Exodus 4:10-12

MOSES HESITATES AND IS REBUKED, Exodus 4:10-17.

10-12. I am not eloquent Literally, not a man of words .

Slow of speech Rather, heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue . Moses declares that he is no orator, has not the gift of persuasion, and therefore he has not confidence that he can convince Israel of his mission . So Paul tells us that his bodily presence was weak, and his speech contemptible; but where are weighty and immortal words to be found if they fell not from Paul and Moses? Moses, like Paul, felt weak when he measured himself with his work. He did not yet realize how God’s strength is made perfect in such weakness. It would also seem that Moses was not fluent, like Aaron his brother; and, perhaps, from his long separation from his brethren, he had to some degree lost command of his native language. This would naturally make him diffident in undertaking a popular appeal. He may have been conscious, too, that in his forty years’ exile from Egyptian civilization his tongue and manners had caught a desert rudeness, which poorly fitted him to appear in the courts of the Pharaohs. Here, for the first time, prophetic inspiration is promised to man. Henceforth in the whole subsequent history of the Church we see this endowment of the Holy Ghost. So the lips of the shrinking Isaiah were touched with a “live coal” from the heavenly altar. Isaiah 6:0. So Jehovah laid his hand on the mouth of the wavering Jeremiah. Jeremiah 1:0. So it was given to the uncultured Apostle to speak boldly before rulers and peoples: and so God’s Spirit has ever been a fire in the words of his genuine messengers. Moses was learned enough to know the vanity of learning, and had now become wise enough to see the folly of wisdom, so that he was just the instrument for God’s hand.