This is the first time I saw it.  Of course I’ve read it countless times but I breezed right on past.  Take a look:

Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action (Acts 7:22).

Seems simple enough.  Moses was powerful and amazing.  But then it struck me.

This is NOT the Moses we read about in Midian.  Powerful in speech?

Quite the opposite.

Moses said to the Lord, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”

The Lord said to him, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord?  Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.”

But Moses said, “Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else.”

Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses and he said, “What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and he will be glad to see you.  You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do.  He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him (Exodus 3:14-16).

It seemed when Moses was young and in Egypt, he was brimming with confidence.  He was powerful in speech and action.  He was sure of himself.

And now?  He was not sure of anything.  He knew he didn’t speak well.  It is thought that he might have been one who stutters.

It does say he himself thought he was slow of speech both now and in the past, but when did that occur?  Was he born with a speech impediment?  Because it seems from the Acts 7:22 that he was in a season where things were going well.

It makes me wonder if indeed he was a stutterer.  Because stuttering is known to follow emotional trauma.  It happens in those who have been to war.  Or from those who grew up with abuse.

When we consider Moses’ life, we see that he indeed had trauma.  He was so confident that his fellow Israelites would see him as the deliverer that he killed an Egyptian (Acts 7:23-29).

“When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites. He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian.  Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not.  The next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting. He tried to reconcile them by saying, ‘Men, you are brothers; why do you want to hurt each other?’

“But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us?  Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’  When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons.

He was devastated.  And he had to go on the run, leaving his princely life and becoming a desert nomad.  He left it all because of murder.  It likely was very traumatic.  Enough that it could have caused a speech impediment.

Now obviously the main thrust of the text is not about Moses and emotional trauma.  But it says something on a pastoral level.

The depth of your emotional trauma does not limit you to the greatness that God can use you.