Why A Bush?
3 Possible Reasons For God's Chosen Medium
“Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.” (Exodus 3:1-2)
Have you ever wondered why God chose a bush as His medium when He appeared to Moses? In his commentary on Exodus, biblical scholar Douglas K. Stuart suggests three possible reasons.
1. The Setting
First, since God apparently wanted to get Moses’ attention through an object in the wilderness, He had limited choices—rocks or bushes. So, perhaps there was no special reason, and He simply went with the bush.
2. The Wordplay
Second, though, the Hebrew word for this “bush” (סְּנֶה, seněh) is rather similar in sound to the word “Sinai” (סִינָי, sî·nǎy)—so similar, in fact, that the Deuteronomy 33:16 phrase “him who dwells in the bush” is sometimes taken to be “the one who dwells on Sinai” (as in the New Revised Standard Version). So, it’s possible the use of the bush was an intentional reminder of its location.
3. The Symbolism
Third, Stuart says, “in biblical culture bushes or trees can symbolize people or groups,” so “the idea that a burning bush could in fact represent Israel’s God” would not have been beyond the realm of Moses’ cultural sensibilities or the sensibilities of those to whom he would later describe the encounter. God may have been, as the expression goes, meeting him where he was at—in more ways than one.
P.S. A version of this brief Bible insight originally appeared in Project 18:15, my weekly briefing of news, Bible, and history. Get the next one in your inbox this weekend:
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