Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Moses: Donrbusch (Seneh - Sinai), Ich bin der ich bin (I am who I am -ehyeh asher ehyeh)

Kurzinhalt: The drama of the revelation is organized as a sequence of clearly distinguishable scenes (5):; when the consciousness of the divine will has reached the clarity of revelation, the historical action has begun

Textausschnitt: What remains, that is, the body of text comprising 3:1-14 and 4:10-12, is again a spiritual drama of the first rank, though we do not know whether it was written by the same hand as Exodus 2.

50/12 The drama of the revelation is organized as a sequence of clearly distinguishable scenes:
(1) Exodus 3:1-3: Moses, while tending the flocks of his father-inlaw, comes to the Horeb, the Mountain of God: (405; Fs)
()
(2) Exodus 3:4: The divine presence has brought itself to the attention of Moses by arousing in general the awareness of his senses. It now makes itself a presence meant for him personally: (406; Fs
()
(4) Exodus 3:7-10: To see God is to die. Moses has hidden his face from the terrifying sensual presence, and he listens, with his soul, to whatever the voice has to say. () The command could be rejected only by a man who could never hear it; the man who can hear cannot reject, because he has ontologically entered the will of God, as the will of God has entered him. When the consciousness of the divine will has reached the clarity of revelation, the historical action has begun. (406f; Fs) (notabene)
()
(5) Exodus 3:11-14 and 4:10-12: When the command strikes Moses it cannot be rejected, but it can be received with misgivings about his human ability to accomplish the apparently impossible. Who is he to persuade Pharaoh and bring Israel out of Egypt (3:11)? And how can he explain to the prospective people that the god of their fathers, who has taken his good time to hear their cries from bondage, is the God, who now will indeed help them (Exod. 3:13)? Such misgivings are overcome when the god of the fathers reveals his true nature through the self-interpretation of his name, "Yahweh." The interpretation is part of the action that has begun in Moses with the revelation, () The people thus will break the bondage of Egypt and enter the present under God, once they have responded to the revelation of God's presence with them. The mutual presence of God and Moses in the thornbush dialogue will then have expanded into the mutual presence of God and his people, through the Berith, in history. (407; Fs) (notabene)