Distrusting Self
by Kim Larsen
Exodus 4:10, 14“Then Moses said to the Lord, “O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither before nor since You have spoken to Your servant: but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” So, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses, and He said, “is not Aaron the Levite your brother? I know that he can speak well. And look he is coming out to meet you. When he sees you he will be glad in his heart.”
We have all heard the story of Moses many times, but I decided to begin again in Exodus and take a deeper look at this lesson that God has so graciously given to us in His Word. I had to stop and look at these two verses, for there are several questions to answer here. Moses has received his mission in verses 1-9. And Moses is so distrustful of self that He asks God again and again what will I do if the people don’t believe that you’ve chosen me to deliver them? God assures him with object lessons, He shows him what happens when he lets go of his rod, and also gives him a backup by afflicting his hand with leprosy and then removing it when he puts it back inside his robe. Moses is still looking for excuses by verse 10. Here we find him reasoning with God that he is slow of speech, he’s unsure of his words. He’s not eloquent. At first one would think that this means that perhaps he has a stutter, or a that he has some sort of speech impediment. This is unlikely since he was trained in the palace of Pharaoh and was the General of the army. Moses was afraid of bringing self into his work. He had history of doing this before when he killed the Egyptian . After many years of humbling work in the fields tending sheep, Moses did not want to take matters into his own hands. He trusted God, himself he did not trust. A man will gain power and efficiency as he accepts the responsibilities that God places upon him, and with his whole soul seeks to qualify himself to do his best . However humble his position or limited his ability, that man will attain true greatness who, trusting to divine strength, seeks to perform his work with fidelity.
The next puzzling text is verse 14, we read that the anger of the Lord was kindled because of Moses hesitancy. It’s impossible for God to become angry as this would certainly be out of his character. The original Hebrew word here is found to also be translated as longsuffering. This word fits the character of God much better. His longsuffering was kindled towards Moses . He understood Moses hesitancy and God found a solution that both could agree on. God would tell Moses what to say, Moses would relay it to Aaron and Aaron would speak for Moses. I totally understand this premise. I am this way as well. I don’t think on my feet well. Sometimes to keep our feet out of our mouth it is wise to not speak immediately , but rather go home and think about it and come back with a well thought out answer. God is so understanding and suffers long with us human beings.
He uses us in spite of our short comings and flaws. As long as we are obedient to His call.
The Bible In Your Hand 
Is there a resource on anger being long suffering in the Hebrew lingo please? This interests me greatly. 🙋
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Hi Lana,
The study of God’s character has led me to search the Scriptures more thoroughly and look at these hard verses that state that God is angry or wrathful. I have always been a person who takes Scripture literally and I certainly do not want to add to the Holy Word of God, but I also want to defend my God when possibly there is another interpretation for these words so frequently used. Exodus 4:14 is one of these verses stating that God was angry with Moses, so I looked up the Hebrew text and sure enough, there are a couple of different words that can be used in our language for this Hebrew word and one of them is longsuffering, also forbearing. I believe this fits the character of God more closely. I am not a Hebrew scholar by any means, just my opinion of who I believe God is.
Blessings,
Kim Larsen
Guest Contributor to The Bible In Your Hand
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Christ continually said that He came to show us the Father. See John 14:9; and John 12:45 as examples. We also read In Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8; and James 1:17 that God is the same yesterday, today and forever. We all seem to say the God of the New Testament is loving and kind but say the opposite about the God of the Old Testament. Yet Jesus said, If you have seen me, you have seen the Father and if God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, then perhaps our understanding of what happened in the Old Testament has become distorted.
We have words in the English language that are the same, with different meanings such as to, too, and two, and there and their, just to name a few simple ones. In Hebrew they had certain words as just one word, but based upon the context in which it was used changed the meaning of the one word. In Exodus 4:14 is an example. Looking at the surrounding story, God is giving evidence to Moses, that (1) He is God, (2) that God has faith in Moses that Moses can do, what he is asking. But Moses, despite all the evidence, continues making excuses. So, was God physically angry and may I remind ourselves that anger must be a character trait that God had to have had before the fall of Satan in order to have anger now. As the three texts above state, he is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. And if God showed signs of anger before the fall of Satan, then Satan was correct in his assessment of God’s character, which we know from Christ coming to die for the remissions of our sins, couldn’t possibly be the case. Therefore we need to look at the alternative meanings for some of these instances when the word anger or angry are used. In this case Longsuffering fits the situation. If God was truly mad, then he would do away with Moses and start over finding another, but he didn’t.
God recognized the human frailty of Moses and so God determined as Kim put it “to find a solution that would work for both parties.” Hope this helps answer your question.
Blessings,
Pastor Lester
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This makes so much sense 🙋🙏🏻🌺
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