Bush

Bush in Scripture refers most significantly to the burning bush in which the LORD appeared to Moses at Horeb—a bush that burned with fire but was not consumed (Ex. 3:2–4). The Hebrew seneh appears only in the contexts related to this theophany; Deuteronomy 33:16 alludes to it in the blessing of Joseph as “the one who dwells in the bush.” The miraculous character of the vision—fire present yet without destruction—signaled divine holiness that was approachable only on God's own terms, as the command to remove sandals makes clear (Ex. 3:5).

The bush theophany is the context of God's self-revelation as “I AM WHO I AM” (Ex. 3:14), the disclosure of the divine name Yahweh, and the commission of Moses to deliver Israel from Egypt. Jesus references “the passage about the bush” in his argument for the resurrection (Mark 12:26; Luke 20:37), citing God's self-identification as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as evidence that the patriarchs are alive, since God is not the God of the dead but of the living. The burning bush thus becomes a locus for both OT revelation and NT theological argument.