The burning bush – Sh’mot
Moses and the burning bush, the Holman Bible, 1890
Out in the wilderness the Voice spoke to him from a thorn-bush which burnt but was not consumed.
Three questions confront us: Why was it a thorn-bush, why was it in the wilderness, why was it burnt and not consumed?
The Midrash applies the episode to the Jewish people.
It is small like a thorn-bush, but spiritually great – size matters less than quality.
It is in the wilderness – it functions in the most unlikely places (Midrash Sh’mot Rabbah 1:9 says that no place, neither a bush nor a wilderness, is devoid of the Shechinah).
It burns but is not consumed – “constantly aflame with suffering”, as Rabbenu Bachya puts it, but indestructible.
