Intertextuality Pair

Ezekiel 3:5-6 → Exodus 4:10

Allusion

Later text

Ezekiel 3:5-6BSB

For you are not being sent to a people of unfamiliar speech or difficult language, but to the house of Israel— not to the many peoples of unfamiliar speech and difficult language whose words you cannot understand. Surely if I had sent you to them, they would have listened to you.

Earlier text

Exodus 4:10BSB

"Please, Lord," Moses replied, "I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since You have spoken to Your servant, for I am slow of speech and tongue."

Significance

Ezekiel 3:5-6 develops the ironic contrast God introduced in the Mosaic commissioning of Exodus 4:10. Where Moses protested his own speech limitations, God now tells Ezekiel that his audience's problem is not comprehension but rebellion. The phrase "deep of lip and heavy of tongue" (עִמְקֵי שָׂפָה וְכִבְדֵי לָשׁוֹן, imqey safah vekhivdey lashon) inverts Moses's self-description, applying it hypothetically to foreign nations who would actually have listened. This escalation reveals that Israel is more resistant to God's word than pagans who have never heard it.

Found via
Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type
Allusion
Connection Method(s)
Analogy — the call of Ezekiel replays the Mosaic call-scene of Exodus 4:10 with its terms turned inside the parallel: Moses pleads "I am slow of speech and tongue," while God tells Ezekiel that deep lip and heavy tongue belong only to foreign peoples who, had he been sent to them, "would have listened" (3:6). Two prophetic commissionings set in analogical correspondence expose the same truth — the barrier to God's word is rebellion, not language.

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