Chapter Twelve

The dissatisfaction of Aaron and Miriam against Moses. — Confirmation of the prophet’s divine election. — Miriam’s leprosy. — Healing.

Numbers 12:1. Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman. Under “the Cushite woman,” the wife of Moses, some understand Zipporah, the daughter of the Midianite Jethro, arguing that the land of the Midianites was adjacent to the land of the Ethiopian tribe of Himyarites or Sabeans (1 Sam 10:1; Luke 11:31) and could also be called Ethiopian (Theodoret, Commentary on Numbers, question 22). Others, relying on the data of Josephus (Jewish Antiquities 2:10, 2), understand the daughter of an Ethiopian king, whom Moses supposedly married while at the court of Pharaoh, after a glorious campaign against Ethiopia. Still others understand a Kushite woman, inhabitant of southern Arabia, taken by Moses after the supposed death of Zipporah in order to avoid family connections in Israel.

Numbers 12:2. And they said, “Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?” And the Lord heard it. Evidently, the “Cushite woman” served only as a pretext for Aaron and Miriam to express to Moses the feelings of their wounded ambition: the latter could not reconcile itself with the exceptional position of their brother in the people. A special confirmation of Moses’ divine election was required.

Numbers 12:3. Now Moses was a man of great humility, more humble than any person on the face of the earth. There is an opinion that this verse was appended by Joshua when he completed the final review of the manuscript of Numbers — similar to what he did by adding a note at the end of Deuteronomy (Deut 34).

Numbers 12:10. And the cloud departed from above the tent, and there, Miriam had become leprous, white as snow. And Aaron turned toward Miriam, and there, she was leprous. “Since the leper,” Theodoret remarks, “was recognized as unclean by the law, and Aaron was the foundation and basis of the priesthood, so that the reproach would not fall on the entire order, God did not subject him to the same punishment, but frightened and corrected him through the punishment of his sister” (Commentary on Numbers, question 23). From the following verse it is evident that Aaron truly understood his transgression.

Numbers 12:15. And Miriam was shut up outside the camp for seven days, and the people did not set out on their journey until Miriam was brought in again. “Seven days” — according to the quarantine period established by law for those defiled by contact with a corpse and for those just cleansed from leprosy (Lev 13:1; Num 19:16).