Exodus Chapter 3 verse 11 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 11. - And Moses said... Who am I, that I should go, etc. A great change had come over Moses. Forty years earlier he had been forward to offer himself as a "deliverer." He "went out" to his brethren and slew one of their oppressors, and "supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them" (Acts 7:25). "But they understood not" (ibid.) They declined to accept him for leader, they reproached him with setting himself up to be "a ruler and a judge" over them. And now, taught by this lesson, and sobered by forty years of inaction, he has become timid and distrustful of himself, and shrinks from putting himself forward. Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh? What weight can I, a foreigner, forty years an exile, with the manners of a rough shepherd, expect to have with the mighty monarch of all Egypt - the son of Rameses the Great, the inheritor of his power and his glories? And again, Who am I, that I should bring forth the children of Israel? What weight can I expect to have with my countrymen, who will have forgotten me - whom, moreover, I could not influence when I was,in my full vigour - who then "refused" my guidance and forced me to quit them? True diffidence speaks in the words used - there is no ring of insincerity in them; Moses was now as distrustful of himself as in former days he had been confident, and when he had become fit to be a deliverer, ceased to think himself fit.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(11) Who am I, that I should go?--The men most fit for great missions are apt to deem themselves unfit. When God called Jeremiah to be a prophet, his reply was, "O Lord God! Behold, I cannot speak, for I am a child" ( Jeremiah 1:6). St. Ambrose fought hard to escape being made Archbishop of Milan. Augustine was loth to undertake the mission to England. Anselm was with difficulty persuaded to accept the headship of our Church in the evil days of Rufus. The first impression of a fit man selected for a high post generally is, "Who am I?" In Moses's case, though there were some manifest grounds of fitness--e.g., his Egyptian training and learning, his familiarity with the court. his knowledge of both nations and both languages--yet, on the other hand, there were certain very marked (apparent) disqualifications. Forty years of exile, and of a shepherd's life had at once unfitted him for dealing with a court, and made him a stranger to his brethren. Want of eloquence seemed to be a fatal defect in one who must work mainly by persuasion. Even his age (eighty) might well have seemed to him unsuitable.