“Suppose I do go to Israel in Egypt,” Moses says, “and report that I am sent by the God of their fathers—they may well say ‘So what?’ What then am I to say to them?” (3:13) Moses’ use of the tide “the God of your fathers,” an echo of the title given to him by the voice from the thornbush in Exodus 3:6, makes clear that the question he anticipates from Israel, no doubt the very question rising in his own mind, has little to do with identity and much to do with authority. Though the literal translation