Parshat Shemot4 min read

Moses Refused at the Burning Bush for Seven Days

Moses hid his face at the burning bush and refused for seven days. Midrash Tanchuma says the hesitation was the right beginning for Israel.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Bush Burns and Moses Produces Excuses
  2. Why the Hiding Was the Beginning
  3. The Job Verse the Tanchuma Opens With
  4. Why Moses Could Not Have Gone Sooner

The Bush Burns and Moses Produces Excuses

The bush is on fire and is not burning up, and Moses has turned aside to look at it, and God calls to him from the middle of the flame, and Moses hides his face. That is Exodus 3:6. After that, Moses says he cannot speak well (Exodus 4:10). After that, he asks God to send someone else (Exodus 4:13). The Torah compresses this into a few exchanges. The Midrash Tanchuma, compiled in the Land of Israel between the 8th and 9th centuries CE, does not.

Seven days, the Tanchuma says. The bush burned for seven days, and for seven days Moses stood there producing reasons why he was the wrong man. God waited. Moses refused. Seven days of one of the strangest arguments in scripture, with the outcome never in doubt and Moses still resisting.

Why the Hiding Was the Beginning

Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai, cited in the Tanchuma, offers a reading that inverts the obvious. Moses' hiding of his face was not a failure of nerve or a display of inadequacy. It was the correct response. It was yirat Shamayim, awe of heaven, the reflex that recognizes the limit of what a person can bear to see before that person has been prepared to see it.

You do not look directly at what you cannot yet receive. Moses hid because the hiding was reverence, not cowardice. And because it was reverence, Rabbi Simeon argues, it was rewarded. The reward was not the mission itself. The reward was what came later: the face-to-face encounter described in Numbers 12:8, the likeness of the Lord he beholds, the intimacy with the divine that no other prophet in Israel would ever achieve. He hid his face at the bush. He beheld the face of God at Sinai. The Tanchuma reads these as cause and effect.

The Job Verse the Tanchuma Opens With

The Tanchuma opens its reading of the burning bush with a verse from Job: Though your beginning was small, your end shall greatly increase (Job 8:7). The Tanchuma uses this verse as a lens. The man who hid his face is the small beginning. The man who beheld the likeness of the Lord is the greatly increased end. The distance between those two moments is the distance between a shepherd covering his eyes and a prophet speaking with God as a man speaks with his friend.

That distance was traversed over seven days of refusal. Not despite the refusal. Through it. The seven days of the burning bush were a threshold, the same holy pause that seven always marks in Jewish time. Moses stood at the entrance of his own mission for exactly as long as it takes to complete a week, a creation, a cycle of preparation, before the answer he would eventually give became possible.

Why Moses Could Not Have Gone Sooner

Moses' objections are not treated by the Tanchuma as pretexts. He was genuinely uncertain. He genuinely did not believe himself adequate to the task. He was right to be uncertain. A man who walked into Egypt already certain he was the deliverer would have been a different kind of man, and possibly a more dangerous one.

The hesitation was the formation. Seven days of hearing the same voice from the same burning bush, arguing each objection and receiving each refusal, built in Moses an understanding of the mission's source that a man who said yes on the first day would not have had. He did not accept because the arguments ran out. He accepted because seven days at the edge of the sacred had remade his sense of what he was standing next to.

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From the tradition

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The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Midrash Tanchuma, Chayei Sara 6Midrash Tanchuma

"And Abraham again." This is what Scripture says: "Though your beginning was small, your end will greatly increase" (Job 8:7); it speaks of Moses. Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachman said: for seven days the Holy One, blessed be He, was persuading Moses at the bush, and he kept fleeing, as it is said: "Send, I pray, by the hand of him whom You will send" (Exodus 4:13). And it is written: "I am not a man of words" (Exodus 4:10). And it says: "And Moses hid his face" (Exodus 3:6). "And your end will greatly increase," as it is written: "And he beholds the form of the LORD" (Numbers 12:8). Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai said: he would see the likeness at once.

Another interpretation: "Though your beginning was small": this is Abraham, who was a hundred years old and had no son, and afterward the Holy One, blessed be He, appeased him.

Rabbi Yehudah bar Simon and Rabbi Chanan in the name of Rabbi Yochanan say: He raised him above the dome of the firmament, as it is said: "And He brought him outside and said: Look now toward the heavens" (Genesis 15:5). One says "look" only from above to below. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: One who is beneath the constellation fears it; you, who are above it, lift your head over it.

Even so, at a hundred years he begot a son. This is the meaning of "Though your beginning was small": this is Abraham. "And your end will greatly increase": that he married a wife and begot still more children at the end, as it is said: "And Abraham again."

"And Abraham again." This is what Scripture says: "In the morning sow your seed, and in the evening do not let your hand rest" (Ecclesiastes 11:6).

Rabbi Eliezer says: Scripture speaks of crops. Solomon said: if you sowed at the early rain, do not stand idle at the late rain, as it is said: "and in the evening do not let your hand rest." Why? "For you do not know..." Rabbi Yehoshua says: if seed of a commandment comes before you in the morning, sow it; and if a matter of a commandment comes before you in the evening, do not let your hand rest. Why? "For you do not know which of them will succeed for you, whether that of the morning or that of the evening, or whether both alike will be good."

Rabbi Akiva says: "In the morning sow your seed": if you raised up disciples in your youth, do not cease from raising them up in your old age. There was an incident with Rabbi Akiva, who had three hundred disciples in his youth, and they all died; and had he not raised up seven disciples in his old age, there would have been no disciple to recite teachings in his name. Another interpretation: "In the morning sow your seed." Rabbi Yose said: if you took a wife in your youth and she bore children and died, take another wife in your old age, "for you do not know..." And from whom do you learn this? From Abraham, who in his youth begot only two, and in his old age begot twelve.

Rabbi Levi said: this is what the Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: "And in him shall all the nations of the earth be blessed," for the sea went forth in the generation of the Dispersion and scattered thirty families of the sons of Ham, as it is said: "And the LORD scattered them" (Genesis 11:8). The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: From you I will raise them up, as it is said: "And in him shall all the nations of the earth be blessed" (Genesis 18:18). He raised up families, and these are: the twelve princes that he raised up from Ishmael, and sixteen from here, and the "two nations in your womb." This is the meaning of "And in him shall all the nations of the earth be blessed."

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Sifrei Bamidbar 44:1Sifrei Bamidbar

It wasn't just a one-day event. According to Sifrei Bamidbar, the book of Numbers, the seven days leading up to the dedication were a whirlwind of activity.

Every single morning for seven days, Moses would assemble the mishkan, anoint it with oil, and then… dismantle it again. Can you picture the scene? All that work, day after day! Then, on the eighth day, he finally set it up for good. Well, mostly. Rabbi Yossi b. R. Yehudah adds a twist: even on that eighth day, Moses still anointed it and dismantled it one last time.

So, when did all this take place? (Exodus 40:17) tells us the mishkan was established on the first day of the first month – Nissan – in the second year after the Exodus. Sifrei Bamidbar then lays out a detailed timeline. The anointing of Aaron and his sons, along with all the vessels, began on the twenty-third of Adar (the month before Nissan). Then, on Rosh Chodesh Nissan, the new month, the mishkan was finally established. The very next day, the second of Nissan, the red heifer – the parah adumah – was burned. And on the third, its waters were sprinkled, as described in (Numbers 8:7). It was a flurry of sacred action!

The significance of that first day of Nissan? Huge! Sifrei Bamidbar emphasizes that it was "the first of all the days of the year." It was a day of firsts. That’s when the Shechinah – the Divine Presence – came to rest in the House. Remember the verse in (Exodus 40:35)? "And Moses could not enter the tent of meeting…" That was that day. And it was also the day the tribal leaders began bringing their offerings, as (Numbers 7:12) says.

And then… fire. Fire came down from heaven and consumed the offerings on the altar, just as we read in (Leviticus 9:24). A truly awe-inspiring moment! But alongside that incredible miracle came tragedy.

On that very same day, Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aaron, offered "a strange fire" before the Lord – an esh zarah, as (Leviticus 10:1) calls it – and they died. A devastating blow. The verse reads, "their death was 'before the Lord' and their falling was outside." Where exactly did this happen? Rabbi Yossi believed an angel held them upright in death until they were outside the inner sanctum, where they then fell in the azarah – the court. That detail, he says, is supported by (Leviticus 10:4) which refers to "before the sanctuary," not "before the Lord." Rabbi Yishmael, however, reads the verse differently. He believes they died and fell within the sanctuary, and were then dragged out with iron hooks. A grim image.

And what about the anointing itself? The text raises an interesting question: Were the vessels anointed individually? No, Sifrei Bamidbar clarifies. They weren’t consecrated until all of them had been anointed. And the anointing was thorough, both inside and out. But even here, opinions differ. Rabbi Yoshiyah thought that vessels for wet measures were anointed inside and out, while those for dry measures were only anointed inside. Rabbi Yonathan, however, argued that wet-measure vessels were anointed only inside, while dry-measure vessels weren't anointed at all! He bases this on (Leviticus 23:17), which describes loaves baked as first fruits "to the Lord" after they are baked, implying they aren't anointed beforehand.

Finally, Rebbi asks a crucial question: Why repeat "and he anointed them and consecrated them"? Isn’t it already stated? The answer? This repetition teaches us that the anointing of these initial vessels consecrated all future vessels. They wouldn't need individual anointing.

So, what do we take away from this detailed account of the mishkan's dedication? It wasn't just a simple ceremony. It was a complex, many-sided event, filled with joy, sorrow, and profound spiritual significance. It reminds us that even in moments of great celebration, tragedy can strike, and that meticulous detail and differing interpretations are all part of the tradition of our tradition. And perhaps most importantly, it shows us the enduring power of dedication and the transformative potential of sacred space.

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