them in; he failed at the second, but Christ does both.