Prayer is personal. We all have different ways of listening and speaking to God. But we can learn a lot from others. I talked in one of my books about how Jesus prays. But what about Moses?
Moses does not say many prayers in the Bible. But the ones he does utter embody empathy, simplicity, and passion.
Prayer 1: Moses's first prayer is one of intercession. Standing atop Mount Sinai, he asks God to spare the Israelites, who have defied God by worshipping a Golden Calf.
Moses prays to God, "Turn from your fierce anger; relent (_nācham_) and do not bring disaster on your people... Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: 'I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’" (32:12-14)
Moses is pleading with God to spare the Israelites from destruction. The passion is clear. Moses loves his people.
But the empathy shines through as well. Moses senses God does not truly want to destroy the Israelites because God had made promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God promised them descendants and land.
Now God will fail to keep that promise and destroy them in the wilderness? God had just freed them from Egypt. They are still growing.
And Moses knows what God is feeling. Moses knows that underneath God's fiery anger is a love for the people. God is like a parent boiling with anger, but still driven by compassion and care. Moses names those feelings in God, and God responds by forgiving.
It may sound strange to describe an emotional God, but the God of the Bible is a God of pathos, of feelings. Abraham Joshua Heschel contrasted the philosopher's God with the biblical God.
The philosopher's God is the "unmoved mover," the one who sets the world in motion and then steps away from it. The biblical God, on the other hand, loves creation and, as the Bible puts it, "neither sleeps nor slumbers."
God loves, God gets angry, God cares. That is the God to which Moses prays. That is the God in our soul.
Prayer #2: “So the Lord said to Moses, ‘I will also do this thing that you have spoken; for you have found grace in My sight, and I know you by name.’ And he said, ‘Please, show me Your glory.’” – Exodus 33:17-18.
Moses prays to see God's face. This prayer is the culmination of Moses's yearning to feel a closeness to God after the Egyptian plagues, the splitting of the Red Sea, the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.
Seeing God's face symbolizes an intimacy, a prophetic connection, the closest one human being can get to the divine.
How does God answer Moses's prayer? With a partial yes. Moses can see God's back but not God's face.
Interestingly, in other parts of the Torah, God and Moses do speak face-to-face, so I suspect Moses's request here is a different level of connection.
Perhaps Moses is praying to experience God's face in its fullness, which no human being can do. As the poet put it, the only way a human being can see God's face is through a veil. Not even Moses can get closer.
Prayer #3: "Please God, heal her." (Numbers 12:13) Moses prays for Miriam. Moses asks God to heal her from the leprosy she got after gossiping about Moses and his wife Zipporah.
This is the first healing prayer of the Bible. Part of its power comes from its simplicity. Moses does not try to justify Miriam's behavior. Moses does not discuss her condition. He simply asks God to heal her.
Its honesty makes the prayer resonate. When our loved ones suffer, we just want God to heal them. We don't ask for apologies. We don't make small talk. We don't meander.
We just pray. We yearn. That's love. That's the sacred force behind our deepest prayers.
That force generates an energy of its own. It's like a painful injury to our bodies. The pain grabs our attention. It needs us to notice.
So prayer is a form of noticing a pain, a need for attention in the world. And we respond.
In the end, our life is a prayer as well. It is a sacred response to the reality of God in a broken world.