What Did Moses Mean by ‘Uncircumcised Lips’?
Why would Moses describe his own lips as “uncircumcised”? Exodus has already recorded a dangerous circumcision crisis in his household, so I want to understand whether he was referring back to that event. Following what happened in order will help us see what Moses meant by this unusual phrase.
Moses’ Objection and God’s Answer
Moses had already raised a concern about speaking at the burning bush. God called him to return to Egypt and lead Israel out of slavery, but Moses kept finding reasons he couldn’t go. He first asked who he was to approach Pharaoh. Then he asked what name he should give Israel and whether the people would believe him. The LORD answered those fears with signs, yet Moses still objected that he could not speak well.
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.”
Behind “slow of speech and slow of tongue” is the Hebrew picture of a heavy mouth and tongue. That could describe a lack of eloquence or difficulty producing speech. Moses may also have meant that he was hesitant or felt unable to do the task. I can recognize those possibilities without deciding he had a stutter. Scripture never gives us a medical diagnosis.
Acts 7:22 describes Moses as educated in Egypt’s wisdom and mighty in words and deeds. He had real education and public ability, which we need to consider alongside his reluctance in Exodus. The description may concern his reputation or an earlier period of his life. I don’t see a need to accuse him of lying in order to read the two passages together, nor does either passage establish a disease.
God directed Moses’ attention to the One who had made the human mouth. Rather than giving him a lesson in self-esteem, the LORD promised, “I will be with your mouth.” He would teach Moses what to say. Yet Moses still asked Him to send someone else, and God’s anger was kindled. At that point, fear about weakness had become resistance to a clear command.
God appointed Aaron to speak with Moses and serve as his mouth, while leaving Moses responsible for the calling. I notice that the help did not release Moses from the work. It enabled him to obey, with someone beside him to help him speak.
When Moses and Aaron first met with Pharaoh, the situation appeared to grow worse. Pharaoh increased Israel’s forced labor, and the officers blamed the brothers. Moses returned to the LORD in distress. In Exodus 6, God answered with repeated covenant promises: He would bring His people out of bondage and redeem them from Egypt. He would claim Israel as His own and bring them into the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
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.
Before we decide that Moses failed as a speaker, we need to notice why Israel didn’t listen. The narrator names their anguish of spirit and cruel bondage. He says nothing about faulty pronunciation or speaking style, and he doesn’t point back to uncleanness in Moses’ household. The people were suffering so deeply that they struggled to receive the promise of rescue.
Moses understood their response through his old fear: if his own people wouldn’t listen, how could Pharaoh heed a man with “uncircumcised lips”? I can see how their refusal seemed to confirm his concern, but the LORD did not let Moses’ assessment decide the mission. He commanded Moses and Aaron concerning both Israel and Pharaoh.
After the genealogy, the account returns to Moses repeating his objection. God’s answer defines who will speak and sends the brothers back. He performs no ritual on Moses’ mouth and does not reopen the household circumcision case. Nor does He agree that Pharaoh cannot understand Moses.
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.
The words “as God to Pharaoh” describe the authority God gave Moses to represent Him. The comparison does not make Moses divine. Aaron serves as a prophet by receiving the words God has entrusted to Moses and speaking them to Pharaoh. So the message comes from the LORD through Moses, with Aaron giving voice to it wherever God assigns him to speak.
Pharaoh would resist because his heart was hard, not because Moses needed to find more persuasive words. God would multiply signs and judgments until Egypt knew He was the LORD. That helps me understand why the mission could proceed despite Moses’ concern about his delivery: its authority came from God.
Aaron’s help still left Moses with work to do. He had to listen to God and carry the rod God had given him. Moses would face Pharaoh with announcements of what the LORD was about to do, and he would intercede before eventually leading Israel out. Aaron supported his obedience without taking over his responsibility.
Aaron could not change the message to make it more acceptable to Pharaoh. His role as a prophet was not that of a public-relations adviser softening an unpopular command. Pharaoh had to release Israel, and his rejection did not change that demand. I need to remember that faithful speech agrees with God’s Word even when the ruler hearing it refuses to approve.
Moses spoke more often as the plagues unfolded, but Exodus never tells us that he received a medical cure or acquired a new personality. Repeated obedience may have strengthened him. Aaron could still speak when assigned to do so. What the text continues to show us is that every word and sign came from the LORD.
What “Uncircumcised Lips” Means
Moses’ phrase is aral sefatayim, literally “uncircumcised of lips.” His lips stand for his speech. The Hebrew Sefatayim refers to the paired lips, and aral pictures something obstructed or unfit for its proper use. Understanding that wording helps me see the force of his objection. He was using strong covenant language for speech he believed was not ready for Pharaoh.
