Exodus 3:1-15

Living Bible

3 One day as Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro,^[a] the priest of Midian, out at the edge of the desert near Horeb, the mountain of God, ² suddenly the Angel of Jehovah appeared to him as a flame of fire in a bush. When Moses saw that the bush was on fire and that it didn’t burn up, ^3-4 he went over to investigate. Then God called out to him, “Moses! Moses!”

“Who is it?” Moses asked.

⁵ “Don’t come any closer,” God told him. “Take off your shoes, for you are standing on holy ground. ⁶ I am the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” (Moses covered his face with his hands, for he was afraid to look at God.)

⁷ Then the Lord told him, “I have seen the deep sorrows of my people in Egypt and have heard their pleas for freedom from their harsh taskmasters. ⁸ I have come to deliver them from the Egyptians and to take them out of Egypt into a good land, a large land, a land ‘flowing with milk and honey’—the land where the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites live. ⁹ Yes, the wail of the people of Israel has risen to me in heaven, and I have seen the heavy tasks the Egyptians have oppressed them with. ¹⁰ Now I am going to send you to Pharaoh, to demand that he let you lead my people out of Egypt.”

¹¹ “But I’m not the person for a job like that!” Moses exclaimed.

¹² Then God told him, “I will certainly be with you, and this is the proof that I am the one who is sending you: When you have led the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God here upon this mountain!”

¹³ But Moses asked, “If I go to the people of Israel and tell them that their fathers’ God has sent me, they will ask, ‘Which God are you talking about?’ What shall I tell them?”

¹⁴ “‘The Sovereign God,’”^[b] was the reply. “Just say, ‘I Am has sent me!’ ¹⁵ Yes, tell them, ‘Jehovah,^[c] the God of your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has sent me to you.’ (This is my eternal name, to be used throughout all generations.)