The burning bush
The angel appears in flame; God calls Moses and reveals the divine name.
Reception
Classic Christian reading
Tradition note
Read the encounters through the eternal Word's revelation and the Church's Christological reading of Israel's Scriptures. Patristic witnesses are named individually; their interpretations and the symbolism of Abraham's hospitality are not identical in every source.
Avoid overclaiming
Acts 7 retains the angelic language without explicitly naming the angel Jesus. Augustine allows a Christological reading while examining revelation through created signs or angelic representation. An appearance in flame is not the incarnation.
Key points
- The angel of the LORD appears in an unconsumed bush. The narration then names the LORD and God as the speaker. Moses removes his sandals, hears the patriarchal God's identity, and is commissioned to deliver Israel.
Common questions
- Where does the narrator shift from angel to LORD and God?
- What makes the ground holy, and what mission follows?
Doctrinal connections
- Justin, Dialogue 59–60, explicitly identifies the angel and God who speaks here with the Son. John 1:18 supplies a wider theology of the Son's revelation of the unseen God.
Scripture
- Exodus 3:1–15 — The angel of the LORD appears in an unconsumed bush. The narration then names the LORD and God as the speaker. Moses removes his sandals, hears the patriarchal God's identity, and is commissioned to deliver Israel.
- Acts 7:30–35 — Stephen retells the angel's appearance, God's voice, and Moses' commission.
- John 1:18 — The Son makes the unseen God known.
- Joshua 5:13–15 — The command to remove sandals recurs before Jericho.
- Luke 20:37–38 — Jesus uses the bush's patriarchal divine name to argue for resurrection, without explicitly identifying the angel as himself.
- Hebrews 11:24–27 — Moses' choice is related to Christ's reproach and endurance before the invisible God. This does not name the bush's speaker.
Primary sources
Acts 7 retains the angelic language without explicitly naming the angel Jesus. Augustine allows a Christological reading while examining revelation through created signs or angelic representation. An appearance in flame is not the incarnation.
Exodus names an angelic appearance and then attributes the voice from the same bush to God.
Yahweh’s angel appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the middle of a bush … God called to him out of the middle of the bush
Passage context and translation
The angel of the LORD appears in an unconsumed bush. The narration then names the LORD and God as the speaker. Moses removes his sandals, hears the patriarchal God's identity, and is commissioned to deliver Israel.
Before the excerpt
Exodus 3:1 — Now Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the back of the …
After the excerpt
Exodus 3:5 — He said, “Don’t come close. Take off your sandals, for the place you are standing on is holy ground.”
Sources and further reading
- Augustine, On the Trinity II.10–13: appearances and their interpretation
Augustine allows a Savior reading but asks whether a created angel or created sign represents God. The account alone does not settle which divine person is manifested. - Exodus 3 · World English Bible
- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 56, 58–60
- Justin Martyr, First Apology 63: the Son, Angel, and Apostle
Justin explicitly names the Son as the one who appeared to Moses, while distinguishing his mission from the later incarnation.
Related records
- Exodus
- The Son and Word of God
- Before Abraham was, I AM
- Justin Martyr
- Augustine of Hippo
- Christophanies: a guide to reading
- Hagar at the spring
- The angel who bears God's name
- The commander of the LORD's army
- Moses and the passing glory
- The LORD in the garden
- The covenant in smoke and fire
- God's promise before Egypt
- The angel and the pillar at the sea
- Elijah: the angel and the quiet voice
- Yahweh descends on Sinai in fire