The wording may express shame or inadequacy without automatically confessing hidden moral impurity. To understand which meaning fits, we need to follow the discussion of speaking and listening in Exodus 4–7. Moses first described his mouth and tongue as heavy. After Israel didn’t listen, he used the image of uncircumcised lips to intensify that same concern.
That brings me back to the reason Exodus 6 gives for Israel’s response. These exhausted people were wounded by cruel bondage, not evaluating Moses’ skill as a speaker. He took their refusal as proof that his lips could never carry the message to Pharaoh. But God understood what was happening in the hearers as well as in the messenger.
The LORD answered the supposed obstruction with His own Word and authority. He gave the brothers a clear way to work together: Moses would receive His commands, and Aaron would speak as Moses’ prophet. There was no separate cleansing of the lips, because Exodus does not present Moses’ words as a confession of sin like Isaiah’s later confession.
The Circumcision Crisis in Exodus 4
The phrase naturally brings physical circumcision to mind. In Genesis 17, God established it for Abraham and the males of his household as the covenant sign in their flesh. But Abraham had already believed the LORD in Genesis 15. I need to keep that order clear: the surgery did not create God’s promise or make a sinner righteous. It marked covenant belonging, so neglecting it was nevertheless serious disobedience. Genesis warns that an uncircumcised male had broken the covenant and was to be cut off from his people.
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.
That covenant requirement helps us understand the danger Moses encountered on his journey to Egypt. He was going to announce the covenant God’s faithfulness while the required sign had been neglected in his own 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.
This brief account leaves several details uncertain. The Hebrew pronoun translated “him” does not identify whether Moses or his son was threatened. Traditionally, readers have understood it as Moses, but the grammar has prompted real debate. The son is unnamed, and we aren’t told why his circumcision had been delayed or who had made that earlier decision. I would rather acknowledge what we are not told than fill the gaps with guesses.
We are not told what Zipporah was feeling when she spoke either. “Feet” may mean literal feet, although some understand it as a modest expression for a part of the body. The phrase “husband of blood” is also difficult to explain. Those uncertainties keep me from confidently reconstructing her motives or Moses’ private choices, or declaring exactly who was threatened.
What we can say with confidence is that circumcision resolved the danger. Zipporah acted, and the LORD let the threatened person go. The passage reports obedience to the covenant in response to a covenant crisis. It does not say that divine wrath was appeased.
I do see a thematic connection between this crisis and the later words about Moses’ lips. Both concern a servant called to represent the covenant God, and the household incident shows that a great calling did not place Moses above the Word he announced. But belonging to the same larger account does not by itself establish what his later phrase meant.
Exodus never says that Moses called his lips uncircumcised because he had failed to circumcise his son. If he were confessing that disobedience, we might expect God’s answer to address guilt or repentance, or refer to the earlier incident. Instead, God assigned speaking roles and renewed His command. That is why I distinguish a shared theme from the stronger claim that one event explains the other.
The order of events supports that distinction. Zipporah acted before Moses met Aaron at the mountain of God. The crisis was already past when Israel’s elders believed the signs, and it remained past when Pharaoh increased their labor. By Exodus 6, the physical circumcision had long been completed. Moses was now concerned that Israel had not listened and Pharaoh would not listen either.
We can recognize the lesson of the household failure without making it the explanation of Moses’ lips. Public usefulness cannot cover disobedience at home. That is a serious warning in its own right, without our claiming that Moses hid it inside his later metaphor about speaking.
Heart, Ear, and Lips in Scripture
The Old Testament uses circumcision language for more than the physical sign. Leviticus 26 speaks of an uncircumcised heart being humbled in exile. Deuteronomy tells Israel to circumcise the foreskin of the heart and stop being stiff-necked. Later, it promises that the LORD Himself will circumcise the heart so His people will love Him.
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.
Jeremiah uses the picture for ears rather than lips. The people cannot heed the Word and take no delight in it, so he describes their ear as uncircumcised.
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.
Comparing these passages helps me see what the images share and where they differ. The uncircumcised heart resists God inwardly, and the uncircumcised ear cannot receive His warning. Moses applied the image to lips he believed were obstructed in speaking. Each picture describes something not ready to respond as it should, but we still need the immediate context to understand the particular obstruction.
Jeremiah’s hearers resisted God’s Word, whereas Moses feared he couldn’t deliver it properly. If I treat those two uses as identical, I lose the distinction between rebellion in the hearers and the physical or rhetorical limitation Moses thought he faced. His phrase has to be understood in the conversation where he used it.
Isaiah’s commission gives us another comparison involving lips. He used the word “unclean,” though, rather than “uncircumcised.” In the presence of the Holy King, he confessed his own uncleanness and acknowledged that he lived among unclean people.
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.”
A seraph touched Isaiah’s mouth with a coal from the altar, and the vision declared that his sin was purged. Nothing matching that sign occurred in Exodus 6. God restated the speaking roles and sent Moses. I therefore cannot use Isaiah’s experience to prove that Moses was confessing the same kind of uncleanness.
