The liberation from Mitzrayim was a multilayered event. It transformed Jewish history by freeing us from more than two centuries of slavery and setting us on the path toward our ancestral land. Along that journey, we would stand beneath a trembling mountain and receive the Torah, committing ourselves to a life shaped by covenant and command.
In time, we would assume a broader role – bearing witness to monotheism in a world fractured by idolatry and superstition. Through our history and our teachings, we would help redirect the human imagination away from paganism and toward a vision of life grounded in moral responsibility, restraint, and accountability.
A Mystery
Hashem first reveals Himself to Moshe Rabbeinu through a bush that burns yet is not consumed. The visual paradox is deliberate. It signals that Hashem cannot be reduced to scientific explanation or empirical inquiry. He exists beyond the categories through which human beings normally understand reality.
The image of a bush aflame yet not consumed also conveys separation. Hashem is not part of the physical system He created. The laws that govern nature – energy, decay, and limitation – do not bind Him. He transcends the world even as He governs it.
Through this encounter, Moshe is taught the first lesson of monotheism: Hashem is not part of the created order and cannot be grasped by the human imagination. Years later, atop Har Sinai, Moshe would ask to perceive Hashem more fully and understand His essence, and he would be told, “You cannot see My face.” Human beings may approach Hashem and speak about Him, but full comprehension remains beyond reach.
The encounter at the burning bush lays the foundation of monotheism: Hashem may be known, but He can never be fully understood.
Moshe’s Dilemma
Moshe then faces a daunting question: how should he present Hashem to a nation of slaves? They had not witnessed the burning bush. They were crushed by generations of bondage. Much of the spiritual inheritance built by their ancestors had been eroded under the weight of oppression in Mitzrayim.
Slaves live in survival mode – one step, one day at a time. They have little emotional or imaginative space for abstraction, let alone for a Hashem who defies logic and resists definition. What language, what symbols, could convey Hashem without reducing Him to something physical – or pulling them back toward the pagan culture that surrounded them? Moshe’s hesitation is understandable: how does one speak of an unknowable Hashem to a people ground down by centuries of suffering?
Eternity and Consolation
Hashem answers Moshe with a name: Ekyeh asher Ekyeh or “I am, that I am.” In this brief phrase, Hashem introduces Himself as eternal, existing before the universe and independent of it.
Unlike human beings, who are shaped and altered by circumstance, Hashem remains constant. Human lives move from strength to weakness, from promise to decline; Hashem does not. He exists across all moments without change or development. This name allows Moshe to describe Hashem without images – as a presence beyond time and change.
This first glimpse of Hashem as eternal and unchanging offered comfort. The people remembered Yosef, how he had saved Mitzrayim from famine and how his family had once been welcomed with honor. Alongside those memories were quieter stories, passed from generation to generation, of a family that had once known dignity and promise.
Learning that Hashem is eternal renewed hope. If Hashem had acted once, He could act again. The promises whispered from generation to generation, passed along like bedtime stories, might yet be fulfilled. As distant and improbable as redemption seemed amid the misery of slavery, it suddenly felt imaginable.
They still struggled to picture a Hashem without physical form. But they could grasp a Hashem who transcends time and change – and whose promises endure even in the darkest hours.
The process of learning about Hashem, and finding ways to relate to Him without physical form, had begun. It would unfold slowly, shaping faith step by step.
Hashem and Human Relationships
Moshe now stands in Mitzrayim, confronting Pharaoh for the first time. His message is directed at a tyrant who sees himself as divine. Moshe commands a ruler whom no one dares challenge to release the Jewish slaves, warning that refusal will bring devastating consequences.
At this early stage, Moshe names only one plague: the death of the firstborn. Speaking in Hashem’s name, he declares that the Jewish people are Hashem’s children. If Pharaoh refuses to free them, Hashem will strike Pharaoh’s firstborn. Though delayed until after nine additional plagues, this is the first threat Moshe delivers; it is meant to pierce Pharaoh’s arrogance.
But Pharaoh was not the only audience. The Jewish people also heard Hashem describe them as His children and pledge redemption, even at tremendous cost to the tyrant. From this declaration they learned another way to relate to a Hashem they could not define. If Hashem chose to describe them as His children, He was inviting them to relate to Him as a parent.
Hashem invites us to draw upon human relationships as lenses through which to relate to Him. He is not our father in a biological sense, yet we are allowed – and expected – to imagine Him as a parent so that the emotions bound up in that bond (trust, dependence, longing) can animate faith. Emunah is meant to be lived emotionally, not only understood intellectually.
As that relationship matured, additional metaphors emerged. Hashem is described as a spouse, demanding loyalty and offering covenant. Dovid HaMelech compares Hashem to a mother, evoking the warmth and security of an infant held close. He also speaks of Hashem as a friend, drawing upon the trust that defines friendship.
Gradually, the contours of monotheism come into focus. Hashem cannot be understood in human terms. Yet to build a living relationship with Him, we are given conceptual entry points, such as the idea of an unchanging Hashem, steady amid upheaval. We are also given metaphors—not to define Hashem, but to make a relationship possible. Through them, we are invited to bring the language and emotion of human relationships into our encounter with Him.
History, Nature, and Choice
Despite Moshe’s ominous warning about the fate of the firstborn, Pharaoh remains unmoved, and the oppression intensifies. When Moshe returns a second time, he introduces a vital idea to a broken people: Hashem does not stand apart from history. He enters it and reshapes it. Moshe delivers divine promises of redemption – of release from Mitzrayim and a journey toward Eretz Yisrael. The events that follow will give those promises substance.
Hashem does not act only through political upheaval or human rebellion. Nature itself is overturned. The orderly rhythms of the world are suspended as the plagues unfold. The Nile, the land, the skies – even time itself – bend in service of redemption.
More striking still, Hashem’s reach extends inward. Pharaoh’s stubbornness and inner resolve become part of the unfolding drama. Human will and inner struggle are no longer beyond Hashem’s reach. Redemption moves through history, through nature, and through the inner life of human beings – revealing a Hashem who governs not only nations and events, but the deepest layers of human choice.
The liberation from Mitzrayim was not only political or historical. It also marked the beginning of a gradual education in emunah. Hashem cannot be understood in human terms; like the burning bush, He remains a mystery. Yet we are asked to build a deep and enduring relationship with Him, even without full comprehension.
This has been our enduring legacy: commitment to a Hashem we can never fully understand.