Ezekiel 3:4-7

4-7. The prophet having learned the character of the message he is expected to deliver, Jehovah urges him to immediate action. Although no word is recorded one can be sure that there has come into the prophet’s mind, and perhaps been uttered by his lips, the self-depreciative argument against his acceptance of the commission which Moses had uttered many centuries before: “O my Lord, I am not eloquent,… but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue” (Exodus 4:10). Jehovah replies: Thou art not sent, as Moses was, to a foreign people, “of dark speech and heavy tongue,” but to your own countrymen. Thou art not sent to the Babylonian capital, amidst the strange multitude of many peoples “whose words thou canst not understand,” but to those who speak your own language. There is no need of any gift of tongues. But do not be deceived, it is not eloquence that you need any more than Moses did. Even the Assyrians would listen to your broken and stammering message with more respect than will these men, so “stiff of forehead and hard-hearted,” even though your words be like music (Ezekiel 33:32). It is not the manner, but the message to which they object. “They will not hearken unto thee; for they will not hearken unto me.”