Encountering the Divine, “even in a thorn bush.”
Parashat Shemot, 2026
Parashat Shemot opens with a quiet but profound shift: “a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph” (Exodus 1:8). That single line signals more than political change; it marks the beginning of social amnesia - a society choosing to forget the debt it owes to the vulnerable, and to rewrite the story of the ‘other’ as threat. What follows is the tightening machinery of oppression: forced labour, dehumanising rhetoric, and finally state-sanctioned infanticide (Exodus 1:11-22).
Against that darkness, the Torah places acts of moral courage that are, at first glance, almost small. The midwives refuse to comply. A mother hides a child. A sister watches, waits, and speaks. Pharaoh’s own daughter refuses to be recruited into cruelty. Redemption begins here - not with spectacle, but with human beings insisting that power is not the final authority (Exodus 1:15-21; 2:1-10).
Moses then emerges as a figure shaped by complex identity; born Hebrew, raised Egyptian, and drawn towards his people’s suffering, he intervenes violently (Exodus 2:11-12), flees, and becomes a shepherd in Midian (Exodus 3:1). In the background, the Torah insists that God is not indifferent: “God heard their groaning… and God knew” (Exodus 2:24-25). The portion ends not with liberation but with setback: Moses and Aaron confront Pharaoh, and the labour becomes harsher (Exodus 5:6-19). In other words, the first steps towards freedom can sometimes feel like failure - and the Torah makes space for that truth.
The burning bush is possibly one of the most analysed parts of the Torah, and one of the most psychologically recognisable. Moses is not in a sanctuary, he is at work, doing the ordinary. Then: “the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed” (Exodus 3:2). Moses says, “Let me turn aside and see” (Exodus 3:3). Only when he turns aside does the call come: “Moses, Moses!” (Exodus 3:4).
The choreography here matters. There is a phenomenon in the world; Moses notices; he creates space for attention; and then encounter becomes possible. Revelation is not only about what God does, it is also about what we are willing to notice.
Midrash deliberately refuses to romanticise the setting. It is not a mighty cedar but a thorny bush. Shemot Rabbah teaches that the Divine Presence is not absent from any place - “not even a thorn bush” (Shemot Rabbah 2:5). This is spiritually disruptive. We often imagine that God is found where life is polished: where prayer is fluent, where the space is beautiful, where the heart is settled. The midrash insists otherwise: holiness is discoverable even in what is prickly, overlooked, or painful.
It also echoes the context of the parashah itself. Israel is in the thorns of Egypt; God meets Moses in thorns. The message is not only, “I see suffering,” but also, “I am not absent from the places you would least expect holiness to appear.”
At the heart of the burning bush is a theological riddle. When Moses asks what he should say to the people, God answers: “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh” (Exodus 3:14). The Hebrew resists a single English rendering. It is often translated “I Am That I Am,” but can also be read as “I Will Be What I Will Be” .. amongst other tense-bending possibilities!
That translation question is not a footnote; it changes the theology we hear. If we emphasise “I am,” we may hear the language of presence and reality - God as the One who truly is. If we emphasise “I will be,” we may hear the language of becoming - God as the One who will show up in unfolding history, in future acts of redemption.
Modern scholarship also notes that the Torah contains different formulations about when the divine name becomes known (compare Exodus 3 with Exodus 6:2-3), and this has long fuelled discussion about sources, layers, and composition. Whether or not one adopts source-critical conclusions, the interpretive takeaway is valuable: revelation can unfold, deepen, and sometimes arrive through tension. Torah invites wrestling, not simple watching.
Jewish philosophical thinking sharpens the question the burning bush asks of us: Martin Buber famously writes, “All real living is meeting.” For Buber, the sacred is not primarily an object to be analysed; it is a presence encountered in relationship - when we stop turning the world into an ‘It’ and learn again how to address a ‘Thou’. The bush is not merely a symbol; it is a moment of meeting, born from attention.
Abraham Joshua Heschel offers a corrective to a casual spirituality: “God is of no importance unless He is of supreme importance.” Heschel is not urging us to escape the world; he is warning against reducing the Divine to a decorative idea - comforting, optional, and undemanding. The God of Shemot hears groaning and sends a human being back into danger with a mission.
Put together, Buber and Heschel raise a practical question: are we living in a way that makes meeting possible, and are we willing for that meeting to matter?
If the Divine Presence can be encountered even ‘in a thorn bush’ (Shemot Rabbah 2:5), then where, in your week, might the bush already be burning?
Perhaps it is in the difficult conversation you keep postponing. Perhaps it is in the quiet grief of someone you have not asked about. Perhaps it is in the repeated moral injuries of the news cycle, where suffering becomes ‘normal’. Perhaps it is in the interruption you resent - the one that calls you to patience, to dignity, to compassion.
Moses does not manufacture revelation. He does one thing: he turns aside to see (Exodus 3:3). In that turning aside, the ordinary becomes charged with commandment. Parashat Shemot begins redemption, but it also begins a vocation - the moment when a person learns that faith is not only what we believe about God, but what we are willing to do because of God.
May we have the courage of the midwives to refuse what dehumanises. May we have the attentiveness of Moses to turn aside. And may we learn, in the thorny places of ordinary life, to hear the call that addresses us by name.
Shabbat shalom.