Miriam’s Challenge

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The story in Numbers 12 is one of the most troublesome in Scripture. It is unlikely to be read in a worship service with a concluding announcement, “The word of the Lord”; if it were, many worshipers would murmur or perhaps storm out in protest.

The brief story, involving Moses, Aaron and Miriam, portrays an episode that occurred on Israel’s wilderness itinerary, at a place called Hazeroth. It falls into the following parts:

1. Miriam and Aaron, the sister and brother of Moses, challenge Moses’ authority (Numbers 12:1–3). They speak against Moses, saying: “Is it only by Moses that the Lord [Yahweh] speaks? Doesn’t God also speak through us?” The occasion for questioning their sibling’s authority is Moses’ marriage to an “outsider”—perhaps Zipporah, his Midianite wife (Exodus 2:21), though his dark-skinned Cushite wife may be referred to. However, what they regard as a flaw in Moses’ background is only a pretext to get at the real issue. “Question authority” is their intention, to cite the slogan seen on bumper stickers today. Moses, however, does not defend himself, for he is “the humblest man on the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3)—an ancient stumbling block to the view that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, for a humble man would hardly brag about his humility!

2. The Lord—not Moses—responds without hesitation. “But the Lord heard” (Numbers 12:3). Suddenly, God summons all three (Moses, Aaron and Miriam) to the door of the Tent of Meeting, but calls two of them, Aaron and Miriam, aside to reprimand them for having the temerity to question the authority of God’s special servant. The divine oracle has a poetic flavor and is sometimes printed as poetry:

“When a prophet of the Lord is among you,

I reveal myself to him in visions,

I speak to him in dreams.

But this is not true of my servant Moses;

he is faithful in all my house.

With him I speak face to face,

clearly and not in riddles;

he sees the form of the Lord.

Why then were you not afraid

to speak against my servant Moses?”

(Numbers 12:6–8, NIV)

This part of the story ends by noting that “God’s anger burned against [Aaron and Miriam].”

3. Miriam’s punishment (Numbers 12:10–15), when “the cloud” (signifying God’s presence) lifts from the Tent of Meeting, is affliction with a disease that makes her skin “as white as snow” (not necessarily leprosy, although many translations designate the disease as leprosy^a). Aaron protests to Moses (not to God), asking that he not hold “against us” (Aaron and Miriam) “the sin we have so foolishly committed” (NIV). Moses cries out, “O God, please heal her,” and in response, God seems to have mitigated Miriam’s punishment, but with curious reasoning. If Miriam had offended her father, and he spat in her face in anger and contempt (cf. Deuteronomy 25:9), she would “bear her shame for seven days” so, an offense against Moses (which is tantamount to an offense against God) should receive a comparable punishment. Accordingly, Miriam is confined outside the camp for seven days, after which—cured—she is brought back. Once her problem is resolved, the people continue their journey.

Why was Miriam so severely punished for challenging Moses’ authority while Aaron got off scot-free? Commentators have great difficulty with this. One says that “Aaron merely followed his sister in her rebellion; hence she alone was punished.”¹

But the text does not say explicitly that Miriam was the instigator; this is an inference from the fact that she is mentioned first in verse 1 (“Miriam and Aaron”; but “Aaron and Miriam” in verse 5). In any case, God holds both of them responsible by taking the two of them aside for a special word about Moses’ unique prophetic role (verses 6–8) and divine anger burns against “them” (verse 9). Moreover, Aaron himself recognizes that he and his sister are co-responsible and asks Moses not to hold the sin “against us” (verse 11). The text says nothing about Miriam being “the principal offender.”²

Another commentator, noting that “Aaron admitted himself to be as guilty as she was,” theorizes that “possibly Aaron as well was punished in the original form of the story, later modified by the Priestly tradition.”³ This view, however, is purely conjectural and, in any case, does not help us with the text that we have received. The same applies to attempts to “bring Miriam out of the shadows” by showing that originally she had a position of respected leadership along with Moses and Aaron (see Micah 6:4) but was pushed aside in the history of the tradition.⁴ This is undoubtedly true, but we have to consider how she is treated in the text that we have.

