Moses was a shepherd, looking after the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the Midianite priest. He led the flock far into the wilderness until he came to God's mountain, Mount Horeb. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from inside a bush. Moses looked carefully and saw that though the bush was on fire, it wasn't being burned up.
“Let me go over and take a look,” Moses said to himself. “It's very odd to see a bush that's not burning up.”
When the Lord saw that Moses was coming to take a look, God called to him from inside the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
“I'm here,” Moses replied.
“Don't come any closer!” God told him. “Take off your sandals because you're standing on holy ground.” Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Moses covered his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
“I'm completely aware of the misery of my people in Egypt,” the Lord told him. “I have heard them crying out because of their taskmasters. I know how much they're suffering. That's why I have come down to rescue them from Egyptian oppression and to take them up from that country to a productive, wide-open land—a land flowing with milk and honey—where currently the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites are living. Listen! The cries of the Israelites have reached me, and I have seen how badly the Egyptians are mistreating them. Now you must leave, because I'm sending you to Pharaoh to lead my people Israel out of Egypt.”
But Moses said to God, “Why me? I'm a nobody! I couldn't go to Pharaoh and lead the Israelites out of Egypt!”
“I'll be with you,” the Lord replied, “and this will be the sign that it is really me who is sending you: when you have led the people out of Egypt, you will worship God at this very mountain.”
Then Moses said to God, “Look! If I were to go 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?’ —then what should I tell them?”
God replied to Moses, “‘I Am’ is who I am. Tell the Israelites this: ‘I Am’ has sent me to you.”
Then God said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites, ‘The Lord—the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you. This is my name forever, the name you are to call me for all generations to come.’
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