Texts in Conversation
In Exodus 3, God appears to Moses as a fire in a bush that never burns up and in Exodus 19, God is described as fire coming from Sinai. The Hebrew word for bush sounds like Sinai, so the description of the small fire likely anticipates the large one.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Exodus 3:2
Hebrew Bible
1 Now Moses was shepherding the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to the mountain of God, to Horeb. 2 The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from within a bush. He looked, and the bush was ablaze with fire, but it was not being consumed! 3 So Moses thought, “I will turn aside to see this amazing sight. Why does the bush not burn up?”
Exodus 19:18
Hebrew Bible
17 Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their place at the foot of the mountain. 18 Now Mount Sinai was completely covered with smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire, and its smoke went up like the smoke of a great furnace, and the whole mountain shook violently. 19 When the sound of the horn grew louder and louder, Moses was speaking and God was answering him with a voice.
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Notes and References
"... The revelation at the burning bush in J is comparable to the revelation on the holy mountain in E, but with a key difference. The name of God has already been revealed in Genesis. The J description of the revelation to Moses in Exodus 3 begins as follows: An angel of Yhwh appeared to him in a flaming fire in the midst of the bush. And he looked and behold – the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, “Let me turn aside so I might see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” (Exodus 3:2–3) In the Leitwort style of biblical prose, the revelation to Moses at the “bush” is a wordplay with the future revelation at Sinai, which also burns with fire: “Mount Sinai was all in smoke because Yhwh had descended on it in fire” (Exodus 19:18). The latter is a full-sensory theophany, accompanied by lightning, thunder, quaking, fire, and the sound of horns. ..."
Hendel, Ronald
"God and the Gods in the Tetrateuch" in van Oorschot, Jürgen and Markus Witte (eds.) The Origins of Yahwism
(p. 250) De Gruyter, 2017
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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