(Exod. 4:10–16), that he is not a good public speaker. His hesitation is much more fundamental than that. He feels he is being pitchforked into a task for which he is totally unprepared and wholly inexperienced. He is overwhelmed by a sense of his own personal inadequacy. This was to be a recurring struggle in Jeremiah’s life. We shall see in his “personal diary” further evidence of this tension between his own estimate of his ability and resources and the demands God made upon him. Perhaps only