Last week we read about the birth of Moses. This week, Rabbi Janet Roberts guest-led our group on a review of what we know about Moses the man.
When God summoned Moses, telling him that he would be the person to lead the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage, Moses did not bravely step up and embrace the calling. Instead, he said:
I have never been a man of words, either in times past or now that You have spoken to Your servant; I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue. (Exodus 4:10)
The Hebrew word translated as “heavy” is translated elsewhere as “stopped,” “blocked,” or “obdurate.” And when God tells Moses to speak to Pharaoh, Moses responds:
The Israelites have not listened to me; how then should Pharaoh listen to me, poor speaker that I am? (Exodus 6:12)
The word translated as “poor speaker,” which can be synonymous with the word translated as “heavy,” is translated elsewhere as “impeded” or “uncircumcised lips.”
These passages have led some people to believe that Moses had a speech impediment, perhaps a stutter. Whatever it is, we have the impression Moses would rather not do what God is asking of him. Why not? What does it mean to have heavy, blocked, poor, impeded, or uncircumcised lips? It could mean that he has a speech impediment. But it is worth noting that the entire book of Deuteronomy is said to be a monologue given by Moses, and the existence of a speech impediment never enters that text.
Rabbi Roberts pointed out that, last week, Rabbi Jaech told our group that the ancient Rabbis left Moses out of the Passover Haggadah because they associated Moses with the priesthood; an institution that they were trying to deemphasize. The biblical passages were written hundreds of years before the records of the ancient Rabbis, so the undercurrent of knocking Moses down a peg existed early on.
Maybe the writer was emphasizing the superiority of God, by showing that he could take the imperfect instrument of Moses and work his miracles through him.
Or maybe the writer objected to the fact that Moses was not raised in an Israelite household. This theory could be bolstered by the translation that Moses’s lips were “uncircumcised.” Even today, circumcision is a big part of Jewish identity. How could this man, who did not have a shared experience with the enslaved Israelites, be the perfect hero of the Israelite people?
The story of Moses provides an interesting counterpart to the story of the biblical hero Joseph. Joseph was raised as an Israelite, was sold into slavery in Egypt, and then rose to power. Moses was raised as an Egyptian prince, who later fled from home. We sometimes talk about how conflicted Joseph might have been in his position, but we don’t think about how conflicted Moses surely was.
The Bible tells us that Moses’s mother kept him for three months before putting him in the basket to float down the Nile (Exodus 2:2). When Pharaoh’s daughter found the basket, she saw that it was a boy and said, “This must be a Hebrew child” (Exodus 2:6). We might imagine that Moses was swaddled with a blanket that signified his Hebrew origin, but that is not in the Bible (and we might credit Cecil B. DeMille for that midrash). It is more likely that, in the three months Moses lived with his mother, he was circumcised. When Pharaoh’s daughter found the basket and saw the babe, she could immediately see that he had been circumcised—an identifying mark of his being a Hebrew child.
The household knew about Moses’s Hebrew origin. The text tells us that Moses went “out to his kinsfolk and witness their labors” (Exodus 2:11), meaning that Moses, raised as a prince and speaking Egyptian, knew that he was a Hebrew. But did he speak the Hebrew language? Maybe Moses was expressing to God that the Israelites would not follow a man who could not speak their language.
Or maybe, after fleeing from Egypt and living in Canaan for a long time, Moses was concerned that his Egyptian was rusty, and he would not be able to speak clearly with Pharaoh.
Whatever the reason for Moses’s hesitation, the writer is making a point that Moses is not the hero of this story. Moses does not make it into the Promised Land and, later, his name is not mentioned in the Passover Haggadah. Moses is a great man, but he is not perfect. The miracle of liberation from bondage is brought by God; Moses is merely a vehicle.
The blog is Tara Keiter’s interpretation of the Temple Israel of Northern Westchester Torah Study session. Misquotes or misunderstandings in what Rabbi Roberts taught are the responsibility of Tara Keiter.