Augustine of Hippo : [Moses] believes that by God's will he can suddenly become eloquent when he says, "or since the time you began to speak to your servant." He shows that it could happen that one who was not eloquent the day before, or the day before that, could suddenly become eloquent, from the time when the Lord began to speak to him. — QUESTIONS ON Exodus 7 Clement of Rome : Let us be imitators also of those who in goat-skins and sheep-skins [Hebrews 11:37] went about proclaiming the coming of Christ; I mean Elijah, Elisha, and Ezekiel among the prophets, with those others to whom a like testimony is borne [in Scripture]. Abraham was specially honoured, and was called the friend of God; yet he, earnestly regarding the glory of God, humbly declared, "I am but dust and ashes." [Genesis 18:27] Moreover, it is thus written of Job, "Job was a righteous man, and blameless, truthful, God-fearing, and one that kept himself from all evil." [Job 1:1] But bringing an accusation against himself, he said, "No man is free from defilement, even if his life be but of one day." [Job 14:4-5] Moses was called faithful in all God's house; and through his instrumentality, God punished Egypt with plagues and tortures. Yet he, though thus greatly honoured, did not adopt lofty language, but said, when the divine oracle came to him out of the bush, "Who am I, that Thou sendest me? I am a man of a feeble voice and a slow tongue." [Exodus 4:10] And again he said, "I am but as the smoke of a pot." — Clement's First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 17 Origen of Alexandria : And of old indeed Moses said: "but I am ἄλογος (without speech or reason)" — which, though the Latin has rendered it otherwise, can nevertheless be more properly translated: "without speech or reason" —, and after he said this, he received reason or speech, which he had confessed that he did not before possess. But the people of Israel in Egypt, before it received the law, was in a certain way "mute", without speech and reason; then it received speech, of which Moses was an image. This people, therefore, does not now confess what it then confessed in Moses, namely that it is "mute" and ἄλογος, but by nods and silence indicates that it does not have speech and does not have reason. Does it not seem to you to be a confession of foolishness, when none of them can render a reason for the legal precepts and the prophetic oracle? — HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF Luke 5 Origen of Alexandria : But I will bring forward to you yet another thing, which you cannot contradict. In Exodus, where we in the books of the Church have it written that Moses answered the Lord and said: "Provide, Lord, another whom you may send. For I am of a thin voice and slow of tongue," you in the Hebrew copies have: "but I am uncircumcised in lips." Behold, you have circumcision of the lips according to your copies, which you say are truer. If, then, according to you Moses says he is still unworthy, because he is not circumcised in lips, it is certain that he thereby indicates this, that he is worthier and holier who is circumcised in lips. Apply, then, the sickle also to your lips and cut away the coverings of your mouth, since such an understanding in the divine letters pleases you. But if you recall the circumcision of the lips to allegory, and likewise call the circumcision of the ears allegorical and figurative, how do you not also seek an allegory in the circumcision of the foreskin? — HOMILIES ON Genesis 3.5