Miriam and Aaron challenge Moses
1 Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married
2 and they said, “Has Yahweh only spoken through Moses? Has he not also spoken through us?” And Yahweh heard.
3 Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than any man on the face of the earth.
4 Yet suddenly Yahweh said to Moses, Aaron and Miriam, “Come out, all three of you, to the Tent of Meeting.” The three of them came out.
5 Yahweh came down in the pillar of cloud and, standing at the door of the Tent, called Aaron and Miriam. They both went out and 6 he said, “Listen carefully to what I say,
6 If there is a prophet among you,
I reveal myself to him in a vision
and I speak to him in a dream.
7 It is not so for my servant, Moses,
my trusted steward in all my house hold.
To him I speak face to face,
8 openly, and not in riddles,
and he sees the presence of Yah weh.
Why then did you not fear to speak against my servant, against Moses?”
9 Yahweh became angry with them and he departed.
10 The cloud moved away from above the Tent and Miriam was there white as snow with leprosy. Aaron turned towards Miriam and he saw that she was leprous.
11 And he said to Moses, “My lord, I beg you, do not charge us with this sin that we have fool ishly committed.
12 Let her not be like the stillborn whose flesh is half-eaten when it comes from its mother’s womb.”
13 Then Moses cried to Yahweh, “Heal her, O God, I beg of you.”
14 But Yahweh said to Moses, “If her father spat in her face, would she not hide in shame for seven days? Let her then be confined outside the camp for seven days; only then shall she be admitted again.”
15 And so Miriam was confined for seven days outside the camp and the people did not move on until she had been readmitted.
16 After that the people set out from Ha ze roth and camped in the wilderness of Paran.
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Comments Numbers, Chapter 12
• 12.1 In the Gospel Jesus would declare that no prophet is accepted by his own family (see Mk 6:4). Miriam and Aaron, the “relatives” of Moses, criticized what he was doing and may have been right. However, it was an attempt to make themselves equal to Moses and God intervened to defend his prophet. God’s answer clarifies two things:
– Moses has a special place in revelation: he is to establish the foundations of faith in a Liberating, Just, Holy and Merciful God and no prophet will be able to change that. What is more, prophets who actually are Moses’ successors will have to be accepted by the religious leaders of God’s people.
– To him I speak face to face. Visions and dreams can be one of God’s ways of revealing him self to prophets, though these ways are of an inferior nature, since all kind of spirits may be involved and may even be illusions from the devil.
Moses was a very humble man, a clear sign that he had encountered God.