Burning bush

The burning bush (or the unburnt bush) refers to an event recorded in the Jewish Torah (as also in the biblical Old Testament and Islamic scripture). It is described in the third chapter of the Book of Exodus as having occurred on Mount Horeb. According to the biblical account, the bush was on fire but was not consumed by the flames, hence the name. In the biblical and Quranic narrative, the burning bush is the location at which Moses was appointed by God to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and into Canaan.

The Hebrew word in the narrative that is translated into English as bush is seneh (Hebrew: סְנֶה, romanized: səne), which refers in particular to brambles; seneh is a dis legomenon, only appearing in two places, both of which describe the burning bush. The use of seneh may be a deliberate pun on Sinai (סיני), a feature common in Hebrew texts.

In the narrative, an angel of the Lord is described as appearing "in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush", and God is subsequently described as calling out from it to Moses, who had been grazing Jethro's flocks there. When Moses starts to approach, God tells Moses to take off his sandals first due to the place being a sacred space.

The voice from the bush, which later self-discloses as Yahweh, reveals himself as "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" and thus Moses hides his face.

Some Old Testament scholars regard the account of the burning bush as being spliced together from the Yahwist and Elohist texts, with the angel of Yahweh and the removal of sandals being part of the Yahwist version, and the Elohist's parallels to these being God and the turning away of Moses's face, respectively.

The text portrays Yahweh as telling Moses that he is sending him to Pharaoh to bring the Israelites out of Egypt, an action that Yahweh decided upon as a result of noticing that the Israelites were being oppressed by the Egyptians. Yahweh tells Moses to tell the elders of the Israelites that Yahweh would lead them into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Hivites, and Jebusites, a region generally referred to as a whole by the term Canaan; this is described as being a land of "milk and honey".

Moses asks "When I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?” (Ex 3:13) The voice of God from the bush reveals that he is Yahweh. The text derives Yahweh (יהוה‎) from the Hebrew word היה ([haˈja]) in the phrase אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה "I Am Who I Am".

According to the narrative, Yahweh instructs Moses to confront the Egyptians and Israelites and briefs the prophet on what is to take place. Yahweh then performs various demonstrative miracles in order to bolster Moses's credibility. Among other things, his staff was transmuted into a snake, Moses's hand was temporarily afflicted with "snowy tzaraath", and water was transmuted into blood. In the text, Yahweh instructs Moses to take a staff in his hands to perform miracles with it, as if it is a staff given to him rather than his own; some textual scholars propose that this latter instruction is the Elohist's version of the more detailed earlier description, where Moses uses his staff, which they attribute to the Yahwist.