The last two verses of chapter 2 make explicit what has been implicit throughout the passage, and what will be the focus of chapter 3-the presence of God with his people. 'Years later the king of Egypt died, but the Israelites were still groaning under their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry went up to God who heard their groaning and remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He saw the slavery of the Israelites and was concerned for them.' This God not only knows all, but cares for those whom he has created. He is the same God whose reality became known to Abraham and his immediate descendants. He will soon reveal himself to the descendants of Abraham who are in bondage in Egypt, proving to them that his power is greater than that of their persecutor.

Exodus 3, which describes the revelation of God to Moses and the call of Moses to serve him, resembles other passages in the

Bible which describe how other men are called to enter the service of God, or become prophets, and at this point we should be clear about the Biblical meaning of the word 'prophet'. In all religions we find those who have unusual powers of divination, who claim to have knowledge of hidden matters, or power to predict future matters. Diviners and seers are found in African traditional religions. Although there is a predictive element in Biblical prophecy, it is not the power of prediction which sets the Biblical prophet apart from his fellow-men. What sets him apart from others is his experience of the direct and compelling revelation of God which affects him so profoundly that henceforth he speaks and acts on behalf of his God. He experiences a call to speak and act for God which may require a great change in his way of life and total disregard of his personal safety and comfort.

The Biblical prophet does not need to use divination techniques to try and discover what it is that God wishes him to do and say because the message which he is to give' seizes' him with a sense of compulsion. The message of the prophet is likely to have a strong predictive element because what he says concerns the spiritual state of the people he is speaking to, and that spiritual state will have consequences. The prophet's predictions have a moral element which relates to the way in which his hearers are behaving or ought to behave. For example, when Jeremiah predicted the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, he was not merely predicting an event which took place but was passing judgment on the behavior of the people of Jerusalem who had made their city such a place of injustice and evil that it was only fit for destruction.

Because the prophet in the Biblical record is the spokesman or messenger of God, he is also a mediator between God and the people to whom he is to deliver his message. He has to communicate to them the compelling nature of the revelation that he has received but which they have not. He also speaks on behalf of the people to God. He may speak, preach, exhort and perform actions intended to pierce their spiritual and moral darkness. He is in a position of great spiritual and moral responsibility and he must never lose sight of the fact that he was called by God to this position and of his dependence upon God for its continued upholding.

In the vivid and dramatic account of the call of Moses to be God's prophet, we notice the awareness of the man of the presence of God, the human response of fear and unworthiness to what has been revealed, God's direct and personal command to the man to speak and act on God's behalf, the man's awareness of his inability to do what has been commanded but God's assurance that the divine power will enable the man to do what seems impossible. The man will not serve God in his own human strength but God will work through the man, empowering him with divine strength.

This last point is very important because it brings us back to the essential note of salvation history that God himself acts and intervenes in human affairs so that his ultimate purposes for mankind may be fulfilled. But God acts through those who respond to him, and the deliverance of the Israelites from the oppression of Egypt will be affected through his servant Moses. It is not irrelevant to ask if Moses could have refused the call of God to undertake the very difficult task which would not end until his death. The story of man's rebellion against God in the Garden of Eden indicates that the creature able to have fellowship with God can also turn against God. What is so important about Moses is that his final acceptance of his call to be the servant of God was a step of faith which was to leave a permanent influence on the religious development of the people of God. The themes of election and faith, seen in the story of Abraham, are continued in the story of the call of Moses.