Exodus 3:4–6

Exodus 3:4 — The Divine Initiative and the Double Call

The verse opens with a precise causal structure: "When Yahweh saw that he came over to see…" This detail is theologically loaded. God does not call at random; He calls Moses in response to Moses's own turning toward the mystery. Gregory of Nyssa (Life of Moses II.19) interprets this movement as the pattern of all authentic spiritual seeking — human curiosity, however tentative, is itself already a gift of grace that God honors with greater revelation. The text uses two divine names in quick succession: Yahweh sees, then God (Elohim) calls. This pairing is not careless editing but a theological signal: the personal, covenantal name (Yahweh) perceives the heart's turning, while the universal name (Elohim) speaks aloud into creation.

The double vocative — "Moses! Moses!" — follows a biblical pattern of urgent, intimate divine address. The same construction appears with Abraham (Genesis 22:11), Jacob (Genesis 46:2), and Samuel (1 Samuel 3:10). In each case, the repetition marks not mere volume but the depth of the relationship: God calls a specific person by name, twice, as one might call a beloved child. This is not impersonal decree but encounter. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 203) reflects on this moment as foundational to Israel's understanding of God as a living Person who "calls" rather than merely "exists."

Exodus 3:5 — Holiness, Proximity, and the Command to Unshoe

God's first word to Moses is a prohibition: "Do not come close." The Hebrew al-tiqrav communicates not merely spatial distance but ritual boundary — the same root used throughout Leviticus for unauthorized approach to the sacred. Far from being cold, this restraint is a mercy: to approach the Holy without preparation is destruction, not communion (cf. Leviticus 10:1–3).

The command to remove sandals (na'al) is deeply significant in its material concreteness. Sandals in the ancient Near East were the barrier between the human foot and the earth — the interface of the profane world. To remove them is to allow the body's unmediated contact with ground that has become other, set apart, holy. The Hebrew qodesh, "holy," fundamentally means "set apart, belonging to God." This ground is not intrinsically magical; it is holy because Yahweh is there. The presence of God is what makes a place sacred — a principle the Church carries forward in her theology of sacred space, altars, and the reserved Eucharist.

The Church Fathers saw in this act a typological prefigurement of baptismal stripping. Origen (Homilies on Exodus III.3) writes that just as Moses removes what covers him before encountering God, so the catechumen removes the old self before entering the waters. Ambrose of Milan (De Mysteriis 7.34) explicitly connects Moses's unshod feet with the Easter Vigil ritual of removing footwear — a practice in some early communities — signifying readiness to stand on the holy ground of the font.

Exodus 3:6 — Divine Self-Disclosure and Covenant Memory

The climactic self-revelation — "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" — is structured as a solemn declaration in three movements. First, "your father" personalizes the covenant to Moses's own family line (his father Amram was a Levite). Then the three patriarchs are named individually, not collectively, insisting that the covenant was made with real persons, not merely with a nation in the abstract. Each name carries its own narrative of promise and testing.

Crucially, Jesus cites this very verse in the dispute with the Sadducees (Matthew 22:32; Mark 12:26–27; Luke 20:37–38), arguing from the present tense "I AM" that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob must be living — God is "not the God of the dead, but of the living." This is a stunning hermeneutic: the burning bush passage becomes a scriptural proof of the resurrection of the dead, demonstrating that the covenant God makes with persons is not terminated by bodily death. Catholic biblical tradition (cf. Dei Verbum §12) holds that this kind of literal-to-spiritual sense, demonstrated by Christ Himself, is the fullest reading of the text.

Moses's response of face-hiding (3:6b in context) mirrors Isaiah's terror before the Seraphim (Isaiah 6:2–5) and John's prostration before the risen Christ (Revelation 1:17) — a consistent biblical grammar: genuine encounter with divine holiness produces simultaneous fear and adoration.

Catholic tradition reads this passage at several interlocking levels that together illuminate what divine revelation means.

On Divine Holiness and Approachability: The CCC (§208) describes God's holiness as "the inaccessible center" of His mystery, revealed to Israel precisely through theophanies like this one. Holiness is not primarily a moral category but an ontological one — it names what God is in Himself, the "wholly Other" (totaliter aliter). Yet Catholic teaching equally insists, in the same paragraph, that this holy God is "close to the man who fears him." The burning bush holds both poles: the prohibition of approach and the personal call by name.

On Divine Naming and the "I AM": The self-identification here — "I am the God of Abraham…" — anticipates the fuller revelation of the divine name in Exodus 3:14 (YHWH / "I AM WHO I AM"). St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I, q.13, a.11) argues that of all divine names, "He Who Is" (Qui est) is the most proper, because it designates God's very act of being (esse). The Fathers of the Church, especially St. Gregory of Nyssa, see in this moment the first philosophical disclosure of God's aseity — His existence is not received from another but is identical with His essence.

On the Covenant God and the Resurrection: The Second Vatican Council's Dei Verbum (§3) affirms that God bound Himself to the patriarchs in a covenant of progressive revelation. Jesus's exegesis of Exodus 3:6 in the synoptic Gospels (Mt 22:32) demonstrates that the Living God's covenant is stronger than death — a truth that undergirds Catholic teaching on the Communion of Saints (CCC §956) and the hope of bodily resurrection. The burning bush, unconsumed by fire, becomes in patristic tradition (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 60; Gregory of Nyssa) a type of Mary's virginal motherhood: the divine fire indwelt her without consuming her, just as the bush burned without being destroyed.

For the contemporary Catholic, this passage challenges two common distortions of the spiritual life: a casual, sentimental religiosity that treats God as an affirming companion requiring nothing of us, and a distant, impersonal theism that renders God effectively absent from daily life.

The command to "remove your sandals" is a call to active preparation for encounter. Catholics who enter a church, approach the Eucharist, begin Lectio Divina, or enter into any serious prayer are invited to ask: what am I still wearing that creates distance between me and holiness? This might mean distractions, unconfessed sin, distracted busyness, or the habitual numbness that makes the sacred feel ordinary. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is, in a deep sense, the Church's institutional practice of "removing sandals" — stripping away what separates us from the holy ground of God's presence.

The double call — "Moses! Moses!" — also speaks directly. Each person is called by name in Baptism (CCC §2156). The question the burning bush poses to every Catholic is not simply "Do you believe God exists?" but "Have you stopped to turn aside and see?" Moses was going about his work when he noticed the bush. Divine encounter often comes at the margin of ordinary life — but only to those who turn aside.