Numbers 12:12

The Holy Bible, Berean Study Bible

Contextual Overview

¹⁰As the cloud lifted from above the Tent, suddenly Miriam became leprous, white as snow. Aaron turned toward her, saw that she was leprous, ¹¹and said to Moses, "My lord, please do not hold against us this sin we have so foolishly committed. ¹²Please do not let her be like a stillborn infant whose flesh is half consumed when he comes out of his mother's womb."¹³So Moses cried out to the LORD, "O God, please heal her!" ¹⁴But the LORD answered Moses, "If her father had but spit in her face, would she not have been in disgrace for seven days? Let her be confined outside the camp for seven days; after that she may be brought back in." ¹⁵So Miriam was confined outside the camp for seven days, and the people did not move on until she was brought in again. ¹⁶After that, the people set out from Hazeroth and camped in the Wilderness of Paran.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

as one dead: Psalms 88:4, Psalms 88:5, Ephesians 2:1-5, Colossians 2:13, 1 Timothy 5:6

of whom: Job 3:16, Psalms 58:8, 1 Corinthians 15:8

Reciprocal: Leviticus 13:2 - the plague of leprosy Job 13:28 - And he

Cross-References

Genesis 12:8
From there Abram moved on to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. There he built an altar to the LORD, and he called on the name of the LORD.

Genesis 12:10
Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe.

Genesis 20:11
Abraham replied, "I thought to myself, 'Surely there is no fear of God in this place. They will kill me on account of my wife.'

Genesis 26:7
But when the men of that place asked about his wife, he said, "She is my sister." For he was afraid to say, "She is my wife," since he thought to himself, "The men of this place will kill me on account of Rebekah, because she is so beautiful."

1 Samuel 27:1
David, however, said to himself, "One of these days now I will be swept away by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than to escape to the land of the Philistines. Then Saul will stop searching for me all over Israel, and I will slip out of his hand."

Proverbs 29:25
The fear of man is a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD will be set securely on high.

Matthew 10:28
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Instead, fear the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Let her not be as one dead,.... As she was in a ceremonial sense, being to be shut up and excluded from the society of people, and as defiling by touching as a dead carcase; and, in a natural sense, her flesh, by the disease upon her, was become as dead flesh, putrid and rotten, and unless miraculously cured it would issue in her death:

of whom the flesh is half consumed, when he cometh out of his mother's womb; like an abortive, or one stillborn, that has been dead some time in its mother's womb; and therefore when brought forth its flesh is almost wasted away, or at least half consumed: and in such a plight and condition was Miriam already, or quickly would be, through the force of her disease.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Miriam, as a prophetess (compare Exodus 15:20-21) no less than as the sister of Moses and Aaron, took the first rank among the women of Israel; and Aaron may be regarded as the ecclesiastical head of the whole nation. But instead of being grateful for these high dignities they challenged the special vocation of Moses and the exclusive authority which God had assigned to him. Miriam was the instigator, from the fact that her name stands conspicuously first Numbers 12:1, and that the punishment Numbers 12:10 fell on her alone. She probably considered herself as supplanted, and that too by a foreigner. Aaron was misled this time by the urgency of his sister, as once before Exodus 32:0 by that of the people.

Numbers 12:1

The Ethiopian woman whom he had married - (Hebrew, “Cushite,” compare Genesis 2:13; Genesis 10:6) It is likely that Zipporah Exodus 2:21 was dead, and that Miriam in consequence expected to have greater influence than ever with Moses. Her disappointment at his second marriage would consequently be very great.

The marriage of Moses with a woman descended from Ham was not prohibited, so long as she was not of the stock of Canaan (compare Exodus 34:11-16); but it would at any time have been offensive to that intense nationality which characterized the Jews. The Christian fathers note in the successive marriage of Moses with a Midianite and an Ethiopian a foreshadowing of the future extension to the Gentiles of God’s covenant and its promises (compare Psalms 45:9 ff; Song of Solomon 1:4 ff); and in the complaining of Miriam and Aaron a type of the discontent of the Jews because of such extension: compare Luke 15:29-30.

Numbers 12:2

Hath the Lord ... - i. e. Is it merely, after all, by Moses that the Lord hath spoken?

Numbers 12:3

The man Moses was very meek - In this and in other passages in which Moses no less unequivocally records his own faults (compare Numbers 20:12 ff; Exodus 4:24 ff; Deuteronomy 1:37), there is the simplicity of one who bare witness of himself, but not to himself (compare Matthew 11:28-29). The words are inserted to explain how it was that Moses took no steps to vindicate himself, and why consequently the Lord so promptly intervened.

Numbers 12:8

Mouth to mouth - i. e. without the intervention of any third person or thing: compare the marginal references.

Even apparently - Moses received the word of God direct from Him and plainly, not through the medium of dream, vision, parable, dark saying, or such like; compare the marginal references.

The similitude of the Lord shall he behold - But, “No man hath seen God at any time,” says John (John 1:18 : compare 1 Timothy 6:16, and especially Exodus 33:20 ff). It was not therefore the Beatific Vision, the unveiled essence of the Deity, which Moses saw on the one hand. Nor was it, on the other hand, a mere emblematic representation (as in Ezekiel 1:26 ff, Daniel 7:9), or an Angel sent as a messenger. It was the Deity Himself manifesting Himself so as to be cognizable to mortal eye. The special footing on which Moses stood as regards God is here laid down in detail, because it at once demonstrates that the supremacy of Moses rested on the distinct appointment of God, and also that Miriam in contravening that supremacy had incurred the penalty proper to sins against the theocracy.

Numbers 12:12

As one dead - leprosy was nothing short of a living death, a poisoning of the springs, a corrupting of all the humors, of life; a dissolution little by little of the whole body, so that one limb after another actually decayed and fell away. Compare the notes at Leviticus 13:0.

Numbers 12:13

Heal her now, O God, I beseech thee - Others render these words: “Oh not so; heal her now, I beseech Thee.”

Numbers 12:14

If her father ... - i. e. If her earthly parent had treated her with contumely (compare Deuteronomy 25:9) she would feel for a time humiliated, how much more when God has visited her thus?