Here is a well-known passage looking at נסה, to test/to try/to prove, and please recall, this includes משח the root for messiah, as well. (נ ↔︎ מ)
Exodus 3:1-12 NKJV
1 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 And the Angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. 3 Then Moses said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.”
4 So when the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!”
And he said, “Here I am.”
5 Then He said, “Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.” 6 Moreover He said, “I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.
7 And the LORD said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. 8 So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites. 9 Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. 10 Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”
11 But Moses said to God, “Who (am) I that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”
12 So He said, “I will certainly be with you. And this shall be a sign to you that I have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”
- See all those nations listed in verse 8. They are “tests” for us. They are listed in Post 43. All Those Nations.
Here is the same passage with messiah משיח. You can see both similarities and differences from the two dissections.
- There are numerous comments to be made here, and likely we will need a future blog entirely on this passage. See vocabulary, including Moses:
- Children of Israel… feet… sandals… briar סנה… place which… ground holy…
Undoubtedly there is much more in this passage than this writer could ever grasp. I would like simply to discuss one thread that hopefully will make some sense to you, in relation to our concept of messiah and some other discoveries we may share in the future. I don’t expect all readers to accept this thread, but I do ask simply some consideration, time of reflection. It may help to return to Blog 85. מסע⇔משח, and of course note we are discussing the same cognate permutation group. From that Blog, grasp the idea of the thorn hedge, the “barbed-wire fence,” as it were, the painful or scary thing that limits us for our protection. Think of this as part of our messiah concept.
We are so very used to the wording “the burning bush,” that it has become a phrase of commonplace usage in everyday conversation. I have purposely used the Brown-Driver-Briggs wording of “briar” here, and Strongs derivation says “from an unused root meaning to prick; a bramble.” Here is EDBH for the root:
To follow is an oversimplification of the life of Moses, trying to give a brief outline. Historians disagree (imagine that!), and here is a link with some descriptions:
Here we will say that it is possible to look at Moses’s life as having three chapters of forty years each. In the first forty years, he was a prince as grandson of Pharaoh, and possibly a general. In the second chapter he spent much time in the wilderness tending sheep for his father-in-law, a priest of Midian, and in the final chapter, he again was a leader, perhaps a combination of his two earlier leadership roles, one military and one as shepherd. His prior experiences led him to this point near the end of “chapter two” of his life. Recognize in verse two, two usages of וירא, at the beginning of the verse, as “And appears” the Angel of the LORD, and then, beginning the second sentence in the verse, “So he perceives,” or “And he perceives.”
See, I have placed three words in boxes, and we’ll discuss those a bit. Recognize that they could all be seen as part of a larger cognate permutation family of רע, but we have already warned not to play the game of looking at this as “evil.” Remember that we are not to eat of that tree. I want to show some roots from EDBH to show interrelationships here, all very important to see. You may also quickly scan just what you see in the screenshot above and see there are many words occurring here in the “Guttural-Resh” group.
See, please, that these are all related by variants and cognates.
I am going to say (here is where you may question) that Moses’s prior years of experience has all of a sudden brought him to the “realization/perceiving,” with the obvious guidance of the LORD יהוה, that we need not be consumed by our fears, we need not fear the restrictions that are placed upon us; indeed limits placed in our lives, allow us to see, perceive, and flourish. He begins to “see” that there are the very strict limitations on his people by Pharaoh, and there are hedges placed around us by a loving God that allow us not to “be consumed” by his fire/strength (אש/עז), but rather that brings about our opportunity to filter out all the negative influences in life, those “wild beasts” that attack our sheep, in order that they may flourish. What a great life lesson for us all. A lesson for each of us as we relate to those less powerful than us, be they children, the older, more feeble, widows, orphans, etc. in loving our neighbor (most often רע – see רעה root above), is setting appropriate boundaries so they may thrive. In our strengths we must serve those in places of weakness. (((Your neighbor רע does not equal evil רע, even if he is different from you.))) It is only with neighbors, i.e. in community, that we learn to be the kind of person the LORD wants us to be, challenging as it may be sometimes.
The Teacher, by the way, frequently tells us “Do not fear.” See the two sides of ירא, to fear and to focus attention. We are to focus our attention constantly on the the one providing for us (recall “transition” is the meaning of the אר cognate permutations).
Thus one of God’s many names: Yehovah Yireh:
And recognize בהר, which they translate above as “on the mount,” I would put “in the mount/mountain,” הר being one of those “transition” words. We must have the faith of Abraham אברהם, whose name reminds us, among other things, that he was constantly “in transition” בהר.
Moses/Moshe’s insight allows him to “see” a way out for his people. They do not realize at the time, most likely, that they will be going from one set of restrictions (Pharaoh’s) to another (the LORD’s), and the necessity for “transition” is a wilderness time in order to be able to “see” that they can trust the LORD (יהוה) to carry them through. They get there only with much grumbling and murmuring.
This is the messiah way. It is necessary to accept restrictions we would not necessarily choose for ourselves. And with those restrictions is a “test,” נסה. The briar סנה does burn (i.e. we don’t like it) but it does not consume.
“The Briar Burns but Does Not Consume.” Boundaries allow us to thrive. Free roaming in a dangerous world means we have chosen to live without the hedge of protection of a loving Parent, who is our Shepherd. We need community, neighbors, but with Godly boundaries, as we are shown in God’s Word.
Luke 10:27 So he answered and said, ”‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself.’” (Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18) a messiah concept.
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