Ezekiel 3:5

Though the Divine command is reason enough why we should obey readily, yet God is pleased to give the prophet arguments to persuade, and ushers them in here. A people of a strange speech; who cannot skill of thy speech, nor thou speak (without gift of tongues) to them. Shift not off thy work as if, with Jonah, sent to a people of barbarous tongue, in which are dark and profound idioms, but as horrid to thy ear as deep and dark precipices and gulfs to the eye, as the Hebrew, deep of lip, intimates. Of an hard language; the same repeated in other words; they will need no interpreter to tell them what thou sayest to them, nor wilt thou need an interpreter to tell thee what answer they give. Thy work will be the easier, neither difficult, as things that lie deep to be digged out, nor as things of great weight and heaviness to be lifted, as both metaphors imply: this is his first argument. Next, implied in it, I send thee to thine own countrymen, whose welfare thou shouldst readily seek, and in their own tongue thou mayst express thy care for them. To the house of Israel; they still are a family that God owneth he hath not broke up housekeeping, there is further encouragement; and they are Israel's seed, the posterity of Jacob, and under covenant mercy; go therefore readily, for Israel shall be gathered.