Exodus 3:1-22

Exodus 3:1 to Exodus 4:17. Moses commissioned by Jehovah at Horeb to deliver His people. The dialogue between Jehovah and Moses, as in other cases (cf. Delitzsch on Genesis 12:1), must be pictured, not as one audible externally, but as giving expression, in wordswhich are naturally those of the narrators, to Moses" mental communings with God, through which he was gradually taught by Him that, in spite of the difficulties which he saw before him, he was nevertheless to be His appointed agent for accomplishing Israel's deliverance (cf. the dialogue in Jeremiah 14-15). See further, on the sense in which God is to be understood as -speaking" to a man, the Introduction, p. xlvii f.