Hebrew Word Study – The Heart of the Fire – Belavat Esh  בלבת אש  Beth Lamed Beth Taw  Aleph Shin

Exodus 3:2: “And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.”

The story of the burning bush has always baffled me.  Why did God choose to appear in a bush?  Not any bush but a seneh which is a bush that has thorns like a blueberry bush which was common in the deserts of the Mesopotamian area. As to not repeat my recent study on the Consuming Fire I would like to dwell on the question of the purpose of a thorn bush. 

To repeat my previous study, I need to point out some interesting things in Exodus 3:2 that are often overlooked.  For one thing, it does not say the Lord appeared but the angel of the Lord.  The word angel is melake which has multiple meanings from a king to a leader to a message from a king or leader. A message directly from a leader, no matter how it is conveyed either in writing or through a human messenger to smoke signals, that message goes back to its source and if it is a source of authority, it is just as effective as if it were conveyed by the leader himself. 

Most commentators or church tradition teaches that this was a theophany or an appearance of God Himself or for Christians an appearance of Jesus. As awesome as that thought is I feel in my spirit that it was more than just an appearance of God but a message of God as well.  That is, what caught Moses’s attention was the flame of fire burning in the midst of the bush and that the fire did not consume the bush, it was a message of God that he saw. 

The word appears in Hebrew from the root word ra’ah which is seeing either spiritually or physically. As a spiritual seeing, we would call that a vision. With the bush not being consumed by this fire, Moses immediately suspected he was seeing a vision. In his mind, what he was witnessing was not a natural event as the bush was not consumed by the fire so he concluded he was witnessing something supernatural. 

Another hint that this was supernatural is that the word rendered as flame for flame of fire is the word balavat from the root word lev which is the word for the heart. The writer should have chosen the word karesh which would be a word for a consuming fire. If the writer wanted to convey the idea of the middle midst of the fire he should have chosen the word tavek which means in the midst of or the middle of something.  Instead, the word balavat is used. Translators assume from the context that the root word of balavat is lahav which is the word for a flame but that root form is debatable. However, it fits the context so flame it is. But I can also see the root word lev as fitting the context as well, especially if we render the word maleke as a message rather than an angel. Thus, Moses knew and recognized that the fire was a vision with a message from the very heart of God.  

So, why send a vision in the midst of a thorn bush? The midrash suggests various reasons but the one that makes the most sense to me and is generally accepted among rabbis is found in the word ‘ekal which means to eat or consume. That is an interesting word. One would expect the writer to use the word kaesh which means a consuming fire but instead, we have the word ekal which means to consume but consume in the sense of eating like food which when consumed separates the nutrients from that which is of no value to the body and eliminates it as waste. The nutrients then feed the body with energy to continue one’s life.  Here the bush was not eaten up by the fire,  In fact, the bush was not taking what was of value to keep the fire burning and then leaving just ashes. The point is that God was sending a twofold message to Moses. The first and equally important message is that He had not forgotten his people who were enslaved in Egypt.  The second was that He was going to send Moses as his human agent to free His people from slavery. The thing is that the Hebrew people had now been enslaved by the Egyptians for almost 200 years. So, why is God finally getting around to doing something about it? I suppose we can come up with a lot of reasons but Scripture is silent on why God waits so long to finally send His deliverance. However, the fact that His lev, his heart, and the heart of his message appear to Moses in a thorn bush suggests something for all of us to take note of. 

God was in the midst of the thorn bush, He could at any time devour those thorns or consume them, but He doesn’t. Instead, he just dwells in the midst of the thorns. Jewish scholars teach that God was showing Moses that even in the midst of their enslavement He was right there with His people in the midst of all those thorns. He was not burning away the thorns but He was still there with them. For almost 200 years God was right there by their side during all their suffering and suffering with them.  

Why does God allow suffering, we don’t know. Job sought a reason for his suffering and the answer he got from God was a list of things he could never understand, how the sun rises and sets, how a cow gives birth to a calf etc.  Then he told Job, “I could explain it to you but you would not understand. You will just have to trust me. There are countless lives that will bring into this world over the next 3,000 years that will receive strength from your suffering. Is that a good enough reason?  The only way you can achieve some semblance of understanding, admittedly not nearly a complete understanding, is to take your eyes off of yourself and consider how I can use your trial to help bring others through their trials and into my kingdom. One of the best forms of comfort is to say; “I know how you feel, I’ve been there.”  The only one who can bring such comfort is another woman who has already gone through it. If a husband attempts to offer comfort by saying: “I know how you feel.”  Well, let’s just say that he is going to be in need of comfort himself after saying such a thing. 

We do not understand why we go through such trials but one thing we do know and that when we are tangled up in a thorn bush, God is right there in the middle of that bush with us.     

Hi there! Thank you for reading this Daily Word Study. Can I ask a favor? Share this Daily Word Study with your friends on Facebook and Twitter by clicking one of the icons below.

Thanks & Blessings, it means a lot to me!