Moses called himself a man of “uncircumcised lips” when God told him to speak to Pharaoh, Egypt’s king, about releasing the enslaved Israelites. I understand him to mean that his speech was inadequate for that assignment. He had raised a similar objection before, and the way God answered him helps us understand why he used this unusual expression.
Moses’ Objection and God’s Answer
Before God sent Moses to Pharaoh, Moses had been living away from Egypt in the land of Midian. He had fled there after killing an Egyptian who was beating one of his fellow Israelites, and he had married and begun raising a family. In Exodus 3, he was tending his father-in-law’s flock when he saw a bush burning without being consumed. God called to him from the bush and told him that He had seen Israel’s suffering. He would deliver the people from slavery, and He was sending Moses to bring them out.
Moses did not immediately agree to go. He asked who he was to approach Pharaoh and lead the people out of Egypt. God answered by promising to be with him. Moses then asked what he should say if the Israelites wanted to know the name of the God who had sent him. The Lord revealed His name and identified Himself as the God of their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When Moses questioned whether the people would believe him, God also gave him signs to perform. His rod became a serpent and then became a rod again, and his hand became leprous and was restored.
Even after those answers, Moses raised another objection, this time about his ability to speak.
Then Moses said to the LORD, “O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither before nor since You have spoken to Your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” So the LORD said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the LORD? Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say.”
The Hebrew wording behind slow of speech and slow of tongue describes a heavy mouth and tongue. Moses may have been referring to a physical difficulty with speech, or he may have meant that he lacked the fluency he thought the assignment required. The passage tells us that he did not consider himself eloquent, but it does not identify a particular disorder. I would not state that he definitely stuttered when Scripture has not told us that.
There is another description of Moses that we should read alongside this one. In Acts 7:20–22, Stephen, a follower of Jesus explaining Israel’s history, recounts how Pharaoh’s daughter raised Moses as her son. He says that Moses was educated in Egyptian wisdom and was mighty in words and deeds. That description concerns his upbringing and earlier life, while Exodus records the objection he made when God sent him back after years away.
I do not think we have to accuse Moses of lying in order to receive both accounts. A man’s education and the effectiveness of his words do not tell us everything about how easily he speaks or how willing he is to face a hostile king. Neither passage gives us the information needed to diagnose him. What we can say is that Moses considered his speaking ability a reason to object, even after the Lord had promised His help.
God’s answer directed Moses to the Creator of the very mouth he was worried about. The Lord knew what Moses could and could not do, and He promised to be with his mouth and teach him what to say. Moses then asked God to send someone else. That request came after the promise of help, and Exodus 4:14 says that the Lord’s anger was kindled against him. His difficulty did not give him authority to refuse the command.
The Lord nevertheless provided practical assistance. Aaron, Moses’ brother, could speak well and was already coming to meet him. God told Moses to give Aaron the words he received, and Aaron would serve as his spokesman. The Lord also promised to be with both men’s mouths. Aaron’s involvement meant that Moses would have help carrying out the work; it did not mean that Moses was released from going.
By Exodus 5, the brothers had arrived in Egypt and appeared before Pharaoh. They told him that the Lord required him to let Israel go, but Pharaoh refused to recognize the Lord’s authority. He also made the Israelites’ work harder. They had been making bricks with straw supplied to them. Now they would have to gather their own straw while still producing the same number of bricks.
The extra work brought suffering to people who were already enslaved. Israelite officers appointed over the laborers were beaten when the required number of bricks was not produced. They appealed to Pharaoh, but he would not reduce the requirement. When they met Moses and Aaron afterward, they blamed the brothers for making the people hateful to Pharaoh and putting their lives in danger. Moses then returned to God and asked why He had sent him when the people’s situation had become worse.
God answered with the promises He had made to Israel’s ancestors. His covenant, the binding commitment He had established with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, had not failed because Pharaoh refused to listen. He would rescue their descendants from slavery, take them as His people, and bring them into the land He had promised. Moses carried that message to the Israelites, and their response made him question going to Pharaoh again.
So Moses spoke thus to the children of Israel; but they did not heed Moses, because of anguish of spirit and cruel bondage. And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Go in, tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to let the children of Israel go out of his land.” And Moses spoke before the LORD, saying, “The children of Israel have not heeded me. How then shall Pharaoh heed me, for I am of uncircumcised lips?” Then the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, and gave them a command for the children of Israel and for Pharaoh king of Egypt, to bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt.
Notice the reason Exodus gives for the people not heeding him. It was their anguish of spirit and cruel bondage. They were suffering under a workload that Pharaoh had increased after Moses’ arrival. The text does not say that they rejected the message because Moses pronounced something badly or failed to present it impressively.
