Numbers 12:1-3

Numbers 12:1-3

[1] And Miriam  and Aaron  spake  against Moses  because of  woman  whom he had married:  woman.  [2] And they said,  Hath the LORD  indeed spoken  only by Moses?  hath he not spoken  also by us? And the LORD  heard  it. [3] (Now the man  Moses  was very  meek,  above all the men  which were upon the face  of the earth.) 

What does Numbers 12:1-3 Mean?

Contextual Meaning

Miriam was the outspoken leader in this incident. The priority of her name over Aaron"s and the feminine gender of the verb in the Hebrew text translated "spoke" indicate this ( Numbers 12:1).
The Cushite woman Moses had married was probably not Zipporah ( Exodus 2:21). Zipporah was from Midian that was in Arabia. At this time Cush was a name for Upper Egypt (Ethiopia).
". . . the Septuagint and the Vulgate translate "Cushite" in Numbers 12:1 as "Ethiopian," the word used by the Greeks and Romans to refer to the region south of Egypt inhabited by people with black skin." [1]
Merrill, however, believed that "Cushite" described people who lived in Arabia as well as in Cush proper in which case Moses" wife may not have been black and may have been Zipporah. [2] It seems unlikely that Miriam would have objected at this time that Moses had married Zipporah. He had married her years before this incident. The repetition of the phrase "for he had married a Cushite woman" ( Numbers 12:1) seems to imply a recent marriage. This would explain Miriam"s objection at this time better. We may assume, therefore, that Zipporah had died and that Moses had remarried. Moses wrote in Psalm 90:10 that a normal lifespan was about70 years. He would have been in his early eighties at this time, so perhaps Zipporah had died of old age, assuming she was about the same age as he. There is no reason to believe that Moses was married to two women at the same time, though that is possible. Marriage to a Cushite was within the will of God. God had only forbidden the Israelites from marrying Canaanites ( Exodus 34:16).
Evidently Miriam and Aaron felt their leading roles in Israel as prophetess ( Exodus 15:20) and high priest were losing distinctiveness as God gave70 elders the privilege of mediating His word. Perhaps Miriam saw in Moses" new wife a threat to her role as the leading female in Israel. Moses" marriage to the Cushite woman may have been nothing more than an excuse. [3]
The statement of Moses" humility ( Numbers 12:3) was not a boastful claim by the writer but an inspired statement of fact. We need not conclude that another writer added it later since it is essential to the argument of this passage. That another writer added it later is a distinct possibility, however. One writer suggested that on the basis of etymology, usage, and context the qere reading of the Hebrew word used here is preferable. He believed the Hebrew word should be translated "miserable" rather than "meek." [4]