וַיְדַבֵּ֣ר מֹשֶׁ֔ה לִפְנֵ֥י יְהוָ֖ה לֵאמֹ֑ר הֵ֤ן בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ לֹֽא־שָׁמְע֣וּ אֵלַ֔י וְאֵיךְ֙ יִשְׁמָעֵ֣נִי פַרְעֹ֔ה וַאֲנִ֖י עֲרַ֥ל שְׂפָתָֽיִם׃ (פ)
האָט משה גערעדט פֿאַר גאָט, אַזױ צו זאָגן: זע, די קינדער פֿון ישׂראל האָבן ניט צוגעהערט צו מיר, הײַנט װי װעט פַּרעה מיך צוהערן, אַז איך האָב פֿאַרשטאָפּטע ליפּן?
Sefer Yetzirah
Ten SEFIROT BELIMAH—The count of ten fingers, five against five, with the Covenant of the Unique One established in the center,13On the image of the Covenant in the empty space between 'hands' or 'wings', cf. perhaps [Exodus 25:22] describing communion with God emanating out of the space between the winged cherubs of the Ark in the Tabernacle. like a word of the tongue and circumcision of the genitals.14This is a pun in Hebrew, drawing upon the similarity (in many dialects homophony) of מִלַּת millat ‘word’ and מִילַת milat ‘circumcision’. Both items refer to anatomical hiddenness: the word emerging from the tongue, hidden in the mouth, and circumcision of the genitals, the concealed lower organs revealed during circumcision. A connection is thus made between the act of speech and the act of circumcision, being two forms of creation and transformation according to the SY’s thought. Another association between language, mouth, and genitals, though the connection (if any) with the SY is unclear, is found in the idiom עָרְלַת שְׂפָתַיִם ʽorlat sefatayim ‘uncircumcised of lips’, probably meaning one who is unskilled in speech, e.g. [Exodus 6:12]. There is also a spatial-anatomical parallelism between the terms employed by the SY: the tongue concealed above, the genitals concealed below. Elsewhere in the SY, the ‘tongue’ (or ‘wedge’) appears as the symbol of a central balance between two extremities, e.g. SY 2:1, 3:1, so it is interesting that in this verse the tongue is rather portrayed as one of two binary poles. See also SY 6:3 where the tongue is one of the שְׁלֹשָׁה שׂוֹנְאִים Sheloshah Sonʼim ‘Three Foes’, probably a reference to לָשׁוֹן הָרָע Lashon Haraʽ ‘the Evil Tongue’, the vice of gossip or slander.