The Burning Bush
“And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.”
Exodus 3:2 · KJV
“And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.”
Exodus 3:3 · KJV
“And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.”
Exodus 3:4 · KJV
Moses turned aside to see a bush that burned and was not consumed, and God spoke from it and called the ground holy. It is where the God who had been silent for four hundred years said His name.
Jesus proves the resurrection from this passage, and from an odd detail in it. God says “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exod 3:6), present tense, centuries after all three had died. Jesus builds the whole doctrine of the resurrection on the tense: “have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him... I am the God of Abraham... He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living” (Mark 12:26-27). The bush that burns and is not consumed is a picture of the men it names: touched by God, and not destroyed by death.