Apart from special revelation, mankind in sin articulates the divine Name in an alphabet of false gods (Ashtaroth, Judges 10:6; Baal, Judges 2:11; Chemosh, Num.
21:29; Dagon, Judges 16:23; and so on through Zeus, Acts 14:12)—a panorama of pagan divinities that biblical theology exposes to the lash of divine wrath in prophetic-apostolic denunciation.4
In Exodus 3 God began graciously to reveal his name and its significance.
Whereas in the initial two chapters of Exodus God had worked largely in the background, in Exodus 3 God arrives in prominence to take his place as the central character.5 The primary reason that God takes center stage at this point of the narrative is given in Exodus 3:7 and 3:9. God had seen the affliction of his people, heard their cry, and knew their sufferings. Now was God’s time to act. However, God would utilize human agency and human leadership in the deliverance of his people. God would call Moses, and should Moses quail at the enormity of the task before him, God’s remedy for a frightened Moses was the explication of God’s name.
the promise of Genesis 15:14. Finally, God would judge Egypt and redeem his people.
According to Exodus 3:8, God would execute this glorious work on his own, and all Moses would have to do was stand back and applaud as God undertook his plan.7 However, God was not yet finished speaking. Exodus 3:10 comes after Exodus 3:8-9.
In what has been called the “crux” and/or the “bottom line” of the entire burning bush narrative, Exodus 3:10 reports God calling Moses to lead the Hebrew people out of Egypt.8 In Exodus 3:10, God said to Moses: “Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” If the words God spoke in Exodus 3:8 had given Moses any hope that God would work alone in delivering God’s people out of Egypt, Exodus 3:10 dashed such a possibility. God now commanded that the elderly Moses be the human means by which the exodus would occur.9 Walter Brueggemann writes insightfully on how Exodus 3:10 would have come as a shock to Moses after the self-commitment of God in Exodus 3:8: “In one brief utterance, the grand intention of God has become a specific human responsibility, human
7With respect to Exod 3:7-9, Victor Hamilton comments, “God . . . consistently [talks] to Moses about himself and what he intends to do,” so that Moses “may think he is to be a spectator to the dynamic work of God.” Victor P. Hamilton, Exodus: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 58.
8John D. Currid, A Study Commentary on Exodus (Auburn, MA: Evangelical Press, 2000), 1:87, calls Exod 3:10 the “crux” of the burning bush narrative. Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Exodus, in vol. 1 of The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), 365, calls Exod 3:10 the “bottom line” of the same narrative. Although Peter Enns, Exodus, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 114-19, labors over the parallels and differences between the call of Moses and those of Joshua, Gideon, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Jesus, in the end the comparisons—though interesting—do not produce much theological fruit that is relevant to Exodus 3.
9Enns, Exodus, 99, writes, “Moses is the means by which God will work his own redemptive strength” (emphasis original). A further note concerns the word “commanded,” which has been chosen consciously. Although Duane A. Garrett, A Commentary on Exodus (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2014), 191, argues that the opening phrase of Exod 3:10 (ה ָכ ְל ה ָתּ ַﬠ ְו) should be rendered in the more invitational sense of “come on” (rather than the more forceful “go”), he fails to mention that a second imperative (the hipʿil of א ָצ ָי: “bring out!”) is found also in Exod 3:10, making it likely that God was commanding in this verse instead of inviting (so Currid, A Study Commentary on Exodus, 87-88).
obligation, and human vocation. It is Moses who will do what Yahweh said, and Moses who will run the risks that Yahweh seemed ready to take.”10 In a previous era God had sent Joseph to Egypt for the purpose of saving lives in a time of famine (Gen 45:5-8);
now God was sending Moses to Egypt with the aim of saving lives in a time of oppression.11
Thus by divine fiat, the long dark night of Israel’s slavery to Egypt was drawing to a close. Moses need only respond to the call of God with hearty affirmation, and God’s plan would whirl into motion. However, Exodus 3:11 reports a Moses who hesitates. Upon hearing the call of God in verse 10, Moses replies to God: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” Terence Fretheim has remarked aptly that the “Here am I” that Moses had spoken in Exodus 3:4 now becomes a “Who am I?” in Exodus 3:11.12
Probably the question asked by Moses in Exodus 3:11 should not be taken in an existential sense, as if he were asking about his very identity in the cosmos.13 Rather, in context the “Who Am I?” of Moses seems intended to stress what Walter Kaiser has called “the magnitude of the inequity between the agent and the mission.”14 As Gideon would later plead his inadequacy to execute the imposing call that God had laid on his life (Judg 6:15), and as Jeremiah would likewise wonder why God had called him to such
10Walter Brueggemann, The Book of Exodus, in vol. 1 of The New Interpreters Bible, ed.
