Burning Bush

In the scriptural narrative (Exodus 3) Moses, while pasturing his father‑in‑law's flocks on Mount Horeb/Sinai, observes a seneh (Hebrew for bramble) that is aflame but not consumed. The phenomenon is described as an "angel of the Lord . . . in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush" and then as God speaking from the bush, who identifies Himself as the God of the patriarchs and commissions Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt. Scholarly commentary noted in the sources observes a deliberate lexical link between seneh and the place‑name Sinai (Hebrew pun), and critical traditions register slight compositional differences (e.g., angelic mediation vs. direct divine speech) in the transmitted text.

The biblical description emphasizes a shrub or bramble that is on fire yet not consumed by the flames. Later devotional tradition at Saint Catherine's Monastery identifies a living bramble venerated as the alleged plant (traditionally called Rubus sanctus in those accounts), with the purported original spot covered by a chapel and marked by a silver star where roots emerged; a transplanted shrub is displayed in the monastery courtyard in connection with pilgrimage commemoration.

The bush itself is presented in the sources as the locus of theophany rather than an agent that independently performs miracles: it houses or makes manifest divine speech (a voice calling from it, identifying Yahweh and commissioning Moses). Its anomalous physical feature in the narrative is being aflame without being consumed. Subsequent miraculous signs that validate Moses' commission (staff to snake, hand afflicted with and then healed, water to blood) are attributed to God acting through Moses rather than to the plant as an independent actor.