From Hearing to Attentive Listening

Parashat Shemot, Exodus 1:1–6:1

Rabbi Isaac S. Roussel, Chavurat Zera Avraham, Ann Arbor, MI

Our parasha this week contains the famous scene of Moses at the burning bush:

Now Moses, tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, drove the flock into the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. A messenger of Adonai appeared to him in a blazing fire out of a bush. He gazed, and there was a bush all aflame, yet the bush was not consumed. Moses said, “I must turn aside to look at this marvelous sight; why doesn’t the bush burn up?” When Adonai saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him out of the bush: “Moses! Moses!” He answered, “Here I am.” (Exodus 3:1–4 The Contemporary Torah, JPS, 2006)

Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish (also known as Reish Lakish), in Shemot Rabbah 2:6, reads this moment as a test of character. God does not immediately speak to Moses; instead, God waits to see whether Moses will notice and turn aside. Moses’ attentiveness—his willingness to pause and look closely—is what marks him as fit to lead Israel.

It is only after Moses turns aside that God speaks. The text thus draws a subtle but important distinction between hearing and attentive listening. Moses first hears God through the miracle of the bush that burns without being consumed. Only then does he truly listen—by pausing, turning, and giving his full attention to what is unfolding before him.

Another verse in Tanakh sharpens this distinction.

The second half of 1 Samuel 15:22 is commonly translated as, “To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams” (NIV). Yet the Hebrew suggests something more layered:

שְׁמוֹעַ מִזֶּבַח טוֹב, לְהַקְשִׁיב מֵחֵלֶב אֵילִים

She-mo-a mi-ze-vach tov, le-hak-shiv meh-cheh-lev ai-lim

She-mo-a, the first key word, based on the root Shama, is often rendered as “to obey,” but at its core it simply means “to hear.” Le-hak-shiv, the second term, based on the root Kashav, goes further. It implies focused, intentional listening—an inward act of attention and presence, not mere compliance.

In other words, Scripture distinguishes between sound that reaches the ear and a word that is truly received.

Spiritual Direction

I have served as a spiritual director for many decades helping my clients discern God’s voice in the midst of their daily lives.

This deeper understanding of these words leads naturally into the work of spiritual direction, where the central question is not “What should I do?” but rather, “What is God saying to me in this experience?” In spiritual direction—and in my own life—I encourage people to attend to God’s voice as it emerges within ordinary, lived experience. I believe that God speaks through many channels: nature, art, sermons, Scripture, music, film, conversation, and even silence. While people often expect God’s voice to appear only in explicitly religious settings, it may also arise in a sunset that arrests us, the smile of a child, a line from a movie, a conversation with a friend, or a story in the news.

For example, a close friend of mine, a self‑avowed atheist, once described an early‑morning walk so suffused with beauty that it briefly unsettled his certainty and opened him—if only for a moment—to the possibility of God.

Another example: a spiritual‑direction client of mine once described pausing before a tank of tropical fish in her dentist’s office. As she gazed at it, she was suddenly struck by the thought that God has entire oceans of such beauty to delight in. This realization opened her to a deeper awareness of God.

Sinai, Silence, and Attentiveness

The Rabbis note that the first letter of the Ten Commandments is an aleph (א), a silent letter. They teach that God’s voice continues to radiate from Sinai, calling to us in every generation. Yet that voice is not loud or coercive; it is quiet, subtle, easily missed. To hear it, one must become attentive.

Likewise, in the scene of Elijah at Mount Horeb God did not appear in the loud wind, the shaking of the earth, or the raging fire, but in what the text calls kol de-ma-mah da-kah, a thin, quiet murmuring voice.

Yeshua as Listener

This pattern appears again in the life of Yeshua. The Gospels repeatedly show him withdrawing into silence—into the wilderness, onto hillsides, or into prayer—before speaking or acting. These moments are not escapes from mission but expressions of kashav: deep, attentive listening. Before choosing the Twelve, before confronting opposition, before going to Jerusalem, Yeshua listens first.

Again and again he urges his listeners, “If you have ears, then hear!” (Matt 11:15 CJB). This is not a call for obedience in the narrow sense, but an invitation to the same interior attentiveness Moses shows at the bush. Yeshua models a life rooted not in merely hearing God’s voice, but in listening for it—turning aside, making space, and receiving the word before responding in action.

Practicing Kashav

1 Samuel 15:22 hints at the work before us: first to discern God’s voice (She-mo-a), and then to remain with it in attentive, receptive listening (le-hak-shiv). God’s voice wells up in both our joys and our struggles, in pain as well as in consolation. Our task is to pause, to notice, and to listen in silence. This kind of listening is not necessarily momentary; it may unfold over hours, days, or even weeks. We can return to it again and again, sitting with it and allowing deeper insight to emerge. In this way, listening itself becomes prayer: “God, I sense your voice in this—am I hearing rightly? What do you have for me here?”

This approach has the added benefit of shifting us away from despair in hard times—from questions like, “Why is this happening to me?” or “I don’t deserve this”—toward a different posture altogether: “What might I receive from this painful experience that could draw me closer to love of God, self, and others?”

From Performance to Presence

In the end, the movement from shama to kashav invites a shift from spiritual performance to spiritual presence. We are called not only to hear God’s word or to act upon it, but to cultivate the attentiveness that makes such hearing possible. When we learn to listen with patience, humility, and openness, we discover that God’s voice is not distant or rare, but quietly present within the texture of everyday life. Attentive listening does not replace obedience; it grounds it. It is here, in this gentle and sustained posture of kashav, that our lives are slowly shaped into lives of deeper faith, compassion, and love.

If we adopt this life stance, we will indeed have something better than a choice sacrifice or the fat of rams! And we will be like Moshe who turned to listen at a quietly burning bush, and Yeshua Rabbeinu who lived a perfect life of Kashav!