Still, both accounts show us God’s grace before human service. He provided Isaiah’s cleansing and gave Moses His presence and Word, along with practical help. Neither man could make himself qualified simply by becoming more confident. Nor could either treat his own inadequacy as having more authority than God’s command.
Weakness, Obedience, and Life in Christ
In Colossians, circumcision language describes Christ’s saving work. Believers receive a circumcision made without hands: those who were dead in trespasses are made alive with Christ and forgiven. It is His work, accomplished neither by a physical rite nor by skillful speech.
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, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
The passage says we are raised with Christ through faith in the working of God, so I do not read it as teaching that water baptism causes regeneration. Baptism follows faith and pictures our identification with Christ, portraying burial with Him and resurrection to new life. Colossians does not erase Israel or let us read Genesis as though physical circumcision never mattered in its covenant setting.
In Romans 2, Paul distinguishes outward Jewish identity from an inward work of the Spirit. Carrying the covenant mark did not excuse breaking the law or seeking human praise. Outward privilege could not replace a heart that responded to God. Paul exposed that folly without declaring God’s promises to Israel meaningless.
The change from death to life goes far deeper than Moses’ concern about speaking. Improving the way I present myself cannot make me fit for God. I need to come to the Son for the forgiveness and new life only He can give.
Moses’ experience also helps us think about people who need help communicating. A speech disability or an accent does not establish spiritual uncircumcision. Neither does limited education, anxiety, or a need for communication support. Aaron’s role shows that practical help can serve God’s work. Receiving that help does not make someone less faithful, and the phrase gives us no reason to shame people who communicate differently.
When the LORD identified Himself as the Maker of the mouth, He spoke of people who were mute or deaf and of those who could see or were blind. He did not call disabled people mistakes or spiritual failures. His authority as Creator establishes their dignity, and it should shape the whole community’s care for them.
The encampment incident makes clear that a calling does not excuse disobedience. But Scripture never says God can use someone only after that person or family has reached sinless perfection. When we have neglected an actual command, we need to confess it honestly and put the matter right. Grace restores those who turn back to God without concealing their disobedience.
Our service will not all look like Moses’ assignment. The Spirit distributes gifts and responsibilities as He wills, so we need to receive the work He gives us. We can accept suitable help and prepare carefully while keeping our message under Scripture’s authority.
Depending on God doesn’t remove the need to prepare. Moses had to listen carefully so he could give God’s words to Aaron, and Aaron had to speak those words rather than improve them for Pharaoh. That makes careless study or false claims inconsistent with trusting God with our mouths. Christian teachers depend on the Spirit as they study the written Word. Checking facts and receiving correction help them speak clearly and truthfully.
I also notice a difference between Moses explaining his distress and refusing the task. He could tell God why it seemed impossible, and the LORD patiently answered him more than once. But after receiving that answer, Moses asked God to send someone else. Humility says, “I am insufficient, so I need You.” Resistance says, “Your presence and provision are still not enough.” The words may sound similar, yet one turns to God for help while the other refuses what He has provided.
A hearer’s response cannot by itself tell me whether the messenger was faithful. Israel first refused because bondage was crushing the people. Pharaoh later refused out of hard-hearted rebellion. A servant might mistakenly read either response as a failure in his own speaking, but Scripture explains what was happening in each audience. God remains Lord of the outcome.
We should not turn “Uncircumcised lips” into a New Testament label for shy Christians or inexperienced preachers, or for people who communicate differently from us. Moses’ metaphor was not given as a weapon against them. The church needs truthful speech and willing hearers, along with real mercy toward those living with physical weakness.
Our final confidence rests in Christ, not in overcoming all the fears and weaknesses we recognize in Moses. Wicked men physically tortured Jesus and killed Him, and He willingly bore that punishment for our sins in His innocent body. He shed His blood in death, was buried, and rose bodily. The Father did not punish or curse His Son, nor did He abandon Jesus. He did not strike or bruise Him or pour wrath on Him.
Christ died for the whole world, and everyone is called to repent and believe in Him. God’s offer is genuine even though people can resist or reject it. Whoever truly believes is forgiven and justified, or declared righteous before God. That believer is born again, and the Holy Spirit indwells and seals that person. That believer is eternally secure, but security never permits lawlessness. A shallow profession cannot prove the new birth. Salvation rests in Christ’s blood. Circumcision and eloquence cannot provide it, nor can leadership or self-improvement.
My Final Thoughts
God’s answer to Moses helps me understand “uncircumcised lips” as a concern about speech he thought was unfit, not a coded confession about his son. The LORD gave him His Word and the help he needed to obey. That encourages me to receive help without shame, while remembering that reluctance cannot excuse refusing God’s command. We can do the work He gives us and leave the hearer’s response in His hands.