What Does Exodus 3:1 Mean?

Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.

The calling of Moses comes in the middle of the most ordinary workday of his life: tending Sheep, leading the flock to grazing, navigating the terrain of the Sinai wilderness. He is forty years removed from the palace and palace education. There is nothing in the description of verse 1 that suggests Moses was expecting anything other than another day's work with the animals. The God who will speak to Moses comes to him in the midst of common labor, not in a moment of prayer or spiritual preparation.

Horeb, identified with Sinai throughout the Pentateuch, is called "the mountain of God" before the encounter happens. The narrator gives it this title from the narrator's own knowledge, not from any information available to Moses on that day. Moses is walking on holy ground before he knows it. The mountain is holy because God will appear there; it is identified as the mountain of God before the text has even told us about the appearance. This proleptic naming reflects the text's perspective: the places where God meets his people are marked by God's intention before the human knows anything is happening.

The geography of the encounter carries forward into Israel's entire covenant history. Sinai is the place where the law will be given, the covenant ratified, the tabernacle designed, the priesthood established. Moses' first visit to the mountain of God is as a shepherd with a flock. His second visit will be as the mediator of the nation's foundational covenant. The same mountain, the same man, entirely different purposes: the continuity of the location ties Moses' personal calling to the national covenant that will be enacted in the same place years later.