Exodus 4:10

Summary

Moses answers Yehovah by objecting to his own capacity for speech. He uses an emphatic self-description, denying that he is a "man of words," and reinforces this with a triple temporal expression covering past and present, ending with a double physical description involving "mouth" and "tongue."

Key words

• ish ("man of", H0376G) — construct noun; introduces a construct phrase meaning "a man characterized by X," here negated by lo' ("not", H3808).
• devarim ("words", H1697H) — plural noun completing the construct chain ish devarim, "a man of words," i.e., a person characterized by verbal fluency.
• anokhi ("I", H0595) — independent personal pronoun, repeated twice in the verse (lines 11 and 32), giving emphasis to the subject beyond what the verb conjugation alone would require.
• daber ("speaking", H1696G) — piel infinitive with pronominal suffix -kha ("your"), forming "your speaking," marking the piel (intensive/factitive) stem rather than the simple qal.
• khevad ("heavy of", H3515) — adjective in construct form, used twice (with peh, "mouth", H6310I, and lashon, "tongue", H3956G), producing two parallel construct phrases: "heavy of mouth" and "heavy of tongue."

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative formula va-yomer ("and he said", H0559) followed by the subject Mosheh ("Moses", H4872) and the addressee el-Yehovah ("to Yehovah", H3068G). Moses' speech begins with the interjection bi ("pardon me", H0994) plus the address Adonai ("O Lord", H0136), a fixed formula of respectful appeal. The core objection is structured as a negated construct phrase: lo' ish devarim anokhi — "not a man of words [am] I" — where the construct chain ish devarim (H0376G + H1697H) denotes a person defined by verbal skill, and the pronoun anokhi (H0595) is placed after the predicate, giving it emphatic weight rather than mere grammatical necessity.

The temporal scope of this claim is expanded through a triad introduced three times by gam ("neither/nor", H1571): mi-temol ("from yesterday", H8543), mi-shilshom ("from three days ago", H8032), and me-az ("from then", H0227B), each governed by the preposition mi/me ("from", H9006). This series moves from recent past to a more remote or unspecified point, reinforced by the infinitive construct daberkha — literally "your speaking" (piel infinitive daber, H1696G, plus suffix -kha) — describing the ongoing act of Yehovah's speaking to "your servant" (avdekha, H5650 + suffix).

The concluding clause, introduced by ki ("for", H3588A), presents two parallel construct adjectival phrases: khevad-peh ("heavy of mouth", H3515 + H6310I) and u-khevad lashon ("and heavy of tongue", H3515 + H3956G), both predicated of anokhi ("I", H0595) at the very end of the verse. The repetition of the construct adjective khevad across two body-part nouns creates a grammatically parallel pair describing a single condition from two angles.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the address pros Tyrion ("to Tyrios") where the Hebrew has el-Yehovah ("to Yehovah", H3068G), a divergence in the divine name/addressee. The LXX also translates khevad-peh and khevad lashon with the Greek terms ischnophōnos ("of weak/thin voice") and bradyglōssos ("slow-tongued"), which convey a speech impediment more specifically than the Hebrew construct phrases "heavy of mouth" and "heavy of tongue." The Vulgate's non sum eloquens ("I am not eloquent") corresponds to the Hebrew lo' ish devarim but does not preserve the construct-noun structure "man of words."