Moses then reasoned from their response to the response he expected from Pharaoh. His own people had not listened to a promise of rescue, so how could he expect the king to listen to a demand that he release them? Moses added that he had uncircumcised lips, bringing the concern back to his ability to speak. I think we can hear his earlier objection returning after the discouragement he had just faced.
The Lord answered by commanding both brothers to bring the people out of Egypt. A genealogy, a record of the family to which Moses and Aaron belonged, follows in Exodus 6:14–27. The account then returns to God’s instruction to speak to Pharaoh, and Moses’ objection about his lips appears again at the end of the chapter. Chapter 7 explains how the two brothers would carry the message.
So the LORD said to Moses: “See, I have made you as God to Pharaoh, and Aaron your brother shall be your prophet. You shall speak all that I command you. And Aaron your brother shall tell Pharaoh to send the children of Israel out of his land.
God was not making Moses divine. Moses would stand before Pharaoh as God’s representative, speaking with authority that came from the One who sent him. Aaron would act as Moses’ prophet, receiving the message entrusted to Moses and announcing it to the king. That is why the command says Moses must speak everything God gives him and Aaron must tell Pharaoh to let Israel go. Neither brother was being invited to invent a message of his own.
The Lord also told them that Pharaoh would resist and that Egypt would come to know Him through the judgments He brought. Exodus records Pharaoh hardening his own heart, and it also records the Lord hardening him in judgment. The king remained responsible for his refusal to obey. In Exodus 9:34, for example, Pharaoh saw relief from a destructive hailstorm God had sent, and he sinned again by hardening his heart. A more impressive speech would not solve that rebellion.
Moses and Aaron therefore had to keep conveying God’s demand even when the king would not welcome it. Aaron could not soften the words until Pharaoh found them agreeable, and Moses could not assume that resistance proved the Lord had sent the wrong man. Their task was to deliver what God had said while He demonstrated His power to bring Israel out.
As God brought plagues upon Egypt, Moses took an increasingly visible part in speaking and acting. One of those judgments brought frogs into the Egyptians’ homes, and Pharaoh asked Moses and Aaron for relief. Moses spoke with the king and then prayed to the Lord, and the frogs died (Exodus 8:1–15). Later, Moses stretched out his rod at God’s command when hail came upon Egypt, and he prayed again when Pharaoh asked for that judgment to stop (Exodus 9:22–35). Aaron also spoke and acted as God directed. We can see the brothers doing the work without adding an account of a medical cure or a changed personality that Exodus never supplies.
What “Uncircumcised Lips” Means
Now that we have heard the conversation, the expression is easier to understand. The Hebrew phrase is aral sefatayim, meaning uncircumcised of lips. Circumcision was the physical sign of God’s covenant with Abraham’s household, involving the removal of the male foreskin. Moses was applying that language figuratively to his lips, which stand here for his speech. He was describing speech he considered unfit for the work God had given him.
The Brown–Driver–Briggs Hebrew lexicon identifies this use of aral as a figure for inability to speak. The NET translation notes on Exodus 6:12 likewise connect it with Moses’ earlier claim that he did not speak well enough for the assignment. Those observations fit the question he actually asked: if Israel had not heeded him, how would Pharaoh heed him? His concern was whether he could deliver the message in a way that would be heard.
I came to that understanding by comparing his objection with God’s answer. The Lord explained how Moses and Aaron were to communicate His words. He did not perform a ritual on Moses’ mouth or announce that his lips had been cleansed of sin. The answer addressed the work of speaking, which is the very difficulty Moses had raised.
That does not make every use of circumcision language in Scripture a reference to public speaking. The same image can describe a different failure when it is applied to a heart or an ear. Here, however, the earlier concern about a heavy mouth, the question about being heard, and the provision of Aaron all point in the same direction. I understand Moses to be expressing his inadequacy as a spokesman, rather than confessing a hidden moral impurity in his lips.
The Circumcision Crisis in Exodus 4
There was also a neglected circumcision in Moses’ household, recorded in Exodus 4:24–26, during his journey back to Egypt. Because Moses later uses the same word about his lips, I want to examine whether that earlier event explains his objection. Its seriousness becomes understandable when we go back to the command God gave Abraham, the ancestor of the Israelites. God established His covenant with Abraham and his descendants, and He gave circumcision as its physical sign.
This is My covenant which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: Every male child among you shall be circumcised; and you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and you.
This command did not mean that the procedure produced Abraham’s faith or earned his righteousness. Genesis 15:6 had already recorded that he believed the Lord and that his faith was accounted to him for righteousness. The command to be circumcised came afterward in Genesis 17. Paul draws attention to that order in Romans 4:9–12, explaining that Abraham received the sign after he had believed.
