God identifies Himself: I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Moses hides his face, because he was afraid to look at God. The identification is everything. Moses is not encountering an unknown deity of the Sinai region; he is standing before the specific, named, covenant-keeping God of his ancestors. The God who made promises to Abraham four hundred years earlier is the same God speaking now from this bush. Jesus quotes this very verse in Matthew 22:32 in His argument for the resurrection: God said I am the God of Abraham — present tense — meaning Abraham must still be alive somewhere, or the God of the living would not claim a dead man. The verse that begins with Moses hiding his face ends, in the New Testament's reading, with the affirmation that God does not abandon those who have died. The God of the bush is the God of resurrection.

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