Shame Shame - Numbers 12

Chapter 12 is short but has some very interesting concepts to discuss. It starts with Aaron and Miriam, Moses’ brother and sister, “spake against Moses.” This basically means that they complained about him. Now if one of my brothers was the prophet, I would probably complain against him too because no matter how good he is, he would still be my little brother and that’s fair, but it seems like there were a couple of different factors that came into play here. It’s important to remember that Aaron is the highest high priest and Miraim is a prophetess, so they are very spiritual, very high up in the religious hierarchy, very influential, so it doesn’t sound like this was just a sibling squabble, but had serious ramifications throughout the entire Israelite community.

First, the words they used to complain against Moses was “because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.” But wait, I thought Moses was married to the Midianite woman name Zipporah? There are a couple of different ideas about how this came to be. The first idea is from the IM which gives an account from Josephus who says that “when moses was a general of the Egyptian army in the attack against the Ethiopians, he married an Ethiopian woman as a political alliance to end the war.” If this is the case, I don’t know where this woman was at the point, if she was still living as Moses’ wife amongst the Israelites at the time, and if so, presumably she had been the whole time so why did they only have a problem with it now, after all these years?

TB suggests something a little bit different. He notes that the more correct translation is no Ethipoian but “Cushite” noting that Ethiopia was a geographical territory in northern Africa that might have been settled by Cush, one of Noah’s sons. Conversely, Cushite might have just referred to the tribe of Cush that encompassed not only Ethiopia but Midian as well, or some combination of the two during the lifetime of Moses. If that is the case then this Cushite or Ethiopian woman that Aaron and Miriam are referring to could in fact be Zipporah because that’s one of her identities be it tribe or region or something like that. This also might be the case because if we remember Zipporah didn’t go all the way to Egypt with Moses when he first went there to free the Hebrews from slavery.

If I recall correctly, Moses and Zipporah had a fight on the way to Egypt and Zipporah took the two boys and went back to live with Jethro her father while Moses was doing his thing in Egypt. Jethro brought Zipporah and the boys back to Moses once they got to the wilderness so it’s very possible that Aaron and Miraim had not met Zipporah previously, just met her during the journey, there was a rebellion engaged in by non-Hebrews and suddenly they started seeing Zipporah as not one of them and they had problems with it. And it seems that Zipporah had a strong personality and maybe they didn’t like that or felt threatened by it. This would also make sense why Moses was just asking Jethro or his brother-in-law to stay on as a travel guide for the camp. Zipporah just returned to Moses with a male family member escort and Moses asked that family member to stay on as a guide. That makes sense to me. Or a third option is that it is an additional wife altogether, not previously discussed. Any of these is possible.

The words Aaron and Miriam used to complain against Moses was “we don’t like your wife” but the actual reasons seemed to stem from jealousy that Moses was favored of God less than them. In verse 2 they say “has God not spoken through us as well?” Was it that they were jealous that God was closer to Moses than them? Maybe. Was is that they didn’t think that it was fair that Moses held so much more power than then in the camp? Possibly. Was it that they wanted more recognition for their status among the people? Who knows. I know that this is a human characteristic, I find myself falling victim to it as well, wanting people to listen to me or think that I’ve so smart or special or whatever, it’s the human condition and overcoming that urge is often just part of a lifetime pursuit of righteousness.

If it was just a matter of them being jealous that Moses seemed to me closer to God spiritually, then that is another matter. Maybe at the time God’s attention and the people’s ability to have a relationship with him might have been different than it is now, but in our time I believe that it is fully possible for each of us to have a relationship with God that is just as strong, enlightening, and personal as the prophets. There is nothing inherent to the relationship that God has with the prophets that is off limits to us, we just serve in different capacities. If we believe that the nursery leader is just as important as the prophet (which we do) then we have to also believe that we are just as able to have the prophet level relationship with God. This is just to show that from our perspective, Aaron and Miriam could have had that same relationship with God (as far as I’m aware) if they had put the work in instead of complaining, which is sounds like they did later and we all make mistakes.

Verse 3 notes that “moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.” This is a funny statement to me because I always thought that it was Moses who wrote the book of Numbers so this could be taken very much as a “I’m the most humble man alive,” which is funny. But it seems that this is actually the case, as displayed by his “I wish everyone in Israel was a prophet,” which the IM used as an example of just how humble Moses was because he didn’t want all the fame or attention or responsibility that came with his position. It’s one of those ironic things where Aaron and Miriam are like “we are jealous of your position,” and Moses is like “please take it.” It’s just interesting to look at.

God is not pleased with all this bickering, and presumably knew the real reason for Aaron and Miriam’s complaints, not just not liking Moses’ wife like they said, and he calls all 3 of them down to the “tabernacle of the congregation.” God came down in “the pillar of the cloud, and stood in the door of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and Miriam: and they both came forth.” God basically tells that that Moses is special and was called to the prophet position specially, not called in a dream like other previous prophets, but instead God speaks to him “mouth to mouth.” God was angry and when he left the tabernacle “Miriam became leprous, white as snow.”

A couple of notes about this, I wonder why only Miriam was punished and not Aaron, maybe she complained louder, was more obnoxious, maybe she knew better and should have done better, who knows. Another point about this is the TB says that the translation of “leprous” is incorrect but this was just a generic skin disease that didn’t have all the stigma around it. Aaron freaks out, Moses prays for her to be healed and it doesn’t say that she is immediately healed but TB suggests that she was because God said that she should be shut out of the camp for 7 days “and after that let her be received in again.” TB says that he believes that she was healed immediately when Moses prayed because when someone is put out of the camp because of the skin conditions, the 7 days of waiting only starts after the skin condition has cleared up, so her seven days of waiting outside of the camp starting right then indicated that she was immediately healed.

The last thought about Miriam having to spend the next 7 days outside of the camp essentially being punished and then having to request to come back in meant that the entire trip that the people of Israel were on had to stop. They were, in their minds at least, almost to the promised land, and they had to take a 7 day stop while waiting for Miriam to be allowed to be let back into the camp, so this was a big deal throughout the entire community of Israel. We all make mistakes and I can easily see myself being guilty of something like that. All I can say is that I’m glad that my mistakes are immortalized in scripture.