Yahweh’s Plan to Rescue the Israelites

3 And Moses was a shepherd with the flock^[a] of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the west of the desert, and he came to the mountain of God, to Horeb. ² And the angel of Yahweh appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush, and he looked, and there was the bush burning with fire, but the bush was not being consumed. ³ And Moses said, “Let me turn aside and see this great sight. Why does the bush not burn up?” ⁴ And Yahweh saw that he turned aside to see, and God called to him from the midst of the bush, and he said, “Moses, Moses.” And he said, “Here I am.” ⁵ And he said, “You must not come near to here. Take off your sandals from on your feet, because the place on which you are standing, it is holy ground.” ⁶ And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face because he was afraid of looking at God.

⁷ And Yahweh said, “Surely I have seen the misery of my people who are in Egypt, and I have heard their cry of distress because of their oppressors, for I know their sufferings. ⁸ And I have come down to deliver them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up from this land to a good and wide land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites^[b] and the Hittites^[c] and the Amorites^[d] and the Perizzites^[e] and the Hivites^[f] and the Jebusites.^{[g] 9} And now, look, the cry of distress of the Israelites^[h] has come to me, and also I see the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them. ¹⁰ And now come, and I will send you to Pharaoh, and you must bring my people, the Israelites,^[i] out from Egypt.”