Moe's Foes

Numbers 12

In this edition of Life in the Wilderness, sibling rivalry rears its ugly head. Aaron and Miriam start to talk smack about Moses- "God speaks through us, too," they proclaim. They seem to be none too happy being the supporting players anymore. Seems like Paul's tempted to break up the Beatles. Or more like Ringo is.

What strikes me most interesting about all the detail here is perspective. We're told the cause of this skirmish is that Moses has taken a Cushite wife. I'm not aware of any regulation against the marrying of foreign born partners, but it seems Moses' clan was none too keen on for'ners. And this skirmish has nothing to do with Moses, after all- as verse three tells us, Moses was "more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth."

It seems like the fight is very one sided, jealous siblings hungry for power- and maybe I've been reading too much into Moses' character in previous readings. While he seems to be getting too big for his caftan, the scripture here is clear- Moses is humble... until you consider that the scripture is written by Moses. So, Moses is the self-proclaimed most humble man on earth. I doubt the Book of Miriam would have chronicled the interaction quite this way.

This is interesting to me and raises a question that might be fundamental to understanding all scripture. Does inspiration remove the biases of the chronicler or is Moses really humble and it would have wounded his pride to have to write about it if he had any pride in the first place. I tend to think that there's lots of Moses in the telling of these stories- I don't think he fell into a trance and woke up to find scrolls scribbled that he had no memory of.

Regardless, God comes down and calls the three of them out and sets them straight. First He lets them know that things are a little different between He and Moses. He implies that Aaron and Miriam may be prophets- and He speaks to prophets in dreams and visions- but there's no mystery when He talks to Moses. With Moses it's face to face, with no riddles- so, He asks, why didn't it scare you to trash him to the camp?

Once again, this might be Moses talking again. Don't you see how tight I am with God? Nothing like what the two of them have relationally. But it certainly creates some questions. Does God talk to some of us more directly than others? Do you get a direct voice, and I get a weird dream, but someone else gets nothing? Why does God send puzzling messages to prophets? Why not make His will plain? And does He keep talking to us until we get the message- or if we don't solve the riddle, does He move on to the next contestant?

So God gets angry and Miriam (notice not Aaron) is struck with leprosy- or at least some disease that turned her skin white. Maybe Miriam was pretty and Aaron wasn't so a skin disease would have meant more to her, but more likely this is just some old testament time misogyny. Aaron sees the disease, and perhaps feeling a bit guilty, begs through Moses to not hold their sin against them. He asks to not let her be like a "stillborn infant coming from its mother's womb with its flesh half eaten away." This is a difficult image to picture- but apparently Miriam didn't make People's most beautiful list this year.

Moses cries out to God to heal her and God does, but not immediately. He tells Moses, "“If her father had spit in her face, would she not have been in disgrace for seven days?"

So she is put out of the camp for a week while she healed and everyone stayed put (which would have made the issue public, I would think). After this they moved on to the desert of Paran.

God's justice here is a little troubling. Is He slow to forgive us too? Or did He forgive instantly but continue to teach Miriam (and Aaron indirectly) by this disease? And how does that translate into our forgiving each other?

In the meantime, how would you like to be this Cushite wife- already an outsider- talked about by family and now perhaps feeling guilty for the fate of her sister-in-law. Would this have made the relationship worse? Awkward Thanksgiving dinner? And in contrast how much pain would have been spared by open and accepting spirits?