Reading through last week’s Torah portion again and looking ahead to this week’s, I can’t help but envy Moshe just a bit. I mean, sure, his life was full of trials and endless waiting and a lot of other inconveniences after he left his destiny as a king of Egypt behind. Being the person haShem selected to lead the children of Israel out of bondage was probably one of the most difficult jobs ever, short of perhaps what Noah was charged with.

Still, you have to think about how unutterably comforting it must have been to hear the voice of haShem so directly. Moshe never had to pray and pray and pray and then wonder if haShem heard him or not. From the burning bush to the face-to-face encounter on Mount Sinai, Moshe heard the voice of the L-rd, not just some still small voice inside him that he had to wonder about. When haShem spoke to Moshe, there was no doubt who it was doing the talking.

I think that perhaps that’s what kept Moshe going in the rough times. When wandering the desert with a lack of food got to be too much, Moshe didn’t have to soft-sell the experience to the children of Israel as some sort of diet trial to see how fit they could all become. All he had to do was talk it over with haShem and the L-rd would just answer.

These days, people who think they hear the voice of G-d that way are usually not prophets; they’re disturbed. And I’m sure my rabbi would argue that if one dedicated themselves to prayer enough, G-d could still work that way in someone’s life today.

But I’m not so sure it’d be exactly the same. To borrow an old punchline, “Burning bushes don’t grow on trees.”