What Does Exodus 6:12 Mean?

Moses said to God, "Behold, the people of Israel have not listened to me. How then shall Pharaoh listen to me, for I am of uncircumcised lips?" Moses' renewed objection in verse 12 combines a new evidence-based argument with the old limitation claim.

The evidence-based argument is fresh: Israel, his own people with every reason to hear him, did not listen. If the covenant community itself could not respond to Moses' words, how can Moses expect Pharaoh, the hostile foreign king with every reason not to hear, to respond? The logic is compelling: if he cannot persuade those who want to be persuaded, he cannot persuade those who are determined not to be.

The "uncircumcised lips" phrase is a new image for Moses' established limitation claim. In chapter 4, Moses described himself as "slow of speech and of tongue" (kaved-pe u'kved lashon). In verse 12, he uses "uncircumcised lips" (Hebrew: arel sefatayim), which carries the connotation of the uncircumcised as outsider, unfit for covenant participation.

Moses is saying his lips are like the lips of someone outside the covenant community: unable to speak with the authority that covenant membership should confer. The circumcision image applied to speech is unique in the Hebrew Bible; Moses is combining the covenant sign with the speech limitation in a single phrase.

The "uncircumcised lips" image will be echoed in Jeremiah 1:6, where Jeremiah's initial commissioning response is "Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth." The pattern of the newly commissioned prophet claiming speech inadequacy before the commissioning is complete appears throughout the prophetic tradition. The speech inadequacy claim is rather than false modesty but an honest recognition of the gap between the prophet's natural capacity and the scale of the task. God's response throughout is not to dispute the inadequacy claim but to promise divine accompaniment in the act of speaking.