The Voice That Called Moshe

And He called to Moshe and Hashem spoke to him from the tent of community saying.

The Ohr Hachaim asks, why does the Torah not tell who it was who called out to Moshe? Only later, when He spoke to Moshe, is He identified as Hashem.

The Ohr Hachaim offers multiple explanations:

1. Chazal tell us that Hashem’s voice was the mighty voice referred to in Tehillim. Still, the only one who heard this voice was Moshe Rabbeinu. If the Torah would have told us that Hashem called out to Moshe, we would have thought that Hashem called out in His customary loud, powerful voice, but Moshe only heard it as an ordinary voice. By the time it reached Moshe Rabbeinu, it had softened and weakened. Nobody else heard this, because it was soft enough just for Moshe to hear. The Torah wishes to tell us that Moshe heard the voice exactly as it emerged from Hashem, with everything enumerated in Tehillim 29. However, a person standing right next to him did not hear a thing. If the Torah had said, ‘And Hashem called to Moshe,’ we may have thought that Hashem indeed called out in a powerful voice, but that voice only arrived at Moshe’s ears in a moderated form. The Torah writes that He called out to Moshe to show that it was this voice that called Moshe.
2. The possuk prefers to use Hashem’s name when talking about the Torah Hashem told Moshe, rather than when describing the preparation for the speech. This is why Hashem’s name is pushed off to ‘And Hashem spoke to Moshe.’
3. The Medrash says that Aharon and the elders of Klal Yisroel were waiting expectantly to see which of them was the truly beloved one in the eyes of Hashem. When Hashem called out to Moshe, all knew that Moshe was the chosen one. The Posuk is not telling us about the calling out that Hashem did to Moshe. The possuk is telling us that, out of the three, Hashem chose Moshe to call out to.

The Ohr Hachaim adds that this is the reason the Torah needed to tell us that He called to Moshe. We would expect the Torah to tell us ויָלֵא אָרְקִּיַו – and he called him. The end of Parshas Pkudei fills in the rest. Now that the purpose of the possuk is to tell us which of the three options was chosen, the Torah certainly had to tell us who was called.