Exodus 3:4-5

"And when Jehovah saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And he said Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground."

"God called to him ..." This makes it necessary to view the Angel of Jehovah (Exodus 3:2) as none other than God Himself.

"Moses, Moses ..." Such double use of a man's name always implied very unusual urgency and importance. It was the case with Samuel (1 Samuel 3:10), and with Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9:4).

"Put off thy shoes ..." The holiness of that location was not due to the location there of some ancient shrine. If so, Moses would already have known all about it; he had lived in the vicinity for forty years. It was God's presence only that endowed the vicinity with holiness and required Moses to take off his shoes.

"And when Jehovah saw ... God called ..." Rawlinson has an important comment on the use of two different names for God in this same sentence:

"This collocation of words is fatal to the entire Elohistic and Jehovistic theories. No one can suppose that two different writers wrote the two clauses, nor that if the same term was originally used in both, that any reviser would have altered one without altering both."[14]

We shall pay less and less attention to the alleged sources of Genesis, and the endless, tedious postulations about "doublets" and "documents," which never existed. All of that was thoroughly discussed in the commentary on Genesis. The greatest O.T. analyst of this century said:

"It is true and is acknowledged that the advocates of this hypothesis (that of various sources in such documents as "E," "J," "P," etc.) have far more difficulties to overcome in Exodus than in Genesis, in which latter book, too, there are insufficient grounds for accepting this view."[15]

In such a passage as this, such things as the infinite holiness of the Eternal, the sin and unworthiness of mortal men to approach him, unless invited or commanded, and the condescension of the Father who stoops to make any kind of revelation to His creatures are easily visible.