Miriam and Aaron challenge Moses; Miriam's skin disease

The stated grievance is one thing and the real one turns out to be another. Miriam and Aaron begin talking against their brother because of his Cushite wife. Cush usually means the region south of Egypt, in modern Sudan, which raises a question, since Moses' wife Zipporah was a Midianite. It may refer to a second marriage, or it may be describing Zipporah with a term used more loosely. Neither reading affects what follows, because the marriage is never mentioned again.

The real question comes next: has the LORD spoken only through Moses? Has he not also spoken through us? Both of them have a case. Miriam is called a prophet and led the singing at the sea. Aaron is the high priest and was appointed as his brother's mouthpiece before Pharaoh. Neither is an outsider making a baseless claim, and that is what makes the episode serious rather than petty.

Then an awkward sentence intrudes: now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth. Read as a self-description it defeats itself, and it is among the standard arguments against attributing every line of the first five books to Moses himself. Read as a later editorial note it explains why he says nothing in his own defence at any point.

All three are summoned to the tent, and what they get is a distinction rather than a dismissal. To a prophet God makes himself known in visions and speaks in dreams. With Moses he speaks face to face, clearly and not in riddles, and Moses sees the form of the LORD. The prophetic standing of the other two is not denied. It is placed in a different category.

Miriam is then struck with a skin disease and is white as snow. Aaron is not. The asymmetry has been noticed for a very long time, and one grammatical detail bears on it: the verb describing the two of them speaking against Moses is feminine singular in Hebrew, which indicates that she led and he followed.

Aaron appeals to his brother, and Moses prays. The prayer is five words in Hebrew and is the shortest anywhere: please, God, heal her. The answer imposes a seven-day exclusion outside the camp, and the whole community waits a week before moving on. A nation of tribes and standards and marching order stops for one woman.

The episode is remembered afterwards as a warning, and much later a law about skin disease tells its hearers to remember what happened to Miriam on the way out of Egypt.

She is not mentioned again until her death nearly forty years later, which takes one sentence and records no mourning at all. The woman who watched a basket in the reeds, negotiated with Pharaoh's daughter, led the singing at the sea and was the first woman anywhere called a prophet appears three times in the whole story, and one of those is this.