Yet the sign was still commanded. Genesis 17:14 warned that an uncircumcised male had broken the covenant and was to be cut off from his people. I cannot move from saying that a ceremony does not save to saying that a command from God can be disregarded. Moses was returning to Egypt with his wife, Zipporah, and their sons when a neglected circumcision brought danger to their household.
And it came to pass on the way, at the encampment, that the LORD met him and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone and cut off the foreskin of her son and cast it at Moses’ feet, and said, “Surely you are a husband of blood to me!” So He let him go. Then she said, “You are a husband of blood!”–because of the circumcision.
Zipporah took a sharp stone and circumcised their son, and the Lord let the threatened person go. Her action shows that the required circumcision had not taken place before this incident. Moses was on his way to announce that God would keep His covenant with Israel, while a requirement of that covenant had been neglected within his own household.
The usual reading understands Moses to be the man whose life was threatened. The Hebrew uses a pronoun, however, without naming the person in that sentence, which is why some understand the threat to concern the son. The son who was circumcised is not named either. I do not want to turn those unanswered details into a confident reconstruction of everything that happened. Exodus tells us enough to see the neglected requirement and its seriousness without explaining why the circumcision had been delayed or who had decided to delay it.
Zipporah’s statement about a husband of blood also leaves questions. The passage connects her words to the circumcision, but it does not explain their precise force or tell us how she felt when she spoke. Some readers take the reference to feet literally, while others understand it as a modest way of referring to the private parts. Neither that question nor her words gives me permission to invent an earlier argument between her and Moses. We are not told that she had opposed the procedure, and we are not told whether she spoke in anger or relief.
The outcome is stated plainly: she circumcised her son, and the danger ended. A covenant requirement had been neglected, and carrying it out resolved the crisis. The passage does not identify the blood as a sacrifice offered to appease divine wrath. I would therefore explain the event in terms of the command actually given rather than supply a sacrificial meaning that the account does not state.
Now consider where this happened in relation to Moses’ later objection. The crisis occurred on the journey back to Egypt. The account then describes Moses meeting Aaron at the mountain of God, telling him what the Lord had said, and going with him to gather Israel’s elders. At that first meeting, the people believed. When they heard that the Lord had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshiped (Exodus 4:27–31).
Only after the brothers went to Pharaoh and the king increased the workload did the Israelites fail to heed Moses’ renewed message of deliverance. That was when Moses described his lips as uncircumcised. The sequence gives us more than a shared word to interpret. The household crisis had ended, the people had initially believed, and a new confrontation with Pharaoh had brought greater suffering. Moses’ stated concern now was that people would not listen to him.
I do not see God identifying the household failure as the meaning of that later expression. His answer concerns the words Moses must speak and Aaron’s role in delivering them. The two events belong to the same account, but each has its own explanation.
The household incident still speaks to Moses’ calling. Being chosen to lead God’s people did not place him above God’s commands. Public responsibility could not excuse a neglected duty at home. That warning follows from what happened on the journey; it does not require us to treat his later words about his lips as a disguised confession about his son.
Heart, Ear, and Lips in Scripture
Other passages use circumcision language to describe what is happening within a person. In Leviticus 26, God warns Israel about the judgment that persistent disobedience will bring, including being scattered into enemy lands. He then speaks of their confessing their guilt and their uncircumcised hearts being humbled (Leviticus 26:40–42). The heart here concerns their inward response to God. They had resisted Him, and the passage describes them finally acknowledging their wrong.
Moses uses similar language in Deuteronomy 10:16 when he tells the people to circumcise their hearts and stop being stiff-necked. That second expression describes stubbornness, a refusal to yield. Having the physical covenant sign did not make their continued resistance acceptable. God called them to love Him and obey His commands from the heart, rather than rely on belonging to the people He had chosen.
Later, Deuteronomy 30 looks ahead to a time when the scattered people return to the Lord and He gathers them from captivity. Within that promise of restoration, God also promises to do a work in their hearts.
And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.
The result named in the verse is love for the Lord with all their heart and soul. That explains the kind of change meant by circumcising the heart. God is speaking of an inward change in people who have resisted Him, and He connects it with restoring His people. I do not want to lose either part of that promise by treating it as a vague statement about becoming more religious.
Jeremiah applies the image to an ear. He was a prophet warning Jerusalem about coming judgment because the city was filled with oppression and its people rejected God’s instruction. The difficulty was that those who needed the warning took offense at the word being spoken to them.
