Why did the Burning Bush catch fire?

Or, did the Burning Bush really catch fire?

Both questions have been asked about the story in Exodus 3 in which God appears to Moses and commissions him with his life's work.

In the first three verses of the chapter, we read that the "angel of the Lord" appeared to Moses "in flames of fire from within a bush" while he was tending his father-in-law's flocks. "Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, "I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up."

Scholars have offered several explanations. Perhaps it was just a poetic way of talking about a religious experience, a way of cladding the incomprehensible in language that makes some kind of sense. Or perhaps it was a real bush, with bright berries lit up in the sunshine in a way that looked as if the bush was on fire. An ingenious suggestion is that the bush was the dictamnus plant, found in the region, which exudes a flammable oil which can suddenly ignite; it does no harm to the plant, flaring up and dying down instantly.

There's a great difference, however, between explaining something and explaining it away. It might well be that it's the flashing into flame of a strange desert plant that's being recalled here. But what matters is what God does with it and how Moses responds to it.

He turns aside from his humdrum shepherd's life, bounded by the movement of his flocks and his care for their safety. He has the curiosity and the spiritual imagination to see something new. It changes not just his life, but life of a nation and the life of the world.

A hundred shepherds might have seen the bush burn and walked on by. They had seen the same thing before.

Moses went to look at it, and found God.

It's a story that's drawn responses from poets who've seen in it a picture of our own lives. RS Thomas used it in his poem The Bright Field as an emblem of the shining moments that reveal God to us if we turn aside to them and look. Norman Nicholson in The Burning Bush says of Moses:

"He searched his learning and imagination
For any logical, neat explanation,
And turned to go, but turned again and stayed
And faced the fire and knew it for his God."

Nicholson warns against dismissing the story as just a metaphor: God speaks.

Whatever the physical reality behind the story of the burning bush, we know this: God used it to get Moses' attention, and because he looked, everything was different. He won't speak to us in the same way, but he still speaks, wanting our attention too.

Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods