Moses' first response is a question that is also an objection: who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? It is worth noting that this is not false modesty — Moses genuinely is nobody now. He is an eighty-year-old shepherd living in a foreign country under a death warrant from a previous Pharaoh. His question is an accurate assessment of his own resume. But the question Who am I? is precisely the wrong question for the person about to be told I AM WHO I AM. The answer God gives is not a recitation of Moses' qualifications; it is a promise of God's presence. Judges 6:15 records Gideon asking the same question; 1 Samuel 18:18 has David asking it; Jeremiah 1:6 has Jeremiah objecting that he does not know how to speak. The pattern suggests that Who am I? is what the right person says when God first asks. The commission does not rest on Moses' adequacy. It never did.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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