The Burning Bush Myth

Author: Traditional Jewish; Southern Levant

Time Period: 2499 BCE–1000 BCE

Country or Culture: Middle East

Genre: Myth

PLOT SUMMARY

The book of Exodus, the second book of the Hebrew Bible (and of the Christian Old Testament), begins with the story of Moses. Several hundred years prior to his birth, the nascent Israelite people had gone to Egypt to escape famine. There Joseph, son of the patriarch Jacob and his wife Rachel, rises to second in command after the pharaoh and provides for his family of origin. They grow in number and power but are ultimately enslaved. Believing the growing population to be a threat, a new pharaoh commands that all Israelite boys be killed at birth; the Israelite midwives, however, disobey the order.

During this difficult time, the baby Moses is born. After being hidden for three months, he is placed in a basket of reeds and set adrift on the river. The pharaoh’s daughter, coming to bathe, hears the baby’s cries and adopts him as her own son, hiring his birth mother to nurse him. As a young man, Moses kills an Egyptian who is beating one of the Israelite slaves. He subsequently flees to Midian, where he marries a daughter of the priest Jethro and fathers two sons.

While tending his father-in-law’s sheep, Moses sees a burning bush that is not consumed by the flames. Curious, he approaches the bush, only to have God (Yahweh) call to him from within it. Yahweh tells Moses to remove his sandals, for he is standing on holy ground. He then identifies himself: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exod. 3:6). At this declaration, Moses hides his face out of fear of looking at God.

Yahweh tells Moses that he is aware of the suffering of his people and has come to deliver the Israelites from slavery through Moses, whom he will send to meet with the pharaoh. The would-be deliverer protests that he is unknown and ineloquent and that the people will not listen to him or know who sent him. Yahweh again identifies himself, this time stating, “I am who I am” (3:14). He also gives Moses power to perform miraculous deeds that will serve as signs, such as turning his shepherd’s staff into a snake, making his hand appear to have leprosy, and turning water from the Nile River into blood.

When Moses continues to protest that he is not an eloquent speaker, Yahweh promises to send Moses’s brother, Aaron, to be the speaker. Moses asks for and obtains permission from Jethro to return to Egypt, and he sets out with his wife and sons. Aaron meets Moses in the wilderness at Yahweh’s command, and the two give the news of coming deliverance to the people, who worship Yahweh in gratitude.

SIGNIFICANCE

Traditionally, Moses has been named as the author of the Pentateuch or Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. Modern scholars, however, recognize the work of multiple, anonymous authors of these books, none of them Moses. The Pentateuch was likely solidified during the period of Israelite exile in Babylon in the sixth century BCE or in the subsequent early restoration period of Jewish history.

Scholar Bernard Robinson suggests that the Pentateuch was compiled by the time of the Second Temple (ca. 521 BCE) for liturgical use. Given that the five books would have been handwritten on multiple scrolls, copies for personal use would have been few, limited perhaps to royalty. The Mishnah, a text compiling Jewish oral traditions, relates that serial reading of the Torah took place on feast days and the Sabbath by about 200 CE, possibly earlier. Certainly there are instances within the Hebrew Bible of the texts being read aloud. Upon the return from Babylon, for example, the priest Ezra reads “the book of the law of Moses” to the assembled people (Neh. 8:1).

The story of the burning bush is a prototype for many subsequent “call” stories. Given a message to deliver, prophets often try to convince Yahweh of their inability or unworthiness to perform the task. The judge Gideon, for example, demands a sign of Yahweh before accepting the role of deliverer (Judg. 6). Jeremiah, like Moses, protests that he does not know how to speak and that he is too young for the task (Jer. 1).

As theologian Oliver Davies points out, the writer of the episode plays with the idea of seeing. In Exodus 2:25, God looks on the Israelites and takes note of them because of their cries. Two verses later, the pattern of speaking and looking is reversed. Moses looks around and notices a bush that is burning but not consumed. He then decides to take a closer look, and God calls to him from the bush. Davies posits that curiosity, a typical feature of wisdom literature, plays a role in Moses’s call.

The notion of fire as a symbol of God appears in other texts within the Pentateuch. In Genesis 15, for example, a flaming torch passes between elements of sacrifice, sealing a covenant with Abraham. When the people leave Egypt in Exodus 13–14, a pillar of fire leads them by night. At the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, Yahweh descends in fire.

Robinson concludes that for exilic or postexilic Jews, this story offered comfort and reinforced the belief that God is in control of events and nature. The god they worshipped is not confined to a particular sacred space but able to make a sanctuary wherever he intervenes on their behalf. In this sense, the burning bush symbolizes the menorah, the seven-branched lamp made for the tabernacle and temple.

The burning bush has been interpreted by Jewish scholarship as a reference to the nation of Israel. This sign indicates that the fires of affliction will not consume the people, just as the flames do not consume the burning bush. As a tale of God’s care for his people in distress, the story of the burning bush thus offers comfort during times of hardship.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Davies, Oliver. “Reading the Burning Bush: Voice, World and Holiness.” Modern Theology 22.3 (2006): 439–48. Print.

Garry, Jane. “Tabu: Looking, Motifs C300–C399.” Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore and Literature: A Handbook. Ed. Garry and Hasan El-Shamy. Armonk: Sharpe, 2005. 308. Print.

The New Oxford Annotated Bible. Ed. Bruce M. Metzger and Roland E. Murphy. New York: Oxford UP, 1991. Print.

Paul, Shalom. “Burning Bush.” The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion. Ed. Adele Berlin and Maxine Grossman. New York: Oxford UP, 2011. 151. Print.

Robinson, Bernard P. “Moses at the Burning Bush.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 75 (1997): 107–22. Print.