To whom shall I speak and give warning, That they may hear? Indeed their ear is uncircumcised, And they cannot give heed. Behold, the word of the LORD is a reproach to them; They have no delight in it.
Jeremiah explains the uncircumcised ear by saying that the people took no delight in the Lord’s word. He is describing their refusal to receive it, not diagnosing a physical hearing condition. Later in the chapter, they refuse to walk in the good way and refuse to listen to the warning (Jeremiah 6:16–19). Their response gives the image its meaning.
Moses’ concern was different. He thought his lips were inadequate to deliver the message, while Jeremiah was confronting people who despised the message they heard. Both passages use circumcision language for something failing in its intended purpose, but the context tells us what that failure is. I can compare the figures without treating reluctant speech and willful rejection of God’s word as identical problems.
That distinction does not excuse Moses’ resistance. God had answered him and told him to go, so he remained responsible to obey. It simply keeps me from using a later passage about an unreceptive audience as proof that Moses was confessing the same condition in himself.
Isaiah gives us another comparison involving lips, but his word is unclean rather than uncircumcised. In Isaiah 6, he sees the Lord enthroned, with heavenly beings called seraphim proclaiming His holiness. Isaiah then confesses his own uncleanness and the uncleanness of the people among whom he lives.
So I said: “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, The LORD of hosts.” Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; Your iniquity is taken away, And your sin purged.”
In this case, the action at Isaiah’s mouth comes with a direct explanation: his iniquity, his wrongdoing before God, has been taken away and his sin purged. The live coal belongs to that vision of cleansing. When God asks whom He should send, Isaiah responds by offering to go (Isaiah 6:8).
Compare that with the answer Moses received. God explained how he and Aaron were to speak; He did not announce a cleansing of Moses’ lips. Isaiah’s account gives us an explicit confession of uncleanness and an explicit declaration of cleansing. Exodus gives us an objection about speaking and provision for carrying out that responsibility. I do not think the mention of lips in both accounts is enough to make them descriptions of the same problem.
Both men did depend upon what God supplied. Isaiah could not remove his own guilt, and Moses could not make the assignment succeed through his own ability. God cleansed Isaiah and sent him, and He promised His presence and words to Moses while providing Aaron’s assistance. Their recognition of need had to lead them to receive God’s provision and respond to His command.
Weakness, Obedience, and Life in Christ
When Paul uses circumcision language in Colossians 2, he is explaining something beyond a servant’s ability to speak. He is writing to believers about their life in Christ and warning them against being drawn away by teachings and religious requirements that cannot make them complete. He directs them to what Christ has already done for people whose sins had left them spiritually dead.
In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses,
This circumcision is made without human hands. Paul is describing Christ’s work of bringing people out of their sinful condition, forgiving them and making them alive with Him. A physical operation cannot perform that inward work. The passage also says that they were raised with Christ through faith in God’s working. I understand baptism to follow that faith and picture the believer’s identification with Jesus in His burial and resurrection to new life. I do not understand the water itself to cause regeneration, which means the new birth.
Paul’s use of the image does not make God’s earlier command to Abraham meaningless. Nor does it erase Israel from God’s promises. The physical sign had a purpose in its covenant setting, as the incident in Moses’ household demonstrates. The inward work Christ performs must be understood in its own setting too. Carrying an image forward does not give us permission to cancel what God promised the people to whom He first gave it.
Romans 2:17–29 explains why relying on an outward mark while disobeying God is so foolish. Paul addresses someone who boasts in knowing God’s law and teaching others, yet breaks the very commands he teaches. A man cannot make his theft righteous by pointing to his circumcision. Paul describes the inward work of the Spirit because ancestry and ceremony cannot replace a heart that responds to God. That rebuke of hypocrisy does not revoke God’s promises to Israel.
I think this helps us separate two questions that are easily confused. Moses needed help carrying out his assignment, but every one of us also needs forgiveness and new life. Becoming a more confident speaker would not remove anyone’s guilt before God. Neither an outward mark nor greater effort can do the work that only Christ can do for us.
Jesus is the eternal Son of God, fully God and fully man, born of a virgin and without sin. Wicked men tortured and crucified Him, while He willingly offered Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. He gave His own life, as He explains in John 10:17–18. Through His shed blood and death, His saving sacrifice was complete before His burial and bodily resurrection.
I do not understand that sacrifice as the Father punishing His Son. The Father did not curse, abandon, strike, or bruise Jesus, and He did not pour wrath upon Him. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit remained united, with no broken fellowship in the Godhead. Jesus told His disciples that even when they scattered and left Him, the Father would be with Him (John 16:32). His suffering was real, and His perfection and willing offering provide the salvation we could not achieve.