Leander E. Keck (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 713.
11Tony Merida, Exalting Jesus in Exodus, Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary (Nashville:
Broadman and Holman, 2014), 25.
12Terence E. Fretheim, Exodus, Interpretation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2012), 61.
13R. Alan Cole, Exodus, The Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, vol. 2 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1973), 68.
14Kaiser, Exodus, 368, lists Exod 6:12; 1 Sam 18:18; Isa 6:5; Jer 1:6; and 2 Cor 2:16 as other examples of questions similar to the question Moses was asking.
a mammoth prophetic task (Jer 1:6), so in Exodus 3:11 Moses puzzled over God’s choosing him to lead the exodus. The question “Who am I?” was uttered because Moses felt wholly inadequate for the task that God was commanding, and both fear and humility played a part in the utterance.15
Fear lurked behind the question of Moses.16 After all, Moses had come to Midian in the first place because Pharaoh had been seeking to kill him (Exod 2:15).17 Moses was a fugitive in Midian who had murdered one of Pharaoh’s countrymen (Exod 2:12). Surely God did not now expect Moses—of all people—to go back to Pharaoh.
Humility further funded the question of Moses.18 Moses was now a humble elderly shepherd, and shepherds were an abomination to Egyptians (Gen 46:34).19 For a lowly shepherd to gain an audience with the top Egyptian official was a most unlikely prospect: “Who am I?” may be Moses’s way of questioning how much serious
consideration God had given to socio-economic hierarchies. Further, there was Exodus 3:8, where God had declared his intention to save his people from Egypt.20 Such a massive work of salvation was surely God’s area of expertise, not Moses’s. Peter Enns suggests, “Perhaps Moses’ question is actually a show of true humility. He is not God,
15Scholars are divided on the question of whether Moses’s “Who am I?” was colored by fear (Currid, A Study Commentary on Exodus, 88); humility (John H. Sailhamer, The Pentateuch as Narrative:
A Biblical-Theological Commentary [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992], 245); a combination of “true humility, an appreciation for the difficulties that will confront him in his role, and simple stubbornness”
(Enns, Exodus, 114); or “polite acceptance of [the] honor rather than . . . an attempt to decline it” (Douglas K. Stuart, Exodus, New American Commentary, vol. 3 [Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2006], 118, emphasis original). My suspicion is that both fear and humility may have lurked behind Moses’s question.
16Currid, A Study Commentary on Exodus, 88; see also Cornelis Houtman, Exodus, Historical Commentary on the Old Testament, vol. 1 (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters-Leuven, 1993), 360.
17As noted by Houtman, Exodus, 360.
18Sailhamer, The Pentateuch as Narrative, 245.
19Ibid.
20What follows in this paragraph is taken from Enns, Exodus, 100.
and hence he cannot bring the Israelites out of Egypt.”21 Enns wonders if the question
“Who am I?” reflects Moses’s refusal “to usurp God’s glory.”22
Whatever the reasons that Moses voiced his question, its basic focus was askew. As Victor Hamilton has well observed, the question “Who am I?” put the focus squarely on Moses and his inadequacies, whereas a better question might have been,
“Whose am I?”23 One may fixate on personal deficiencies (and thereby deny one’s capacity to fulfill God’s call), or one may concentrate on God and his abilities, God and his resources, God and his power. When God calls, he comes with the ability and the will to ensure the success of the calling. Everyone is inadequate on their own to fulfill God’s call, but God is able.