Exodus 6:12

Summary

Moses speaks before Yehovah, pointing out that the Israelites have not listened to him, and asking how Pharaoh could be expected to listen to him instead, given a personal characteristic he describes as being "uncircumcised of lips."

Key words

• y.daBer ("he spoke", H1696G) — piel wayyiqtol form; the piel stem gives an intensive nuance to "speak," and the narrative vav marks this as the next event in the sequence following Yehovah's prior speech to Moses.
• lifnei ("before", H6440G) — construct noun panim ("face") with preposition, literally "to the face of," used idiomatically to mean speaking in someone's presence.
• hen ("here!" / "behold", H2005) — interjection that draws attention to the statement introduced, functioning to emphasize the fact stated.
• sha.me.'U ("they have listened", H8085G) — qal perfect, marking the non-listening of Israel as a completed, established fact.
• yish.ma.'E-ni ("will he listen to me", H8085G) — qal imperfect, presenting Pharaoh's potential listening as an unrealized, future/hypothetical action, contrasted grammatically with the completed perfect above.
• 'a.Ral sefaTayim ("uncircumcised of lips", H6189 + H8193G) — adjective in construct with a feminine dual noun ("lips" as a pair), forming the idiom describing Moses' self-assessment.

What the text says

The verse is built as a report of direct speech introduced by y.daBer... le'mor ("he spoke... saying"), a common formula in the narrative. Within the speech, Moses builds an argument through two grammatically contrasted verb forms: the qal perfect sha.me.'U ("they have listened") negated by lo', stating as completed fact that the sons of Israel have not listened to him, followed by the qal imperfect yishma.'Eni ("will he listen to me"), introduced by the interrogative 'eikh ("how?"), which casts Pharaoh's potential response as open and doubtful. This aspectual shift — completed action versus unrealized action — reinforces the rhetorical question: if a completed refusal has already occurred with his own people, how could a future, uncertain listening occur with Pharaoh.

The closing phrase, 'ani 'aral sefatayim ("I [am] uncircumcised of lips"), uses the construct adjective 'aral with the dual noun sefatayim ("two lips"), producing an idiom about impaired or unfit speech, without any verb of being supplied — the pronoun 'ani stands alone with the predicate adjective.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew idiom 'aral sefatayim ("uncircumcised of lips") is rendered differently across versions: the LXX has álogos eimi ("I am without reason/speech"), the Vulgate has incircumcisus labiis ("uncircumcised in lips," preserving the Hebrew idiom literally), while BSB gives an interpretive "unskilled in speech" and SBLIBRE "torpe para hablar" ("clumsy at speaking"), both smoothing the literal circumcision imagery present in the Hebrew and Vulgate.