After the slaves refuse to hear him, Moses turns to God with a new version of his old protest. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the logic: Behold, the sons of Israel do not hearken to me; how then will Pharoh hearken to me, and I a man difficult of speech?
This is the kal vachomer — the rabbinic argument from lesser to greater. If my own people, who share my blood and my history, will not listen to me, how will a foreign king, whose interests oppose mine, ever listen? The logic is devastating in its common sense.
The Stammer Returns as Excuse
Notice that Moses reaches once again for the speech impediment. The Aramaic a man difficult of speech echoes the earlier protest at the burning bush (Exodus 4:10). The stammer has not healed. It never will. Aaron is the fluent voice; Moses remains difficult of speech to the end of his life.
The sages of the Targumic tradition are gentle with Moses here. He is not lying about his disability, and he is not being cowardly. He is making a real observation: rhetoric does not carry tyrants. If the slaves cannot be moved, a king certainly cannot.
But the Targum preserves the protest precisely so that the answer — the entire Exodus that follows — can reframe it. Moses is correct that he cannot persuade Pharaoh. He is wrong about what the Exodus will actually require. The plagues are not argumentation. They are demonstration. And demonstration does not care whether the demonstrator stammers.
The takeaway: the Jewish imagination is honest about the limits of speech. Sometimes the oppressor cannot be argued with. Sometimes rhetoric fails and only the strong hand of God breaks the impasse. Moses' stammer is preserved not as a flaw overcome, but as a reminder that the Exodus was not won by eloquence — it was won by a Power that speaks in plagues and seas.