“The question cries out for an answer,” as Katherine Doob Sakenfeld says. Why 055does Aaron “go unscathed?” Possibly, she suggests, the narrator could not conceive of God afflicting Aaron, the leading priest, with a skin defilement that would disqualify him from the priesthood (Leviticus 21:20).⁵ If so, that would only accentuate the problem by making the woman a victim for a shared offense. There is no way to avoid the fact that this story presupposes a patriarchal society. It betrays a view of women that, alas, is similar to what is found too often in the modern world.⁶

To the credit of the human actors, it should be emphasized that they are sympathetic with their sister. Aaron first senses the injustice of Miriam’s punishment, and then Moses cries out to God with a prayer that she be healed. The major problem is with the divine actor in the story. Though angry with both Aaron and Miriam, the Lord takes it out on Miriam alone, a harsh act that was held up as a warning for future generations: “Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam on your journey out of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 24:9, NRSV).

It could be argued, from a purely literary viewpoint, that the storyteller here, as elsewhere in the old epic tradition, characterizes God as elusive and enigmatic. Harold Bloom observes that the narrator pictures God as an “impish” figure whose actions defy human comprehension;⁷ for instance, no sooner does Yahweh call Moses to go to Pharaoh than he attempts to kill him in the wilderness as he is on his way to Egypt (Exodus 4:24–26).

A more profitable approach, in my judgment, is to read this difficult text in its scriptural context, with the aid of sociological insights about the dynamic of a community, whether a tribal society or a more advanced civil or religious community. If there is to be social welfare and “peace” (shalom), a community must achieve a proper balance between order and freedom, authority and charisma. It is not accidental that the story of the revolt of Aaron and Miriam comes immediately after the story about the distribution of the spirit on the seventy elders (Numbers 11:24–30). It would be unwise and impractical for Moses, as the supreme spiritual authority, to bear the burden of leadership alone. Hence some of his “spirit” was put on the seventy elders. The result was that they “prophesied” in ecstasy, “but only once” (Numbers 11:25), suggesting that Moses’ supreme prophetic authority was not undermined by the distribution of the spirit. The story of the giving of the spirit of the elders of Israel reaches a climax with the exclamation: “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” (Numbers 11:29).

The stories in the book of Numbers seem to reflect controversies over authority and freedom that broke out in the period of Israel’s sojourn in the wilderness and that became especially strong during the early monarchy, when the old epic tradition was written down. The question was: Who speaks for God? Who is a true prophet? This question came to the fore in the time of the prophet Samuel, who at one point was caught up in the charismatic prophetic movement (1 Samuel 10:5–13). It became a burning issue by the time of the prophet Jeremiah, when popular prophets were “deluding” the people: “They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord” (Jeremiah 23:16).

The story in Numbers 12 addresses the question of true and false prophecy. Significantly those who challenged Moses’ authority were Miriam, know to be a “prophetess” (Exodus 15:20), who claimed a share in the prophetic charisma, and Aaron, the priest who maintained that God speaks through priestly channels. Moses’ authority is said to be greater than both of these: the freedom of the spirit and the order of priestly ministry. The true prophet, as we read in a key text in the book of Deuteronomy, is a “prophet like Moses”—one whom God raises up from the people and who stands in the Mosaic tradition (Deuteronomy 18:15–22). With those prophets who belong in the succession of Moses, God speaks in a special way—“face to face, clearly and not in riddles” (Numbers 12:8)—though this does rule out God’s speaking in less distinct ways. In the community of God’s people, claims of spiritual gifts must be tested at the bar of Mosaic teaching (torah).

The story in Numbers 12 is one of the most troublesome in Scripture. It is unlikely to be read in a worship service with a concluding announcement, “The word of the Lord”; if it were, many worshipers would murmur or perhaps storm out in protest. The brief story, involving Moses, Aaron and Miriam, portrays an episode that occurred on Israel’s wilderness itinerary, at a place called Hazeroth. It falls into the following parts: 1. Miriam and Aaron, the sister and brother of Moses, challenge Moses’ authority (Numbers 12:1–3). They speak against Moses, saying: “Is it only by Moses that […]