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The Hebrew version of Exodus has Moses call himself slow of speech and slow of tongue when God calls him. The Greek Septuagint translates the first phrase as weak-voiced, explicitly reading his reluctance as a physical speech impairment.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Exodus 4:10
Hebrew Bible
9 And if they do not believe even these two signs or listen to you, then take some water from the Nile and pour it out on the dry ground. The water you take out of the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.” 10 Then Moses said to the Lord, “O my Lord, I am not an eloquent man, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant, for I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” 11 The Lord said to him, “Who gave a mouth to man, or who makes a person mute or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?
LXX Exodus 4:10
Septuagint
9 And it will be if perhaps they do not believe you through these two signs, and not listen to your report, you will take some of the water of the river, and you will pour it out on the dry ground, and the water that you took from the river will become blood on the dry ground.” 10 But Moses said to the Lord, “I beg you, O Lord, I am not adequate before yesterday nor before the previous day nor from the time when you began to speak to your servant. I am weak-voiced and slow of tongue.” 11 And the Lord said to Moses, “Who gave a mouth to humankind, and who makes a mute person and a deaf person, a seeing person and a blind person? Is it not I, God?
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Notes and References
... This is, perhaps, the most ancient interpretation, as the Septuagint renders ‘heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue’ as ‘weak voiced (ἰσχνόφωνος) and slow of tongue (βραδύγλωσσος)’ (4:10). The Septuagint also translates ‘uncircumcised lips’ as both ‘without speech (ἄλογός)’ (6:12) and ‘weak voiced (ισχνόφωνος)’ (6:30), an interpretation which both quiets, even silences, Moses, and harmonizes the vocabulary of Exodus 4:10 and 6:30 in the process. Even Philo of Alexandria, whose default approach to the Torah was to allegorize, argued that Moses’s ineloquence was literal, a result of the shock of theophany, and part of the process of grappling with beautiful thoughts. ...
Balogh, Amy L.
Moses among the Idols: Mediators of the Divine in the Ancient Near East
(p. 95) Lexington Books, 2018
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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