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“When forty years were fulfilled, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in a flame of fire in a bush.
Verse 30. In a flame of fire, in a bush. [3] Lit. in the fire of a flame of the bush. The sense must be, that the bush seemed on fire, and in a flame, and yet was not consumed. Witham.
When Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight. As he came close to see, the voice of the Lord came to him,
‘I am the God of your fathers: the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ Moses trembled and dared not look.
The Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you stand is holy ground.
Verse 33. Loose the shoes. This was a method of testifying respect among the eastern nations. The Mahometans do not wear their shoes in their mosques. The Jewish priests served in the temple with their shoes off. The angel who appeared to Josue ordered him also to take off his shoes. Joshua 5:16. If the apparition of an angel, or of God himself, could make the place and ground holy so as to deserve external signs of respect, and veneration from Moses; how much more the corporal birth, abode, and miracles of the Son of God in Jewry, and the blessed Sacrament, must make that country, and all Catholic chapels and altars, holy? Is it not then the height of blindness to tax with superstition, the reverence Christians pay to things or places, rendered holy by the presence, or wonderful operations of God.
I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their groaning. I have come down to deliver them. Now come, I will send you into Egypt.’
“This Moses whom they refused, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge?’—God has sent him as both a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.
Verse 35. Moses, whom they refused. Lit. denied. So have you rejected, and denied Jesus, of whom Moses prophesied, when he said that God would raise up to them a prophet like to himself, and commanded them to hear him. Witham.—Redeemer. In the Greek Λυτρωτην; Protestant version, Deliverer; though the learned Polus, in his Synopsis Criticorum, on this place, says, “that no greater injury is done to God, by calling Moses a Redeemer, in this place, than by calling him a Mediator, in Galatians 3:19. He is called a Redeemer, says this learned Protestant commentator, in as much as he led forth, and preserved the people of God safe by the blood of a lamb, and thus exhibited a figure of the true redemption, through the blood of Christ.” We all own that Jesus Christ, as having paid the ransom of our delivery with his own blood, is, strictly speaking, our only true Redeemer, and Advocate with his Father, who asks and obtains all things immediately by his own merit; but this does not exclude the prayers of the saints, both alive and dead. Did not the apostles pray for the people, and desire the people to pray for them? “Our Lord Jesus Christ still intercedes for us, and all the martyrs that are with him, pray for us: nor will their intercession cease, till we cease our groanings,” says S. Augustin, in Ps. lxxxv. in fine.
This man led them out, having worked wonders and signs in Egypt, in the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years.
This is that Moses who said to the children of Israel, ‘The Lord our God will raise up a prophet for you from among your brothers, like me.’
TR adds “You shall listen to him.”
This is he who was in the assembly in the wilderness with the angel that spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our fathers, who received living revelations to give to us,
Verse 38. This is he who was in the Church [4] in the wilderness, after God had by him delivered their Fathers out of their slavery in Egypt.—An angel spoke to him on Mount Sinai. By this S. Stephen owns that the law was given by an angel to Moses: and also shews how falsely he was accused to have spoken against Moses, or against the law.