Rabbi Nathan noticed something striking in the Torah's language about the Exodus. The text uses two verbs — "who brought up" and "who brought" — when describing God's act of taking Israel out of Egypt. This doubling, Rabbi Nathan taught, hints that the Exodus would be remembered not only in the present but "in time to come," in the messianic age.
From this same passage, Rabbi Nathan derived the source for one of the most fundamental Jewish prayers. Where do we get the formula "Blessed are You, O Lord our God, and the God of our fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob"? From (Exodus 3:15), where God instructs Moses: "Thus shall you say to the children of Israel: The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, sent me to you."
This verse provides the exact liturgical formula that Jews recite in the Amidah prayer to this day. God did not simply reveal His name to Moses — He dictated the precise wording of a blessing that would outlast the Temple, the monarchy, and exile itself.
Rabbi Nathan's teaching connects two seemingly separate ideas: the eternal memory of the Exodus and the daily invocation of the patriarchs in prayer. Both point to the same truth — that the foundational events and figures of Jewish history are not confined to the past. They live in every generation's prayers and will resound even in the age to come.