1. And Miriam, and Aaron with her, spoke against Moses. This is one of the most striking instances of an expressive grammatical device in ancient Hebrew prose: when there are two or more subjects of a verb but a singular verb is used (here, feminine singular), there is a thematic focus on the first of the subjects as the principal agent in the action stipulated through the verb. (This translation adds “with her” to suggest an equivalent effect.) Thus Abraham ibn Ezra: “she spoke and Aaron assented or was silent, so he [too] was punished.” It is Miriam, of course, who will be stricken with the skin disease. The expression diber b^e often means “to speak against,” but in a punning usage, it can also refer, as it does repeatedly in this episode beginning with Aaron’s and Miriam’s dialogue in the next verse, to God’s speaking through a prophet. Verse 8 here also uses diber b^e, but because of the mouth-to-mouth idiom, in that one instance it is translated as “speak with.”

the Cushite wife. Is this Zipporah? Only if one locates Cush in Midian, which some interpreters find grounds for doing. Otherwise, Cush might be a designation for Nubia or Ethiopia, which would make this wife black. If she is a second wife, the objection might be simply to the fact that Moses had compromised Zipporah’s privileged status by this second marriage (Baruch Levine’s view), or it could reflect racial disapproval. If Miriam and Aaron are referring to Zipporah, the objection would simply be to her coming from a different ethnic-national group. In either case, they mean to suggest that Moses’s marital behavior is unworthy of a prophetic leader and hence evidence that he does not deserve to be the exclusive vessel of prophecy.

2. Has He not spoken through us as well? This familial “murmuring” should be read against the background of the immediately preceding episode. There two people, Eldad and Medad, were singled out as instruments of prophecy. Now these two siblings come forth to propose themselves as candidates for the same role, though there is scant indication in the earlier narratives that God has been speaking directly through them (despite Miriam’s designation as “prophetess” in Exodus 15:20). Moses responded to the prophesying of Eldad and Medad by wishing that the whole people might be endowed with the spirit of prophecy. In flagrant contrast, Miriam and Aaron pretend that their brother has been treating prophecy as a private monopoly, and their view of the prophetic spirit is of something one can seize as a means of privilege and power. The great biblical theme of sibling rivalry, until now absent from the story of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, here makes an appearance.

3. And the man Moses was very humble. As we have noted before (see the comment on Exodus 32:1), “the man,” quite exceptionally, is a kind of epithet for Moses. His humble or unassuming character is reflected here in the fact that he has not troubled to listen, or has paid no attention, to the malicious rumors about him that Miriam and Aaron have initiated. God, however, has heard.

4. the LORD said suddenly. The use of “suddenly” to introduce divine speech is quite unusual. Nahmanides proposes an interesting explanation: Miriam and Aaron, having made their dubious declaration that through them, too, God had spoken, “were not at the moment thinking of an expected prophecy, and for Moses’s sake it came upon them without invitation.” Prophecy, that is, proves to be an abrupt and frightening business, not the commodity of power they had imagined. Thus, in the next verse, God, having called to all three siblings, singles out Miriam and Aaron in peremptory direct address.

6. Listen, pray, to My words. God’s speech to Miriam and Aaron takes the exalted form of poetry. One of the conventions for beginning a biblical poem is an exhortation for those addressed to hearken to the utterances of the poet. (Compare the first of many instances, Genesis 4:23: “Adah and Zillah, O hearken my voice . . .”)

If your prophet be the LORD’s. The Hebrew text is cryptic, perhaps through scribal error, perhaps merely because of the compacted language of archaic poetry. The literal Hebrew word sequence is: If-there-be your-prophet the-LORD. The second and third of these word-units might be an ellipsis for “prophet of the LORD,” and both the Septuagint and the Vulgate show “of” or “for” (the Hebrew particle l^e). A couple of other ancient versions also reflect a reading of “a prophet among you.” Various modern textual critics move “the LORD” (YHWH) either back to the verb “said” at the beginning of the verse or forward to the next clause, leaving “If there be a prophet [among you].”

vision . . . dream. For an ordinary prophet, God reveals Himself through an oblique imaging process, in vision or dream.

7. My servant Moses, / in all My house is he trusted. “Trusted,” neʾeman, is an expected qualifier for “servant,” ʿeved. Moses figures here as a kind of faithful majordomo given the keys to God’s household.

8. and vision, and not in riddles. Although vision has been noted as one of the two vehicles of communication with the ordinary prophet, in Moses’s case it is no enigmatic vision but a perfectly clear image, as he, and he alone, is privileged to look upon “the likeness of the LORD.”

10. blanched as snow. If the Cushite woman is actually black, this sudden draining of pigmentation, as Jacob Milgrom notes, would be mordant poetic justice for Miriam’s slander.

11–13. The rhetorical contrast between Aaron’s petition to Moses and Moses’s petition to God is pointed. Aaron’s speech is relatively lengthy and centers on an elaborate, and horrifying, simile of stillbirth for Miriam’s skin disease. (Perhaps that simile is dictated by Aaron’s consciousness of the sibling bond between Miriam and her two brothers, as though he were saying to Moses: look, the three of us were born into life from the same womb, and now our sister is suffering a fate no better than that of a stillborn fetus.) Moses’s prayer is a mere five words and five syllables (both in the Hebrew and in this translation), devoid of any metaphorical elaboration or explanation of motive and circumstance, a kind of pure verbal distillate of imperatively urgent plea. The starkness of the language makes it all the more affecting. Compare Rashi’s comment on the urgency of the language: “Why did not Moses pray at length? So that the Israelites would not say, ‘His sister is in distress and he is standing and going on and on in prayer!’”

14. shut up seven days outside the camp. This does not appear to be the usual medical quarantine for this disease, which would be fourteen days, but, to judge by the immediate context, is rather a period of isolation until the public shaming Miriam has undergone will no longer be fresh.

15. gathered back in. This is the same locution used for Moses’s return to the camp in Numbers 11:30. The repeated usage underscores a thematic antithesis: Moses was gathered back into the camp, from which he had gone out to stand before the Tent of Meeting, after sharing his spirit of prophecy with the seventy elders. Miriam is gathered back into the camp after having been excluded from it in punishment because she had complained that Moses was monopolizing the spirit that by right belonged equally to her and to Aaron. In the first instance, we have a gesture of consolidating political unity; in the second instance, a divisive complaint.