Exodus 3:6 Meaning Moreover He Said

A voice speaks from the burning bush and names itself simply as I am, the same presence that lived in every father before. Being itself announces that it was always here, in every generation, beneath every name. And Moses covers his face, afraid to look.

The fear is honest. When a person first meets the vast stillness at the ground of everything, the small separate self trembles, because it senses it cannot survive that gaze intact. Hiding the face is the ego shrinking from what is larger than itself. Yet the voice is not cruel. It has come to send him, to work through him. What terrified Moses was the very life he was made of, finally turning to meet him.

The 3 named fathers are 3 stages of the awakening life within one person, Abraham the beginning of faith, Isaac the offered nature, Jacob the wrestler who becomes Israel, and the one power stands behind all 3 as the single source of the whole progression. Moses is the drawer-out, the faculty that leads the inner people up from bondage, and hiding his face is the recoil of the lower mind before a light it cannot yet endure. To look upon that power directly would overwhelm the unprepared self, so the face is covered until the sight can be borne.

The same source has moved through every phase of a person's growth, and when it appears at full brightness the mind turns away, not from absence but from an intensity it has not yet grown strong enough to hold.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: 3 stages of the awakening life in one person, faith beginning, the nature offered, and the striver who is transformed Moses: the drawing-out faculty that leads the inner people up out of bondage Hidden face: the recoil of the lower mind before a light too intense for the unprepared self to endure

A shepherd covers his face, and the covering is the honest thing. The heart that rushes to stare, sure it can hold the sight, is puffed with a confidence it has not earned. Real awe knows its own smallness and looks down.

Yet the One met here is not a stranger. He names Himself through the fathers, the same presence shining in bush and in bloodline. A single fire can burn in a thorn tree without eating it, and the Hidden shows Himself in whatever will hold Him, gently, so a person can bear to be near.