Moses asked God a lot of questions. God had a few for Moses, too.
They began almost as soon as God called Moses from the burning bush. Moses wanted to know why he was the man for the job. He worried that the Israelites wouldn’t believe him, so God asked, “What is that in your hand?”
It was his staff. God told Moses to throw it on the ground, where it became a snake, and then to pick it back up. It became a staff again. Something Moses was already carrying would become one of the signs God used to demonstrate that He had sent him.
Moses still wasn’t convinced. He told God that he had never been eloquent and was slow of speech and tongue. God answered with three questions. “Who has made the human mouth? Or who makes anyone unable to speak or deaf, or able to see or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?”
God wasn’t asking because He needed the answers. Moses was focused on what he believed he couldn’t do. God redirected his attention to the One who had made him in the first place.
Moses finally asked God to send somebody else. God became angry, but He also gave Moses help. “Is there not your brother Aaron the Levite?” Aaron could speak well, and God told Moses that Aaron would speak for him.
Once Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, God’s questions continued.
At the Red Sea, with Pharaoh’s army closing in behind them, Moses cried out to God. God asked him, “Why are you crying out to Me?” He told Moses to have the Israelites move forward, raise his staff, and reach out his hand over the sea.
Later, after God began providing manna, some of the Israelites ignored His instructions about gathering it. God asked Moses, “How long do you refuse to keep My commandments and My instructions?”
Then came the complaints about food. The people wanted meat, Moses was overwhelmed by the burden of leading them, and God promised that Israel would have meat to eat. Moses looked at the enormous number of people around him and questioned how that could possibly happen. God asked him, “Is the LORD’S power too little?”
The question wasn’t really about the amount of meat. Moses was looking at the size of the problem. God pointed him back to the size of His power.
By the time Israel reached the edge of the Promised Land, the questions had shifted again. Ten of the twelve spies returned with a frightening report about the people and fortified cities in Canaan. Israel responded by wishing they had died in Egypt or the wilderness and talking about choosing another leader and returning to Egypt.
God asked Moses, “How long will this people be disrespectful to Me? And how long will they not believe in Me, despite all the signs that I have performed in their midst?”
There is a progression in God’s questions to Moses. At the beginning, Moses doubted whether he was capable of doing what God had called him to do. Along the way, Moses and the Israelites repeatedly faced circumstances that made them question what was possible. By the end, God was asking why Israel still did not believe Him after everything they had already seen Him do.
Moses began by questioning whether he was enough.
God kept bringing the question back to whether He was.
Exodus 4:1–17; 14:10–18; 16:22–30; Numbers 11:4–23; 14:1–11
God has more questions. See Let Me Ask You Something: When God Asks a Direct Question.