Exodus 3:15, commentary and pictures

The word came at Horeb while Moses was keeping Jethro's flocks in retirement, after he had learned self-control and humility and while he was being trained through shepherd work to tenderly care for erring and straying Israel as a spiritual shepherd. The time had fully come for him to lay down the shepherd's staff and take up the rod of God, made powerful for signs and wonders to deliver Israel from oppression and to preserve them from their enemies. It gave him the exact words to answer Israel when they asked for God's name, identifying Him as the LORD God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, who had sent Moses to them, and declaring this to be His enduring name and His memorial unto all generations.

The Sender is Jehovah, the great I AM, the LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the same God who had revealed Himself to the fathers as the Angel of the covenant. His presence in that encounter is holy and calls for humility and reverence. Moses did not expect deliverance to come in this way, for he thought it would come by warfare with himself as general at the head of Israel, and he shrank from standing before Pharaoh in God's name to demand Israel's release.

God's plan was not war led by Moses but to magnify Himself before His people and before the Egyptians, to teach both that there is a living God with power to save and to destroy. The signs and wonders performed through Moses before Pharaoh showed that the mission and the miracles came from God's power rather than any power or ability of Moses, to convince Pharaoh of Moses' divine commission and of his duty to release Israel to go and serve God. The word belongs to the revelation of God that Moses came to know while working upward toward the light as he was being prepared to lead Israel.