Numbers 12 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
~1445 BC, the second year after Israel left Egypt
Location
Hazeroth, a camp stop in the Sinai wilderness on the route north from Mount Sinai toward Canaan
Audience
the Israelites of the wilderness generation and their descendants, who preserved these accounts as the record of how their nation was formed
Situation
Miriam and Aaron, Moses' older sister and brother, publicly criticise him over his Cushite wife and claim God speaks through them just as much as through him. God summons all three to the tent of meeting, defends Moses, and strikes Miriam with a skin disease until Moses prays for her.
Key Background
In the ancient Near East, a leader's authority was usually challenged first from inside his own family, and Miriam and Aaron both held recognised roles, she as a prophetess who led the victory song at the sea, he as high priest. Cush was the region south of Egypt, roughly modern Sudan, so the marriage brought a foreign woman into the leading family of the camp. Skin disease, the condition older translations call leprosy, required a person to live outside the camp until a priest declared them clean, which is why Miriam's seven days outside stalled the whole nation's travel.
Miriam and Aaron started Moses because of the he had married — he had indeed married a
They said, "Is Moses really the only one speaks through? Doesn't he speak through us too?" And it.
Now Moses was more than anyone else on the face of the earth.
Yahweh said to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, "All three of you — come out to the So the three of them went out.
Yahweh came down in a of and stood at the entrance of the tent. He called out, "Aaron! Miriam!" and both of them stepped forward.
He said, "Listen carefully to what I'm saying: When there's a among you, I, Yahweh, make myself known to them through I speak to them in dreams.
But that's not how it is with my Moses. He is with my
I speak with him to — openly and plainly, not in He even sees the of So why weren't you afraid to criticize my servant Moses?"
Yahweh's against them, and he left.
When the cloud lifted from above the tent, there was Miriam — her skin covered in a that it as Aaron turned toward her and saw the covering her skin.
Aaron said to Moses, "Please, my Don't hold this against us. We acted foolishly and we've done wrong.
Don't let her be like a already half-decomposed when it comes out of its mother's body."
Moses out to Yahweh, "God, —
Yahweh said to Moses, "If own father had in wouldn't she carry that for seven days? Confine outside the camp for seven days, and after that she can be brought back in."
So Miriam was confined outside the camp for seven days, and the on until she was brought back.
After that, the people set out from and made camp in the