Moses and the Burning Bush

Doctrinal reflection

The icon was painted at the bush.

This 12th-century panel from Saint Catherine's Monastery shows Moses turning aside from his sheep to look at a flowering bush wrapped in flame. He is shoeless. His staff lies on the ground. From the bush, a hand emerges in the gesture of speech. The icon was painted at Saint Catherine's, which sits at the foot of Mount Sinai itself, perhaps a few hundred yards from the bush the monks have venerated continuously for sixteen centuries. The iconographer was painting the event in the place where the event happened.

Exodus 3 records what is being depicted. "And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush... God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses... put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." Moses asks for the name of the God who is sending him. The reply is the most theologically loaded sentence in the Hebrew scriptures: I AM THAT I AM.

The New Testament does two specific things with this passage. First, Acts 7:30 (Stephen's sermon) confirms the historical event and identifies the speaker as "the angel of the Lord" — the same Christophanic pattern we saw at Mamre. Second, Christ himself reaches back to this passage. In John 8:58 he declares, "Before Abraham was, I am." The Greek (egō eimi) is exactly the LXX rendering of Exodus 3:14. Christ is taking the divine Name spoken from the bush and applying it to himself in present tense. The Pharisees who heard him picked up stones — they understood what he was claiming.

The Byzantine artists at Sinai understood what the New Testament authors had done with this passage. They painted Moses meeting the pre-incarnate Word in flame, knowing that the Word would later identify himself with that flame's voice. The bush is therefore not just an OT scene; it is the first place the divine Name was spoken in the form Christ would later claim.

What about Mary? The medieval tradition (East and West) developed a Marian reading of the burning bush — bush burning but not consumed = Mary bearing God without being destroyed. We do not affirm this typology. The New Testament does not. The bush was about the Name and the calling, not about the womb. Stephen reads it as Christophany; Christ reads it as the source of his "I am." That is enough.

When you preach the burning bush, preach Exodus 3 and John 8 together. The voice from the flame is the voice from the cross. The Name given to Moses is the Name claimed by Christ. The ground is holy because the Lord is on it.

Take off your shoes.