Christ gave Himself for the whole world, so the call to repent and believe in Him is a genuine invitation to every person. People can resist His grace and reject that invitation, but everyone who truly believes is forgiven and justified, meaning declared righteous before God (John 3:16–18; 1 John 2:2). God gives that believer new birth, the new spiritual life that comes from His Spirit. The Holy Spirit also lives within him and seals him as belonging to God.
That seal guarantees the believer’s inheritance, and Jesus promises eternal life to those who belong to Him (Ephesians 1:13–14; John 10:27–30). A person who has truly been born again is eternally secure in Christ. I rest my assurance in His work, rather than in how capable I feel on a particular day. The new life He gives should become evident in our conduct, but obedience neither earns salvation nor keeps it in place. Ephesians 2:8–10 explains both salvation by grace and the good works for which God prepares His people.
This assurance gives no permission for lawlessness. A Christian label does not prove that someone has become a new creation, and genuine new birth does not make a person sinlessly perfect. John writes to believers so that they will not sin, and he also explains that Jesus represents them before the Father when they do (1 John 2:1–6). His provision calls us to deal honestly with sin, rather than defend it.
Because our standing before God rests in Christ, I also want to be careful about what I conclude from someone’s difficulty with speech. A disability, an accent, or limited schooling does not establish spiritual impurity. Someone may need time to communicate or help making himself understood. That need is not a reason to use Moses’ expression as a disparaging label for him. The Lord provided another person to assist Moses instead of requiring him to hide the difficulty he had brought forward.
God’s answer about who made the mouth included people who were mute or deaf, and people who could see or were blind. He identified Himself as their Creator. I therefore have no reason to treat a disabled person as a mistake or a spiritual failure. In our own gatherings, patient listening and suitable communication support can allow someone to participate who might otherwise be embarrassed or left out. Providing that help is consistent with recognizing the person’s dignity before God.
We should also remember that Moses had received a particular assignment. His command to stand before Pharaoh does not mean that every believer is required to address a ruler or become a public teacher. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul describes the church as a body whose members have different functions. The Holy Spirit distributes gifts as He wills, and one member’s contribution is not the measure of everyone else’s calling.
Yet when a responsibility is clear in God’s written Word, feeling inadequate does not remove it. I can seek help and prepare for the task while trusting Him with what I cannot control. The provision of Aaron shows that receiving assistance can be part of obedience. It would be a strange conclusion to read about God supplying a helper and then tell a struggling believer that asking for help shows a lack of faith.
For someone who teaches, preparation includes studying the passage and checking what he intends to say. Moses had to receive God’s words and pass them faithfully to Aaron, and Aaron had to convey them accurately to Pharaoh. I cannot claim the same authority for whatever happens to come into my mind. I depend on the Spirit as I study the written Word, examine my conclusions, and accept correction. Paul’s instruction to handle the word of truth rightly in 2 Timothy 2:15 calls for diligence, not careless speech dressed up as confidence in God.
The household incident also gives someone serving publicly a reason to examine his own obedience. A ministry title or a useful gift cannot excuse neglect of an actual command. Where I have disobeyed, I should confess it and put right what I can. That is different from demanding a household in which every family member is sinless before anyone can serve. The issue is whether I am defending a known wrong by pointing to the work I do for the Lord.
Moses’ experience helps me distinguish an honest request for help from a continuing refusal to receive it. He brought his questions and distress to God, and God answered him. His request that someone else be sent came after those answers. I can acknowledge a limitation without shame, but when God has made the duty clear and provided help, I cannot keep using that limitation as a reason to refuse Him.
Finally, the people hearing us need to be considered fairly too. The Israelites initially believed and worshiped. Later, their cruel bondage left them unable to heed the message Moses brought. Pharaoh resisted because he refused to submit to the Lord. Neither response, by itself, proved that Moses had spoken badly. I should examine whether I have been faithful and clear without assuming that every rejection exposes a fault in the messenger. An approving audience does not, by itself, prove a message true either. The message still has to be measured against what God has said.
My Final Thoughts
I understand Moses’ uncircumcised lips to mean speech he considered inadequate for the responsibility God had given him. His earlier objection about his mouth and tongue, his concern that Pharaoh would not listen, and God’s provision of Aaron all support that understanding. The circumcision crisis in his household warns us about obedience, but the account does not identify that incident as the meaning of his later expression.
God knew Moses’ limitations when He sent him, and He gave him both the words and the assistance he needed. That leaves me free to admit where I need help while still taking God’s commands seriously. I do not have to pretend that a difficult responsibility is easy. I do have to receive the help He provides and be faithful with what He has actually entrusted to me.