"And these are the names of the children of Israel" (Exodus 1:1). The Torah lists the twelve tribes again, even though they were already named in Genesis. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev explains that the repetition reveals something hidden in the names themselves.
Every name given by the matriarchs was an expression of their relationship with God. When Leah bore Reuben, she said, "God has seen my distress" (Genesis 29:32). The name Reuben contains the root ra'ah (ראה), to see. Shimon comes from shama (שמע), to hear: Leah thanked God for hearing her prayer. Levi comes from lavah (לוה), to accompany: she expressed her hope that her husband would now be bound to her.
It would be inconceivable, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak insists, that the matriarchs named their children to commemorate personal, physical desires. Every name was a theological statement about God's involvement in their lives. When the children grew up bearing these names, the names themselves became prophecies of their service to God.
The tribes are also called matot (מטות), a word that suggests God "leaning down" from on high to observe what happens below. This refutes the heresy that God is too exalted to concern Himself with earthly affairs. The twelve tribes are called "the twelve extremities of the diagonal" in Kabbalistic geometry because they represent the points where God's condensed light (kav yashar, קו ישר) intersects with the physical world.
The burning bush that Moses encountered was not consumed because the divine fire within it was not the kind that destroys. It was the fire of ongoing creation, the same fire that the matriarchs channeled when they gave their sons names drawn from their encounters with God. The bush burned with the same truth that the tribes' names carried: God is here, God sees, God hears, and God never stops being present in the lives of His people.